CNS Heaps Biased Hate On Biden Over Afghanistan Topic: CNSNews.com
As the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in August, with the unexpectedly quick takeover of the Afghan government by the Talibam, CNSNews.com -- in addition to defending former President Trump over his cutting the deal with the Taliban that led to U.S. withdrawal -- went relentlessly negative, filling its website with increasingly vicious and personal attacks from Repubicans and other conservatives on President Biden and his administration.Here's a list of the attacks CNS published between Aug. 12 and Sept. 1:
Needless to say, there is no similar list of stories at CNS of people defending Biden. And pretty much all of these attacks are presented as "news" with no attempt to balance them, despite CNS' mission statement to "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story."
CNS claims to be a "news" organization. It has shown here that it's little more than a stenography service for conservatives.
MRC Doesn't Think Blacks Should Be Encouraged To Play Baseball Topic: Media Research Center
A series of Washington Post articles features the stories of black baseball players, both then and now, in examining the issue of why the number of black baseball players has declined. For some reason, this has Matt Philbin, the Media Research Center's managing editor for culture, to have a meltdown, beause he has apparently decided that blacks shouldn't be encouraged to play baseball:
The Washington Post has “spent this baseball season examining the experiences of nine African American ballplayers, from a 90-year-old icon to an 18-year-old prospect,” according to an introduction to it’s series of articles called “The Nine.” It’s an exercise that’s supposed to tell readers important things “about this game and this country.”
It tells us more about the race-obsessed progressives who write for the Post than anything else. The central theme of the nine long articles is that, after an arduous, often painful integration era and a black heyday in the 1970s and 80s, there have been fewer and fewer black major leaguers. More than 16% of MLB players in 1989 were black. Today it's less than 7%.
As you can guess, this is baseball’s fault.
In a free society, people self-select. They gravitate to the professions, diversions and social circles that suit them. Young black athletes gravitate towards basketball and football. Not coincidentally, blacks are a majority in the NBA and the NFL. But the Post isn’t publishing think pieces about those sports.
Because according to the new woke orthodoxy, any sphere not dominated by [your preferred minority group here] is suspect and must be exclusionary or systemically racist.
[...]
Baseball integrated more than 70 years ago. Black players overcame racism to become some of the game’s legendary figures. As “The Nine” itself proves, MLB is open to black players. Indeed, it’s been doing outreach to black communities for at least 30 years.
Baseball allows black players to play! Isn't that enough? Indeed, Philbin goes on to whine thatthe Post pointed out that baseball is a bit of a "stodgy" sport that gives few opportunities for players to express themselves:
But the real problem with baseball not being black enough seems to be that baseball isn’t, you know, black enough. The game is “stodgy,” permeated by a “personality-suppressing culture.” (That might be surprising to Babe Ruth, Yogi Berra or Keith Hernandez.) The “contrived and archaic ‘right way’” to play ball “has been code for the ‘White way’ for decades.”
The Post says “Recently, baseball has been at war with itself, promoting ‘Let the kids play’ to push its product while some players flash fun-police badges with inside fastballs.”
No question which side the Post takes.
Philbin concluded by sneering that the Post's "focus is raceball." But "raceball" is exactly what Philbin is playing by freaking out over players of color in the game and arguing against more black players in baseball. That' the "culture" the MRC is paying Philbin to write about.
WND Columnist Blames Liberals For Afghanistan's Collapse Topic: WorldNetDaily
Andy Schlafly knows who to blame for the Afghanistan government collapsing and being taking over by the Taliban, and it is ... liberals and feminists. From his Aug. 18 WorldNetDaily column:
Like Biden, the departed Ashraf Ghani was installed as Afghan president by liberals after a disputed election that took months to resolve. Like Biden, President Ghani is an elderly, low-energy man who promoted progressive policies having little connection with reality or what the Afghan people want and believe in.
Like Biden, President Ghani failed to attract genuine support among ordinary Afghans as Trump does so well with many Americans. The equivalent of "woke" ideologies and policies were being pushed on that rugged country, and of course no Afghans would risk their lives to defend what they do not believe in.
Feminist policies were being imposed on Afghans who have a deep-rooted patriarchal culture that is the opposite of what liberals demand. The vast majority of adult Afghan men cannot read or write, yet liberals insisted on building schools to indoctrinate Afghan girls and young women with secular progressive beliefs.
[...]
To be clear, Afghanistan is not a defeat for America's brave soldiers and Marines, who served so courageously there under terrible and frightening conditions. In late 2001, merely 3,000 American troops swiftly accomplished what seemed impossible, by seizing control of the country from al-Qaida for harboring 9/11 terrorists.
But progressives and an effete occupant of the White House have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. This failure was not on the battlefield, but in the misguided ideology of those who attempted to impose political correctness on a country that is the antithesis of it.
Of course, given that the Taliban runs the country now, any policy even slightly to the left of the Taliban could be seen as "progressive" or "feminist." There are, no doubt, a signifncat number of people in Afghanistan who think allowing women to go to school is "feminist." Is that what Schlafly's talking about?
Schlafly also ranted: "In four entire years of Trump's leadership, nothing like this catastrophe occurred, and barely six months into the presidency of the mentally declining Biden the wheels are already coming off."
MRC's Graham Is Mad That Rest Of Media Doesn't Hate Psaki As Much As He Does Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center just hates it when non-right-wing media won't trash and denigrate White House press secretary Jen Psaki the way the MRC's Curtis Houck compulsively does, so it will lash out at any non-negative portrayal of her. So when the Washington Post did an article on the clashes between Psaki and the MRC's favorite right-wing repoter, Fox News' Peter Doocy -- which Psaki tends to win -- Tim Graham spent his Aug. 6 podcast raging about it. It was promoted this way, with a massive dose of whataboutism:
The Washington Post has "honored" Fox White House reporter Peter Doocy by highlighting his exchanges with Biden press secretary Jen Psaki in the briefing room. Doocy gets "fact checked" by media reporter Paul Farhi...but in 2018, Farhi and the Post didn't check on CNN's Jim Acosta as he told them he was all about the facts, not about damaging Trump.
