Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily embraces the highly dubious Arizona election audit because it cast the aspersions on the 2020 presidential election that align with its Trump-friendly agenda. Read more >>
Monday, October 25, 2021
NEW ARTICLE: WND's Big Lie Moves To Arizona
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily embraces the highly dubious Arizona election audit because it cast the aspersions on the 2020 presidential election that align with its Trump-friendly agenda. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:01 AM EDT
Sunday, October 24, 2021
Virtue Signaling: Met Gala Makes MRC Reach Meltdown Mode
Topic: Media Research Center Who coiuld possibly find offense at a museum fund-raiser? The Media Research Center, of course. The Met Gala is a fund-raiser for New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, though it's perhaps more notable for being a gathering for the rich and famous wearing outlandish or provocative costumes. And that's where the MRC can step in for some lazy right-wing virtue signaling to make fun of goofily dressed non-conservatives. Add in that one guest was the hated Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wearoing a dress stating "Tax the Rich," and the MRC was in virtue-signaling overdrive. Krstine Marsh took a shot at AOC in a Sept. 14 post complaining that she was discussed on "The View":
AOC was a guest of the museum and didn't get to keep the dress, but why let inconvenient facts interfere with a fit of virtue-signaling? The MRC was ready to not only bash AOC but rich-shame anyone who defended her. (It's also funny to see right-wingers switch frrom trying to shame AOC for having once worked as as bartender to trying to shame her for accepting the same salary every other member of Congress gets.) Scott Whitlock whined in another post the same day:
Whitlock went on to rant: "In June, Dokoupil channeled his inner socialist, hyping a probably illegally-obtained ProPublica report about the wealthiest Americans." That would be the exact same report Whitlock's MRC co-worker Joseph Vazquez touted for exposing George Soros' financial information, and he didn't complain about the info being "probably illegally-obtained." Yet another Sept. 14 post, this one by Kathleen Krumhansl, served up more AOC-bashing and how Spanish-language networks covered her:
Wedon't recall Krumhansl speaking out against Republican politicians getting tickets to events as a benefit of their position. In the fourth (!) post of the day on the subject, Mark Finkelsten huffed:
Finkelstein wouldn't even begrudge her not having to pay for the ticket: "If AOC was given a free ticket worth $30,000, why wouldn't that constitute a gift or a donation by the Gala?" Finkelstein apparently believes that AOC is so dumb that she wouldn't check House ethics rules before accepting the ticket. So too, apparently, does Gabriel Hays, who cheered the inevitable right-wing ethics complaint in a post the next day:
Hays concluded by sneering: "And even if it ends up being technically true that AOC was welcome to attend, it doesn’t change the fact that AOC looks like a total hypocrite." Because nothing defines right-wing virtue-signaling more than accusing non-conservatives of hypocrisy -- ironic, given its treatment of that "probably illegally-obtained" financial information. AOC wasn't the MRC 's only Met Gala target, though. Equally as hated is soccer player Megan Rapinoe, and John Simmons huffed in a Sept. 15 post under the overwrought headline "Megan Rapinoe Taunts America at Met Gala With Pro-Gay Messages":
First: If you're the sixth MRC post to whine about AOC's dress, it wasn't ridiculous and you helped achieve her goal. Second: Yes, Simmons really did equate being gay to being "anti-America." Third: Yes, Simmons really did melt down over Rapinoe's cluch bag. And fourth: Simmons sounds like a guy who desperately wants to make sure gays are oppressed again.
Posted by Terry K.