Indeed, Graham pretended it was 2018 again and complained at length about Acosta, who has been a longtime MRC target, whining that the same Post reporter didn't spew hate at Acosta in an earlier profile. "Jim Acosta is so clueless that he showed up wherever Trump was working and metaphorically flipped him off. It was his job to yell and upset the president and embarrass him and just basically make a spectacle of himself. This is not what Steve [sic] Doocy does." That's not the impression we get from the MRC, which routinely runs headlines like "Doocy Smash" and "DOOCY DEMOLITION" to cheer his preening and alleged dominance over Psaki. Graham then huffed of Acosta that "A good reporter isn't measured by how loud he yells at Trump," then played a clip package of interactions with Acosta and a very testy Trump in which Acosta... did not yell.
Continuing to get Doocy's name wrong, Graham asserted that by contrast, "Steve Doocy is the one who ytou could say he's asikng, he's holding the president accountable, he's asking factual questions or asking questions about facts he wants." Graham forgot that the MRC stealth-edited a post to hide the fact that Doocy tried to play gotcha with Psaki on a false story about Vice President Kamala Harris' book being given to undocumented immigrants. Graham ultimately huffed that "Acosta's a very one-sided asshat. That's what he does." (Is Graham sure he's not talking about himself?)
Graham then justifed the idea of violence against members of the media who refused to suck up to Trump the way the MRC did and does: "Jim Acosta has very clearly set himself out to be the enemy. That's his gig. That's what he does... Jim Acosta has never been slugged by anyone, and even if he was, you can't blame NewsBusters or Donald Trump. Blame Jim Acosta. Why don't you blame what you're doing? Why don't you look at your last name -- "accost"? Accost is what you do."
Reminder: Acosta stopped being a White House correspondent in January, meaning he hasn't been there for around eight months at the time of Graham's rant. Also remember he's supposed to be defending Doocy here (though he can't even be bothered to get his name right). That's how much Graham and the rest of CNN are obsessed with trying to destroy CNN and its employees for the sin of not being Trump toadies.
Graham went on to whine that the Post didn't label Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaxx group that Robert Kennedy Jr. heads, as a "left-wing" group -- but that's because it's not. As we've documented, Kennedy's group has no constituency on the left. And Graham left out the fact that the organization he's an executive of defended CHD's right to misinform people about vaccines.
He futher whined that, while the Post reporter he's criticizing will actually contact the MRC from time to time for reaction on such stories, "Brian Stelter doesn't call me for media stories. But I guess we can all understand why." Because you're not a "media researcher" but, rather, a right-wing political activist who irrationally hates Stelter and likes to metaphorically (if not actually) flip him off at every opportunity?
Graham's whining continued in his Aug. 18 podcast, where the target was a interviewPsaki did with Mediaite's Tommy Christopher he deemed too fawning (read: he didn't trash her the way the MRC would).He ranted that the media is "99 percent Bicen voters," though he refused to speculate on whom Doocy voted for. He then complained about attention about #PsakiBomb hashtags, apparently oblivious to the ridiculously Doocy-fawning headlines on the website of which he's the executive editor.
Later, Graham was joined by the MRC's chief Psaki-trasher, Curtis Houck, to do what the MRC pays him to do. Sounding like the biased right-wing activist they are, Houck joined Graham complained that "the media" was trying to "drag Trump into" the story of U.S. withdrawal of Afghanistan -- apparently forgetting that Trump was the person who set this in motion by signing a withdrawal deal with the Taliban.
The two then collaborated on what (biased) questions they would has Psaki if they had the chance. They chose to ask about an obscure 2013 "scandal" of the State Department (where Psaki worked at the time) editing out a question by then-Fox News reporter James Rosen from a briefing. Graham added that he wanted to ask why there is no page at PolitiFact for Psaki.
Houck also rushed to the defense of his belived Kayleigh McEnany, complaining that "she was seen as this kind of bimbo" anolong with others who worked in the Trump White House. Graham groused that "obviously, you know that Jen Psaki spends her year or her year and a halfas the White House press secretary, I imagine she's going to land a very sweet gig in some PR group in DC, and then probably have the CNN gig again on the Jake Tapper show. So she could still be doing Biden's talking points, but just as a regular pundit on CNN."
In other words, exactly what you'd expect from these two -- with a complete lack of admission that Doocy or any other right-wing reporter is in any way biased.
Joe Kovacs excitedly wrote in an Aug. 30 WorldNetDaily article:
Video emerged Monday showing a man hanging from a U.S.-supplied helicopter during what is being called an aerial "patrol" of Kandahar, Afghanistan.
The footage shared by the Talib Times, which calls itself the "English language official account of Islamic Emirate Afghanistan," shows the person dangling from what's thought to be a UH-60 Black Hawk chopper.
[...]
The reason for the man hanging was unclear, but the Right Scoop site suggested it may have been a gruesome, public execution.
"I can't imagine this could be anything other than a public execution by the Taliban," its report stated. "Why else would you hang a man from a helicopter like this? But I'm open to suggestions otherwise."
The unverified video was shared just one day before the remaining American troops were expected to exit Afghanistan.
Some online commenters noted:
"You folks just don't get it. The Taliban is in the White House. Taliban Treasonist Joe Biden! Wake up, this is no mistake but by design."
"Just wait till they start tossing their enemies out of the C130s we left them."
"I like how Talib Times Twitter account uses same logo as NBC. LOL."
In fact, as actualnewsoutlets and fact-checkers reportted, the man hanging from the copter was wearing a harness, and he was trying to fix a flag on a building.
Kovacs simply chose to ran with a right-wing meme without bothering to fact-check first. Even though the Right Scoop story he cited eventually updated its post to note that a man was not being hanged, Kovacs couldn't be bothered to update his story with the truth.
CNS Promotes Falsehood That 'Illegal Aliens' Are Spreading COVID in U.S. Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com loves to push as many attack pieces on the Biden administration as it can crank out, and it doesn't bother to fact-check them first. For instance, it has made an effort to promote the right-wing narrative that immigrants coming across the southern border are responsible for the current surge in coronavirus cases.
In an Aug. 6 article, Craig Bannister uncritically quoted Republican Sen. Ted Cruz ranting: "If CNN really gave a damn about COVID, they’d come down to McAllen & see the THOUSANDS of illegal immigrants with COVID being released by the Biden admin without a care in the world into Texas cities & towns. There’s an invasion going on at the southern border but CNN is silent."
An Aug. 9 commentary by Andrew Arthur of the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies hyped claims that COVID-positive immigrants were being released into communities: "Again, the Delta COVID variant is highly contagious, and a “hyperlocal outbreak” could overwhelm health resources (including hospital beds) in the small towns that dot the Rio Grande Valley. If the Biden administration is obstructing disclosures about COVID-positive migrants who have been released into those towns for political reasons, it needs to stop and put the facts out there./p>
An article the same day by Melanie Arter uncritically repeated:
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that President Joe Biden’s handling of migrants at the southern border has resulted in a super spreader event in Texas.
[...]
“And you and I -- and you have documented that well on this program, Maria, but what neither one of us saw was that he would take a humanitarian crisis and now create a health -- public health crisis at our border as well. By his actions, he's created the largest COVID super-spreader event anywhere on the planet at the Southern border in Texas right now, and to criticize Texas over COVID is just -- is just nonsensical,” Ratcliffe said.
“I mean, let me put this in perspective for you, Maria. As you and I, as U.S. citizens, if we go to Mexico City, and we want to return to our home country, we can't do so. The Biden administration says we can't do so without a COVID-negative test,” he pointed out.
“At the very same time, the Biden administration is allowing thousands of COVID-infected illegal aliens not only into the country, but then transporting them around the country, and, again, in what has been the largest super-spreader COVID event anywhere in the world, and the Biden administration is directly responsible for that,” Ratcliffe said.
But there's little evidence that immigrants are responsible for the COVID surge in border states. As one actual news outlet reported:
While it is true that people entering the country without permission could be contributing to the overall number of Covid-19 cases — as has been the case recently in McAllen, Texas — experts believe the impact of these cases does not make a difference in the American health situation.
It is not migratory patterns that explain the recent outbreaks of Covid-19, but the low vaccination rates in certain states, Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at New York University School of Medicine, told Noticias Telemundo.
"In some states, it isn't clear that there is very much migration right now at all, although there are big outbreaks," Caplan said. "As far as I know, the migration patterns in the past month are more north than south. That does not correlate at all."
Facts First: Public health experts dispute the notion that migrants entering the southern border are largely responsible for exploding Covid cases across a large swath of the country. Instead, experts point to the more transmissible Delta variant and relatively low vaccination rates as primary causes of this latest wave. It's also worth noting that some of the Republicans blaming the surge on migrants have banned mask mandates and pushed back against policies requiring vaccines.
The key factors behind the recent spike in COVID-19 cases are people in U.S. communities who are unvaccinated and are not following guidance from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the highly contagious delta variant, according to public health experts.
At a news conference last week, Dr. Ivan Melendez, who serves as the local health authority in Hidalgo County, Texas, acknowledged that arriving migrants were “part of the problem” but he also said they did not pose any more of a danger than he does. “I have been in seven COVID units today.”
He said migrants are not responsible for introducing the virus nor do they have higher infection rates compared with the general population.
“Is it a pandemic of the migrants? No, it is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Melendez said.
Then again, CNS puts narratives first and facts somewhere below that.
MRC Pretends Right-Wing Anti-CRT Think Tank Activist Is Just An 'Independent Journalist' Topic: Media Research Center
During the right-wing movement's -- and, thus, the Media Research Center's -- summer of freakingout over critical race theory, its guilding light has been activist Christopher Rufo. However, the MRC had to contort itself to pretend he's not an activist.
On June 18, Curtis Houck complained that MSNBC's Joy Reid "leveled a misleading attack on the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo" -- but apparently it was not so misleading that he made any effort to correct it. Houck is apparently referring to a statement by Reid -- the transcript was conveniently offloaded to a separate document outside his post -- who said right-wingers are "trying to label anything that makes them feel uncomfortable as a critical race theory. This is from a guy named Christopher Rufo is who’s at the — a conservative think tank — at a conservative think tank and he says “the goal is have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory’...We have decodified the term and we will recodify to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.” Basically using critical race theory as a brand name."
That is effectively what Rufo wrote in a March tweet: "We have successfully frozen their brand—'critical race theory'—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category."
In a June 24 post, Nicholas Fondacaro wrote about Rufo's appearance on Reid's show -- unsurprisingly in full rah-rah mode and insisting that "Reid didn't sdand a chance against" him -- touting him complaining that he's just a "think tank scholar," not the "political operative" Reid claimed he was (and the rest of the world sees him as). Fondacaro then complained: "As the interview progressed, Reid played a series of edited together soundbites of Rufo’s appearances and talks, which wasn’t actually damaging but she tried to put words in his mouth and prescribe his motive anyway. “You want to make a campaign and stuff everything in there and you want to stuff it all into Critical Race Theory,” she sneered." But Rufo's tweet says that's exactly what he's doing.