at 5:01 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, October 24, 2021 8:34 PM EDT
CNS Hypes Bishop's Attacks On Pelosi
Topic: CNSNews.com Part of the multi-pronged war CNSNews.com has waged against Nancy Pelosi is a holy war -- bashing her for being insufficiently Catholic because she won't support the outlawing of abortion. CNS has ramped things up by serving as a stenographer to the archbishop of her San Francisco diocese, dutifully repeating his partisan attacks on her. Editor Terry Jeffrey wrote in a July 23 article:
An anonymously written Aug. 6 article hyped Cordileone's attacks again under the hype-laden headline "Pelosi’s Archbishop Smacks Her Again for Supporting Tax-Funded Abortion: ‘Catholics Stand for Human Life’":
A Sept. 6 article -- also anonymously written -- started to sound repititious in parroting Cordileone again:
CNS cranked up the biased attacks with a pair of Oct. 18 articles, both by managing editor Michael W. Chapman. The first hyped an anti-Pelosi prayer campaign the archbishop was promoting:
The second promoted Cordileone saying that "While discussing his prayer and fasting for the conversion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi," he called abotion a "Satanic practice." This being a highly biased right-wing "news" outlet, CNS gave Pelosi no opportunity to respond to Cordileone's attacks. It did, however, publish a Sept. 23 article by Craig Bannister featuring Pelosi responding to the bishop:
Bannister featured several other anti-Pelosi quotes from Cordileone, even though none of the Cordileone-promoting articles permitted a rtesponse from Pelosi. CNS' mission statement states that it will "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." It has failed to do so yet again.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:19 AM EDT
Updated: Sunday, October 24, 2021 12:27 AM EDT
Saturday, October 23, 2021
MRC's Graham Takes Cheap Shot At Alec Baldwin
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center hates Alec Baldwin -- for being a provocative liberal, for mocking Trump on "Saturday Night Live," and for generally just existing; a particularly hateful review of a Baldwin hosted talk show called it "A Bloated, Self-Aggrandizing Snooze-fest - Just Like Him." The MRC has even demanded that Baldwin's acting career be destroyed (a sign that its cancel-culture attacks on him have failed, and tha they'll admit it). It's even still mad at Baldwin for a 1998 fit of hyperbole about wanting to stone Henry Hyde during the Ciinton impeachment drama. So after a tragic accident on a movie set in which a prop gun fired by Baldwin killed a cinematographer and wounded another person, it's sadly not surprising for the MRC to mock him. An Oct. 22 tweet by MRC executive Tim Graham -- pinned to the top of his Twitter feed, no less -- felt the need to make hay on the tragedy by repeating a 2006 statement by Baldwin in the wake of then-Vice President Dick Cheney shooting a hunting companion in which he called Cheney a "terrorist" and demanded that he go "into a courtroom to answer some direct questions." Never mind that there's no evidence this was anything other than an accident or even that he was aware that the prop gun contained an apparently live round -- indeed, he was reportedly told the gun was safe before the incident. Never mind that Baldwin is fully cooperating with police. Graham has nothing but pure hate for Baldwin, and he decided it was his duty to exploit this tragedy for the sole purpose of taking a partisan shot at the actor. Remember this the next time any MRC employee claims to have standards, scruples and morals.
Posted by Terry K.
at 11:59 AM EDT
WND's Cashill Finds A Capitol Rioter To Spread Conspiracies About
Topic: WorldNetDaily Conspicracy-monger extraordinare Jack Cashill began his Sept. 8 WorldNetDaily column with the dedlaration, "Say the name, 'Roseanne Boyland.'"Unfortunately for Cashill, he needs to spell the name, and he spelled it wrong -- it's "Rosanne." Not a good start for his latest conspiracy theory:
We'll spare you most of the details of this conspiracy, but it's in large part a rehash of his defense of George Floyd's killer, Derek Chauvin, attackkng a medical examiner who weighed in on the idea of neck compression by Chauvin as the cause of Floyd's death -- Cashill wants you to believe that Floyd was a complete reprobate who died of a drug overdose and totally deserved it -- who allegedly had a role in determining that Boyland died not from getting trampled but, rather from amphetamine intoxication. Naturally, Cashill finds a conspiracy here, and he immediately starts stretching the truth:
Actually, nobody has said that methamphetamine was the drug in Boyalnd's system. There are other forms of amphetamine, such as Adderall, which family members said she was taking; it's entirely likely she took a larger-than-prescribed dose of the drug, which on top of other health issues such as obesity and diabetes contributed to her death. Cashill didn't mention Boyland's multiple health issues, of course. Nor did he mention Boyland's obsession with QAnon and other far-right conspiracies that drew her to take part in the riot in the first place. Instead, he cited antoher insurrectionist who accused law enforcement of using "toxins" and a "gas" that was "not tear gas" on the crowd that included Boyland, citing another far-right activist calling it "poison." (You might remember Cashill rushing to the defense of two insurrectionists who allegedly contributed to officer Brian Sicknick's death by spraying him with bear spray, which was apparently totally cool with him.) Cashill knows he must keep the conspiracy going rather than address his own inconsistencies, concluding by ranting that"Nothing that comes out of the office of the D.C. Medical Examiner can be trusted" and huffing that "America's two-tier justice system reaches all the way into the morgue, and Big Media would just as soon keep it that way." That's the sign of an experienced conspiracy-monger -- that and all the failed, fraudulent conspiracies he has left in his wake.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:40 AM EDT
Updated: Saturday, October 23, 2021 1:00 PM EDT
Friday, October 22, 2021
MRC Melts Down Over More Non-Hateful Psaki Profiles -- But Gushes Over Fawning Peter Doocy Interview
Topic: Media Research Center As it often does, the Media Research Center has had another meltdown over a profile of White House press secretary Jen Psaki that didn't express the same contempt for her that the MRC has. First up was Tim Graham in an Aug. 29 post complaining that the Washington Post pointed out how Psaki makes good use of partisan Fox News reporter Peter Doocy:
Weirdly, Graham did not dispute anything in Bump's article, let alone the thesis that Doocy serves as a useful foil for Psaki -- he's merely complaining that it was said out loud in an apparent attempt to boost Doocy's "liberal media" victimhood. Next, Clay Waters did the honors in a Sept. 19 post:
Waters even whined that the article "also noted Breitbart White House reporter Charlie Spiering called her briefings "rehearsed, scripted, and boring." He seems mad that the Times deviates from the MRC's narrative that Psaki is a sleazy mess and Doocy is America's hero. Of course, if Waters and Graham actually want to see media pom-poms in action, they don't need to venture outside the building. They juast have to look at Curtis Houck's slobbering Sept. 27 writeup of an interview Doocy did with the MRC's favorite right-wing radio host, Mark Levin:
That's the very definition of a softball interview -- and a fawning recitation of said softballs. Since Levin is the MRC's close personal friend, they wouldn't dare call him out for peddling such embarrassing fluff.