A July 6 post by Kristine Marsh laughably called Rufo an "independent journalist" (he's neither). The same day, Fondacaro returned to act as Rufo's PR agent:
On Tuesday, the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo unspooled another fantastic Twitter thread exposing how U.S. defense contractor Raytheon was polluting its employees with Critical Race Theory, including telling employees that they must view each other based on race. This massive exposé landed him on Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, where he expounded his findings and noted that memes about the direction of wokeness had become prophetic.
Getting on Fox News, of course, is the goal of any right-wing activist. This was followed the next day by Joseph Vazquez typing up a rote "the non-right-wing media ignored our narrative" story on evening news broadcasts ignoring that "Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Christopher Rufo dropped a bombshell exposing a major U.S. defense contractor’s mission to shame its white employees and enforce critical race theory."
By this time, the MRC had moved into full defense mode for Rufo. On Aug. 8, Tim Graham got mad that the Wahington Post researched a fact-check of Rufo, then ... finding his claim was true, did nothing. Because he had nothing to attack, Graham attacked the Post for even trying to fact-check him. This non-story was the subject of Graham's podcast the next day.
On Sept. 9, Alexander Hall had another right-wing victim of "censorship," because Rufo was "unverified" by twitter "and reportedly targeted by a 'Government-backed attack' after he allegedly exposed Critical Race Theory policies at Google." Hall identified Hall only as a "Manhattan Institute senior fellow," not a right-wing activist.
You'd think that WorldNetDaily would be done with Andrew Cuomo following his resignation as New York governor following multiple allegations of sexual harassment. But because it's WND, its columnists felt the need to build conspiracy theories around it.
In his Aug. 11 column, Nicholas Waddy suggested that Cuomo had to resign in order to keep from hurting Democrats' political chances in the 2022 elections:
The problem, however, is that, while most of us may want to believe that Cuomo, for instance, is guilty of sexual harassment, because it is so easy to think ill of a man so widely disliked, this does not necessarily make him guilty of any crime or "misdemeanor" in point of fact. He can be a jerk without being a criminal jerk. The distinction matters.
Keep in mind that, toward the end of "Cuomo-gate," Democrats in New York wanted Cuomo to be guilty, because if he were, then he could be removed – as a political liability to Democrats. Republican politicos likewise wanted Cuomo to be guilty, because their conservative constituents would never have forgiven them if they did not vote to impeach and remove such a hated figure on the right.
For different reasons, therefore, politicians of both parties in New York agreed on Cuomo's preferred fate – it was resignation or removal, period/exclamation point – but the nature of the accusations and the amount of hard evidence underlying them never made much difference to anyone's political calculus.
[...]
Did Cuomo really harass 11 women, or were those charges merely a convenient means by which the New York political establishment could rid itself of a man who had become "dead weight" and an impediment to Democratic electoral success in 2022 and beyond? We may never know the answer to these questions, and that is highly unfortunate.
Waddy also complained that "President Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives in January 2021 without the presentation of any evidence, without the examination of witnesses and without meaningful deliberation." Of course, the "evidence" was Trump's actions in the runup to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot he instigated, which was out in the open for everyone to see, and it was Republicans, not Democrats, who blocked the introduction of witnesses and the gathering of new evidence in Trump's impeachment trial.
Scott Lively, meanwhile, used his Aug. 12 column to theorize that the harassment claims were a distraction from Cuomo's purported killing of thousands of people by transferring COVID patients to nursing homes in the early part of the pandemic to make room for more patients in hospitals:
On March 25, 2020, as the human death toll attributed to COVID-19 was skyrocketing, and the official government narrative for granting itself extraordinary emergency powers was centered on hospitals being overrun with COVID patients, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo made the executive decision to sacrifice the very elderly and infirm so that more hospital beds would be available for younger people. That's my most charitable possible theory as to Cuomo's motive for issuing what in retrospect was clearly a death warrant for over 15,000 nursing home patients in the Empire State. That death warrant was the now infamous Cuomo Nursing Home Directive, stating in pertinent part:
"No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or re-admission."
My less charitable, more realistic theory is that Andrew Cuomo intentionally murdered those "useless eaters" with the same Malthusian imperiousness he displayed in championing New York's ghoulish 2019 late-term abortion law.
[...]
But even in today's Amerika, mass murder is hard to get away with, and so, when his damage-control efforts proved ineffective, Andrew Cuomo needed a survivable exit strategy.
Enter Lindsey Boylan (aka "Andrew Cuomo's Monica Lewinski") as the first in a parade of "me too" accusers.
To be absolutely clear, I am not accusing Ms. Boylan of complicity in Cuomo's public diversion scheme, any more that I think Monica Lewinski was in on the Bill Clinton diversion strategy (though in Lewinski's case, I think it's possible). I'm only saying that Cuomo is following the Clinton playbook to the letter by allowing an almost certainly ally-orchestrated (or at least nudged), fully survivable (and "stud-status" enhancing) sex scandal to draw public attention away from the real scandal and its risk of truly serious consequences.
Lively went on to claim that President Clinton's Monica Lewinsky sex scandal was a diverson from alleged shady deals with China. But he can't even be bothered to spell Lewinsky's name right, which hurts his credibility on the conspiracy-theory front.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's War on Jen Psaki (And Man-Crush On Peter Doocy): June 2021 Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center writer Curtis Houck loves to help biased Fox News reporter Doocy push right-wing talking points in White House press briefings. PLUS: Houck once again covers for Doocy by burying the stupid question he asked President Biden. Read more >>
CNS Can't Stop Promoting Boebert, Hiding Her Extremism Topic: CNSNews.com
Lauren Boebert is one of CNSNews.com's favorite members of Congress -- though it has to hide her extremism in order to treat her as a normal politician. The gushing has unsurprisingly continued. Melanie Arter touted in an Aug. 13 article:
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said Friday that she has introduced a resolution to censure President Joe Biden for his handling of the border crisis, and she supports her colleague Rep. Andy Biggs’ (R-Ariz.) efforts to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“In my censure resolution that I introduced to censure President Biden for his dereliction of duty to secure the southern border, I called for the removal of Secretary Mayorkas, and I certainly support Chairman of the Freedom Caucus Andy Biggs' efforts to impeach Secretary Mayorkas,” the congresswoman said told Fox News’s “Mornings with Maria Bartiromo.”
Managing editor Michael W. Chapman followed on Aug. 26:
In the wake of the bombing at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan that killed at least 12 U.S. soldiers and an unconfirmed number of civilians, House Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said President Joe Biden has blood on his hands for failing to competently plan and execute the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
"There is blood on Joe Biden’s hands," she tweeted today.
While CNS was serving as Boebert's press office, here's what it didn't report:
She was heavily criticized for tweeting that “the Taliban are the only people building back better.”
She attributed a John Adams quote to Samuel Adams.
MRC Lies To Again Portray Babylon Bee As Victim Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loves to portray the Babylon Bee as a victim of social media "censorship" because its right-wing satire tends to get fact-checked -- while omitting the context that it gets fact-checked because its fellow right-wingers like to potray its satire as fact (while it also fact-checkssatire). Autumn Johnson did this again in an Aug, 18 post:
Lead Stories, a liberal fact-checker site, labeled a satire article from The Babylon Bee as “false.”
The fact-check on the Facebook post said the article had “false information” and that “independent fact-checkers say the information has no basis in fact.”
The Bee article mockingly accused CNN of “praising” the Taliban for wearing masks during its Afghanistan takeover.
[...]
The Babylon Bee has been subjected to multiple fact-checks for its satire.
But that's not what happened here. The Babylon Bee article was promoted in a Facebook post that literally states, "This is no joke." In other words, Johnson is lying to her readers by omitting the context in which the "fact-check" was made.
Johnson also rehashed the MRC's old attacks on Lead Stories, declaring that "Notably, Lead Stories is no stranger to left-wing bias." But it's not "left-wing bias" to point out that a story that someone presented as "no joke"is, in fact, a joke.
This was followed by an Aug. 24 post by Johnson in which she let the Babylon Bee play victim yet again:
Facebook is doubling down on its efforts to suppress conservative satire, according to Seth Dillion, CEO of The Babylon Bee.
Dillon said Facebook uses biased fact-checkers to flag content that leans conservative, especially satire that makes fun of prominent Democrats like President Biden and Speaker Pelosi.
"Facebook uses politically aligned fact-checkers to flag, suppress, and sometimes remove content they deem objectionable. This is not necessarily an issue, but it becomes an issue when it results in politically motivated viewpoint discrimination done under the guise of cracking down on ‘misinformation’ and ‘hate speech,’" Dillon told Fox News on Monday. "We're certainly getting caught up in that."
Dillon believes Facebook’s efforts resulted in traffic dips from the platform and noted that the platform seems to be classifying the publication’s content as “news” instead of “satire.”
But neither Dillon nor the Fox News article from which Johnson pulls her post don't address the issue of people presenting Babylon Bee satire as fact, which is what prompts the fact-checks. Indeed, Fox News was determined to help push the false narrative, complaining that "In 2018, Snopes fact-checked a Babylon Bee satire article claiming that CNN had bought a washing machine to 'spin the news.'" In fact, the Snopes article specifically states: "Although it should have been obvious that the Babylon Bee piece was just a spoof of the ongoing political brouhaha over alleged news media 'bias' and 'fake news,' some readers missed that aspect of the article and interpreted it literally." Again, a "satire" article was fact-checked because people presented it as fact.
Johnson went on to reference her earlier post, repeating her false statement that "Lead Stories, a liberal fact-checker site, recently labeled a satire article from The Babylon Bee as 'false'" -- again omitting the fact that it had been posted on Facebook by someone asserting it was "no joke."
Newsmax Pushes Martyr Narrative For Capitol Rioter Who Was Killed Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax has embraced the narrative that Jan. 6 Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt is a martyr of some kind because she was shot to death by a police officer, even though she was arguably a domestic terrorist who was in the midst of committing a crime when she was shot -- with a big assist from her husband.
After authorities announced in April that the officer who shot Babbitt would not be prosecuted, Newsmax had on Babbitt's widower, Aaron Babbitt, to complain: "They're just lambasting her on social media and mainstream news. You know the term 'insurrectionist' keeps getting throwing around, 'rioter.' To me, she was just a blue-collar American veteran who wanted her voice to be heard and nobody was listening." He was also given a platform to tout the lawsuit he planned to file over her death. No mention, of course, of the fact that Ashli was a QAnon supporter and conspiracy theorist, which would seem to run counter to Aaron's description of her as someone who "loved talking to people with opposing views."
Indeed, the next month, an article by Fran Beyer touted the lawsuit Aaron Babbitt was planning to file "demanding accountability for her slaying," followed by an article in early June on the actual filing of the lawsuit.
Also in June, an article by Jeffrey Rodack touted Aaron Babbitt's demand that the name of the officer who shot Ashli be released, quoting him unironically stating: "It sickens me to hear what people say about Ashli. There has never been a person Ashli ran across in her daily life that didn't love her and wouldn't remember her in some way, shape, or form for the rest of her life," he said. "But this is the game. This is the social media craziness that people just run with a theory and just take off with it."
Later that month, Newsmax TV had on Aaron Babbitt again, and he was allowed to whitewash her again: ""If any of these people ever had the opportunity to be my wife, they fall in love with her, ... She was just a gem to be around. She was a beautiful person. She was an amazing patriot. She served her country from the age of 17. She did four tours overseas, you know, and I haven't mentioned this before, but she was scheduled for a fifth. So these people that are demonizing her from you know, the left and wherever else, they had no problem seeing her in the war four times, almost five, you know, and now they just wanted to demean her and kick her down and it's sad, it's disgustingly sad."