Posted by Terry K.
at 7:10 PM EDT
Updated: Friday, October 22, 2021 8:12 PM EDT
WND's Farah Insists Bogus Ariz. Election Audit Was 'Good News'
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily was already spinning the results of the Arizona election audit to make it look better than it did. But to really make that spin desperate and dishonest, you gotta call in the big guy. So take it away, Joseph Farah, who insisted in his Sept. 30 column that the audit was "good news!":
Like his WND minions -- indeed, he seemed to be copying-and-pasting from WND's "news" stories -- Farah went on to parrot the lies the audit officials spouted:
That didn't happen, of course -- not that Farah will bother to tell the truth. Farah even invoked the old Zuckerbucks claim: "Further, Facebook's leftist Mark Zuckerberg handed out some $350 million to mostly leftist local and state election officials for them to run their 2020 operations, raising the question of undue influence." Actually, the money was needed -- which was available to any election office, not just "leftist" ones -- because state and federal governments failed to adequately fund elections during a pandemic, and the money had no apparent impact on turnout.But who needs facts when there is fearmongering to be done? Farah closed by admitting that he's trying to keep Trump's Big Lie alive:
Trump has chosen to believe and promote a lie. That doesn't sound like a guy who's at "the top of his game" -- unless Trump's "game" is suckering gullible right-wingers like Farah.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:35 PM EDT
Updated: Saturday, October 23, 2021 1:36 PM EDT
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's War on Jen Psaki (And Man-Crush On Peter Doocy): July 2021
Topic: Media Research Center More man-crushing! More Psaki-hating! Hiding another Doocy screw-up! A dash of homophobia! That's how the Media Research Center's Curtis Houck spent his July reviewing White House press briefings. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 1:01 AM EDT
Thursday, October 21, 2021
MRC Writer LIES About Reporting On Border Partrol Whip Claim
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Nicholas Fondacaro hyperbolically ranted in a Sept. 20 post:
Again: Fondacaro doesn't quote anyone declaring that the Border Patrol was using whips. That make him a liar -- eve as he accused others of telling "lies" he didn't actually identify. Yet so committed was Fondacaro to the false right-wing narrative that he spouted it again the following day:
Again, the reality warper is Fondacaro. despite accusing ABC and CBS of claiming the Border Patrol was "whipping" immigrants, he quotes nobody actually saying that. But Fondacaro wasn't done pushing his false narrative. He wrote in a Sept. 22 post: "Border Patrol was already stretched dangerously thin but on Wednesday, ABC’s World News Tonight celebrated their job getting harder as multiple mounted agents were ordered to 'administrative duties' after the rabid left and liberal media smeared them with lies about using 'whips' on Haitian migrants." But nowhere in his post did he quote any ABC employee saying the word "whips." Telling ridiculous and blatant lies is a Fondacaro staple -- but the MRC appears to be totally cool with one of his researchers spreading lies, since he still has a job there.