Newsmax touted how other right-wing activists got on the martyrdom bandwagon. Sandy Fitzgerald wrote in an Aug. 5 article:
Details about the shooting death of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt at the Capitol on Jan. 6 are being withheld to keep her killing from distracting from the Democrats' political agenda to use the events of that day to "attack their political opposition," according to Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, which has filed a lawsuit seeking information on her death.
"There's no law enforcement reason for the delay," Fitton told Newsmax's "Wake Up America" Thursday, later adding that "we know what the delay was. We know what happened to him (in) that period of time, which was the crazed impeachment of President (Donald) Trump."
Fotton, of course, offered no evidence to back up his claim. The same day, Fitton appeared on Newsmax again to talk about this.
Meanwhile, on July 1, Beyer declared that "Former President Donald Trump is looking for accountability" in Babbitt's death; in an Aug. 12 article, Charlie McCarthy hyped Trump's demand that "there must be justice" for Babbitt. Neither article, however, mentioned the inconvenient fact that Trump played a major role in instigating the riot that got Babbitt killed. A July 12 article by Eric Mack, meanwhile, promoted Rudy Guiliani's conspiracy theory (stated on Newsmax, of course) that the investigation into Babbitt's death was "completely phony" and that there is somehow a "whole plot behind" a video of Babbitt being shot was "taken by an Antifa member."
On Aug. 6, McCarthy touted another lawsuit Aaron Babbitt was planning, a wrongful-death suit against the Capitol Police and the then-unidentified officer who shot her.
An anonymously written Aug. 20 article on the officer's formal exoneration in Babbitt's death touted how "Trump has aligned himself with Babbitt and her family, urging justice in her shooting death" and complained that "Democrats have characterized those who breached the Capitol as intent on damaging democracy and obstructing the peaceful transfer of power." nWhen it was announced that the officer who shot Babbitt would reveal himself, Sandy Fitzgerald wrote on Aug. 25 that "The identity of the man who shot Babbitt has been demanded not only by her survivors but by Republicans including former President Donald Trump, who has characterized her death as murder."
After the NBC interview in which the Capitol Police officer Michael Byrd discussed the events that led up to Babbitt's death, Newsmax was not in a police-supporting mood. Newsmax had on Aaron Babbitt again to attack an officer doing his job and to sound like a right-wing Newsmax guest:
"He was complaining that he's getting threats. Join the club, bud," Babbitt told Thursday's "Greg Kelly Reports." "I've been getting them since Jan. 7, and the only thing I did on Jan. 6 was become a widower, and I've had death threats and the most hateful crap thrown at me every single day, sometimes five or 10 a day, so I don't have sympathy in that aspect."
Byrd's name was long held from being revealed as the officer who fatally shot Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, but Aaron Babbitt said the interview might have tried to be a distraction for Democrats and President Joe Biden.
"I had my suspicions when it first came out that it was possibly going to be a distraction from the dumpster fire going off in Afghanistan right now, but it seems like ISIS said 'hold my beer' on that one," Babbitt said, turning his sympathy to more than a dozen U.S. service members killed Thursday morning in Kabul.
Michael Dorstewitz devoted an Aug. 28 column to attacking Byrd as well -- demanding a show trial against him -- as whitewashing not only Ashli Babbitt but the entire Capitol riot:
Despite her stature (described as 5’2” and 125 pounds soaking wet) and the fact that she was unarmed (as were all the protesters) he believed that his actions were heroic.
“I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd said. “I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”
There’s no question but that he was frightened. Most people would be under those circumstances. But Babbitt clearly didn’t even know Byrd was there. Had she known a gun was trained on her, it’s doubtful that she would have taken another step.
[...]
Despite claims from Democrats and media that it was an “insurrection,” the FBI found little evidence to indicate that the attack on the Capitol was coordinated.
“Insurrection” is defined as “an organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government and take control of their country, usually by violence.”
Accordingly, it was no insurrection. It was disturbing, it was frightening, and yes, it was wrong. But it was also “Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour” — or in this case, three hours.
Any other officer working for any other agency under similar circumstances would have been indicted by now, and have been given a public trial.
[...]
Byrd shouldn’t be given special treatment just because he works for Nancy Pelosi.
McCarthy returned on Sept. 16 to note that Aaron Babbitt "has requested there be no violence" at a Sept. 18 gathering of extremists purporting to "show support for people arrested after the Jan. 6 attack."
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:04 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, September 22, 2021 11:09 PM EDT
CNS Is Mad COVID Vaccine Got Approved Because It May Lead To Mandates Topic: CNSNews.com
Only a highly biased "news" organization like CNSNews.com could see the unambiguously good news that a COVID vaccine received official approval as a bad thing. And that's exactly what Craig Bannister does in an Aug. 23 article:
On Monday, the FDA gave its stamp of approval to Pfizer’s COVID vaccine – a move cheered by liberal media outlets as “opening the door” and “paving the way” for the government to issue a host of vaccine mandates.
The FDA approval is will make it easier for companies and universities to issue mandates, in addition to those imposed by the Biden Administration, the Associated Press reports:
[...]
Other media outlets with quick to produce headlines announcing that the FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine ensures that a range of new mandates are coming:
CNN: FDA grants full approval to Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, opening door to more vaccine mandates
Politico: FDA approves Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, making way for more vaccine mandates
USA Today: Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine becomes first to win FDA's full approval, paving way for boosters, mandates
Barron’s: FDA Fully Approves Pfizer Vaccine, Opening the Door for Widespread Mandates
“Experts praised the decision, saying approval could help ease some vaccine hesitancy and pave the way for more vaccination mandates,” NBC News reported.
“Pfizer's full and formal approval will now pave the way for further vaccine mandates in both the public and private sector, akin to existing vaccine mandates for other FDA-approved vaccines,” ABC News agreed.
Bannister made sure not to mention that the Pfizer vaccine was among the vaccines developed with help from the Trump administration. That would have interfered with the right-wing agenda-pushing against vaccine mandates that he was pushing.
WND's Kupelian Doesn't Flesh Out Election Fraud Conspiracies, Still Obsesses Over Trump-Hitler Comparisons Topic: WorldNetDaily
David Kupelian's introductory essay from the issue of WND's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine pushing bogus election fraud claims is headlined "How the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump." Because it wasn't, Kupelian can't possibly prove otherwise. First of all, he's obviously so filled with hate and bile for Biden that he can't possibly bne objective. He writes:
The numbing spectacle of America being humiliated and mocked by the rest of the world and ordered around by Afghan terrorists, and of the greatest nation on earth being led by a babbling, obviously senile, unprincipled, corrupt, mindless shell of a man – with a vice president arguably even worse – should compel every American to carefully consider how on earth we got here, and whether the presidential selection process so employed was truly legitimate.
[...]
A shuffling, peevish and often confused Joe Biden attracted no more than 100 to 200 people to his pre-election rallies where he stumbled through short scripted speeches. His vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, selected entirely for being a woman of color (Biden had committed publicly to choosing a woman VP and said he’d prefer one of color), turned out to be so jarringly repellant, even to Democrats, that she dropped out of the presidential race during the primaries, winning zero electoral votes.
Yet Biden and Harris won the 2020 election – supposedly.
Kupelian then ranted:
Most allegations that last November’s election was stolen from Donald Trump center on election fraud and abuse. Indeed, the number of documented “irregularities” is overwhelming: five crucial swing states bizarrely announcing on election eve they were going to stop counting votes for the night when Trump was ahead, only to report the next morning that Joe Biden was in the lead; the clearly unconstitutional last-minute changes in voting regulations in various states, all obviously intended to invite fraud and abuse; Philadelphia election workers refusing to allow Republican observers to witness the vote count and Detroit election personnel likewise plastering cardboard over windows in a vote-counting room to avoid being observed as required by law; the refusal of some states to check voters’ signatures on ballots; the hundreds of affidavits, sworn under penalty of perjury and imprisonment, all testifying to having witnessed overt election fraud; and so on ad infinitum.
We addressed most of these bogus claims here. But Kupelian simply tossed out allegations that he makes no effort to defend (perhaps because he knows they're bogus and discredited). Instead, most of this essay is devoted to re-litigating Trump's presidency, painting him as a wonderful man and his critics as nothing less than evil. He concluded:
From the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, to the two fake impeachments, to false claims Trump praised “very fine” Nazis in Charlottesville, to claims he instituted a “Muslim travel ban,” to claims he “locks children in cages” and “makes women and children drink from toilets,” to the continual comparisons with Hitler, the media and tech monopolies, along with Democrats and the “deep state,” had been interfering with Trump’s re-election bid for more than four years.
One more thing: If a nation’s leader truly is another Hitler, as top Democrats and media personalities insisted continually, not only should that leader obviously be defeated, but there is an absolute moral imperative to cheat in order to defeat him.
Except they never really believed Trump was another Hitler. They were just lying – because they love power more than truth, more than honor, more than what’s right. More than anything.
We would onceagainremindKupelian that he and the rest of WND spent years likening President Obama to Hitler and other Nazis. By his own reasoning, if Kupelian believed that Obama was another Hitler, that meant not only that he believed Obama should be defeated but also that there is an absolute moral imperative to lile in order to defeat him. That explains WND's obsession with Obama's birth certificate. Portraying it as fraudulent was a lie and Kupelian likely knew it, but he and Joseph Farah also knew it could build a conspiracy theory around it that perpetuate itself throughout Obama's presidency and possibly beyond.
Kupelian's repeated harping on this particular talking point is not the brilliant argument he seems to think it is -- it's more of a self-own. He's accusing Trump's critics of doing what exactly he and WND did to Obama and are doing to Biden. Talk about an unrepentant hypocrite.
And, of course, Kupelian doesn't have the guts to venture outside of his far-right bubble to push his case -- again, because he likely knows he's lying and would get immediately shredded apart (as we've already done). That's why he's stuck doing things like appearing on the allegedly "popular" podcast of a former WND columnist to promote this bogus venture.
Kupelian's essay was capped off with a plea to buy the magazine, with Kupelian adding: "I urge you to get this issue. It is flying off the shelves, but we printed 10,000 extra copies to meet the demand." Kupelian offered no proof that such "demand" for the magazine exists -- heck, he won't even release Whistleblower's circulation numbers.
MRC Rushes To Defend DeSantis Over COVID -- Again, Part 3 Topic: Media Research Center
Almost as if it was the remote office of Ron DeSantis' press operation, the Media Research Center has been aggressivelydefending the Florida governor and complaining he gets criticized for his largely hands-off approach to the COVID pandemic, which many blame for the surge in cases in the state. Charlotte Hazard groused that DeSantis got called out again for the path the state is going on Aug. 13:
On Thursday’s Late Show, leftist host Stephen Colbert once again took it upon himself to take shots at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R). The so-called comedian gleefully touted President Biden forgetting the Republican's name when a reporter asked Biden to respond to DeSantis saying “I am in the way to block too much interference from the federal government."
This resulted in Colbert making a joke that DeSantis didn’t care if his voters died: “Mr. President, show some respect. He should be addressed by his full title: Governor who...doesn't care if his voters live or die.” The liberal audience then broke into applause.
When Colbert played a clip of DeSantis saying he didn't "want to hear a blip about COVID" from President Biden, Hazard protested it was taken out of context:
Placed in the full context, DeSantis was calling out Biden for being a hypocrite when it comes to COVID, particularly when it came to outbreaks among illegal immigrants entering the U.S.. "Why don’t you do your job?" the Florida Republican said during a press conference on August 4. "Why don't you get this border secure? And until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you, thank you."
"This is a guy who ran for office saying he’s going to shut down the virus," DeSantis added. "And what has he done? He’s imported more virus from around the world by having a wide open southern border."
Why is DeSantis wasting his time taking shots at Biden over the "souther border" when he has more pressing concerns regarding COVID deaths in his own state? Hazard didn't answer that question.
After that, the defenses got more sporadic -- perhaps indicating even the MRC got tired of defending the guy.
On Auig. 26, Tim Graham huffed that "MSNBC's Joy Reid smeared Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as 'Dr. Death,' who is 'pro-COVID' and 'rolling out the red carpet for this ravenous virus.'" Kathleen Krumhansl grumbled on Aug. 27 that Spanish-language media was trying "to criminalize red-state governors that support parental choice instead of blanket mask mandates in schools, i.e. Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott."
Clay Waters ranted on Aug. 31 that New York Times columnist Charles Blow was "SICK" for criticizing DeSantis:
Besides being hateful, Blow’s column is incredibly thin on facts to support his case for DeSantis the killer. He can’t fault DeSantis on vaccinations, because Florida is at the national average on that score, and better than most states in the South. Instead, his sole attack line is mask mandates in schools, which could not have affected the number of Covid cases yet anyway.
[...]
Take out the nasty innuendo about DeSantis sacrificing his citizens for political gain, and Blow’s sole factual complaint remains the fact that DeSantis banned Florida school districts from establishing mask mandates for students.
Children in schools are not major Covid spreaders, and there are severe instructional disadvantages to children being masked up all day.
Scott Whitlock played whataboutism in a Sept. 6 roundup item:
For an entire month, the ghouls in the media repeatedly labeled the GOP a “death cult” led by Republican governors like Ron “DeathSantis” of Florida and “Dr. Evil” Greg Abbot of Texas.
MSNBCers Joy Reid and Joe Scarborough viciously attacked the leaders of those states who tried to balance the physical and fiscal health of their citizens. Reid cursed DeSantis for “rolling out the red carpet” for the virus and claimed GOP governors were “in favor of death.” Scarborough, along with his co-host Mika Brezinski, condemned the religious faithful and Republican voters as a “death cult.”
[...]
But when it came to disgraced former New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, CBS correspondent Ed O’Keefe proclaimed “he did a masterful job of keeping the state safe” during the pandemic.
When CNN highlighted how President Biden called out DeSantis and Abbott for trying to penalize schools for mandating masks against their dictatorial orders, Alex Christy sounded like a bit like an anti-vaxxer as he rushed to the governors' defense in a Sept. 10 post:
When we talk about mask mandates and freedom, it is not at all clear that science mandates kids wear masks nor is it clear that the CDC relied on science when it said otherwise.
[...]
Just because the vaccines are safe and effective does not give the government the power to mandate them, but that didn't stop [hostd John] King from offering up a poor analogy to suggest that it does.
Curtis Houck freaked out on Sept. 15 that Reid criticized DeSantis and other Republicans again, effectively demanding she be censored for doing so: "With a rant like that, NewsBusters readers, take particular note of how Comcast has given its approval to this dangerous and inciting rhetoric as well as the advertisers listed at the bottom of this blog."
Weird how the MRC loves to cry "censorship" whenever a right-winger gets inconvenienced on social media for spreading lies and misinformation, yet it demands a critic who doesn't toe the right-wing ideological line be muzzled -- which is the only reason Houck wants readers to contact advertisers.
As the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan in August, with the unexpectedly quick takeover of the Afghan government by the Talibam, CNSNews.com -- in addition to defending former President Trump over his cutting the deal with the Taliban that led to U.S. withdrawal -- went relentlessly negative, filling its website with increasingly vicious and personal attacks from Repubicans and other conservatives on President Biden and his administration.Here's a list of the attacks CNS published between Aug. 12 and Sept. 1:
A series of Washington Post 
Andy Schlafly knows who to blame for the Afghanistan government collapsing and being taking over by the Taliban, and it is ... liberals and feminists. From his Aug. 18 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center 
Joe Kovacs excitedly wrote in an Aug. 30 WorldNetDaily 
CNSNews.com loves to push as many attack pieces on the Biden administration as it can crank out, and it doesn't bother to fact-check them first. For instance, it has made an effort to promote the right-wing narrative that immigrants coming across the southern border are responsible for the current surge in coronavirus cases.
During the right-wing movement's -- and, thus, the Media Research Center's -- 
You'd think that WorldNetDaily would be done with Andrew Cuomo following his resignation as New York governor following multiple allegations of sexual harassment. But because it's WND, its columnists felt the need to build conspiracy theories around it.
Lauren Boebert is one of CNSNews.com's favorite members of Congress -- though it 
The Media Research Center loves to portray the Babylon Bee as a victim of social media "censorship" because its right-wing satire tends to get fact-checked -- while omitting the context that it gets fact-checked because its fellow right-wingers 
Newsmax has embraced the narrative that Jan. 6 Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt is a martyr of some kind because she was shot to death by a police officer, even though she was arguably a domestic terrorist who was in the midst of committing a crime when she was shot -- with a big assist from her husband.
Only a highly biased "news" organization like CNSNews.com could see the unambiguously good news that a COVID vaccine received official approval as a bad thing. And that's exactly what Craig Bannister does in an Aug. 23 
David Kupelian's 
Almost as if it was the remote office of Ron DeSantis' press operation, the Media Research Center has been 