Posted by Terry K.
at 6:22 PM EDT
WND 'News' Article Push Conspiracy Theories Over Planned Parenthood, Biden's 'Failing Mental Abilities'
Topic: WorldNetDaily Bob Unruh peddles two anti-Biden conspiracies in a single Sept. 18 WorldNetDaily "news" article:
This being WND, Unruh offers no objective evidence that Biden has "openly failing mental abilities" or that anything Biden has done has occurred under the direct "instructions" of Planned Parenthood. It takes Unruh several more paragraphs to (badly) explain (with bias) that all his biased invective is over a relatively minor policy change regarding the Affordable Care Act. In 2020, the Trump administration added a provision to the ACA to make billing for abortion services more cumbersome by requiring that coverage for such services be billed and paid for separately, rather than allowing them to be paid under a single bill, a practice that medical observers said was "expected to generate consumer confusion and potentially coverage losses" -- an observation even the Trump administration agreed with. The Biden administration is simply reversing that policy. This also being WND, Unruh can't be bothered to balance his article with any countervailing view -- the entire article is a veiled opinion piece that censors dissent from its right-wing agenda. This, by the way, is the kind of "news" content WND wants its readers to pay for and other websites to republish, at least if they can "provide a large audience." But if WND can't provide its own audience for such content, why would anyone else want to?
Posted by Terry K.
at 4:18 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, October 21, 2021 4:20 PM EDT
Newsmax Censors Most Criticism of Ariz. Election Audit
Topic: Newsmax Brian Truesdell wrote in a Sept. 24 Newsmax article:
That was the only reference to "critics" or any other viewpoint Truesdell would make in the article. The rest of his article largely consisted of repeating claims about the audit by those who conducted it and by Donald Trump, who hyped its results. He wrote at one point:
Truesdell didn't tell his readers that, as we've noted, Ayyadurai mislead in his stated finding and appeared to have no knowledge of Maricopa County policies and procedures regarding the early ballot envelopes and signature verification. Truesdell touted Trump's comments about the audit results but didn't mention that, as even a Newsmax article earlier in the day by Jeffrey Rodack admitted, a newspaper found the results misleading and factually dubious. The closest Truesdell got to noting that the audit would have no impact onthe 2020 election was an admmission that "The after-the-fact audit is not expected to change the election results retroactively" -- though he then promoted how "Trump supporters" have embraced the audit.
Posted by Terry K.
at 2:09 PM EDT
CNS Promotes Right-Wing Jewish Group's Nasty Attacks On Omar, 'Squad'
Topic: CNSNews.com We've documented how CNSNews.com -- led by managing editor Michael W. Chapman -- has embraced the right-wing, pro-Trump Coalition for Jewish Values as a reliable source of right-wing attacks on CNS' political enemies. Chapman has continued to promote the group's political attacks. A particular target of the group is the group of Democratic lawmakers known as "The Squad," and Rep. Ilhan Omar in particular, and Chapman is all too happy to serve as the group's PR agent. Chapman dutifully wrote in a June 3 article:
Fisher did not provide any evidence of any anti-Jewish attack that could be directly linked to any memver of "The Squad" or any thing they said, and Chapman was too locked in stenography mode to ask for any. A June 15 article by Chapman hyped Republican attacks on Omar as a "radical anti-Semite," adding, "In February 2021, the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), which represents more than 1,500 orthodox, traditional rabbis, denounced Omar's appointment as vice chair of the Africa, Global Health, and Global Human Rights subcommittee within the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs. That was followed by a June 23 article by Elizabeth Nieshalla hyping how "Some 200 rabbis from the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week, calling for the removal of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the House Foreign Affairs Committee." Nieshalla quoted the coalition claiming that “Jews are being attacked day and night on American streets by mobs incited by Rep. Omar’s rhetoric,” but no evidence was offered of any direct incitement. An Aug. 11 article by Chapman repeated the unsupported claim -- ironically, in an article complaining that Omar's spokesman pointed out that pro-Israel activists' attacks on Omar were endangering her life. A Sept. 23 article by Chapman enthusiastically promoted the CJV's vicious attack on the members of Congress, quite literally calling them Nazis:
Last year, CNS made a big deal of promoting complaints that some likened Donald trump to Nazis; Chapman didn't explain why the CNS collective mind changed on golng Godwin. Chapman then offered his own biased definition of the group:"'The Squad' is composed of radical, left-wing Democrats, who support socialist policies and are often critical of Israel, sometimes spewing anti-Jewish remarks." Of course, Chapman and the CJV are simpatico in wanting people to believe that any criticism of Israel is "anti-Jewish" and make no clear distinction between the two. We've already noted that Chapman called on the CJV to trash Colorado Gov. Jared Polis after he got "married" (his scare quotes, not ours) to his gay partner.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:41 AM EDT
Updated: Friday, October 22, 2021 12:09 AM EDT
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
MRC Complains About Facebook's VIP Policies -- But Censors How Trump Benefited From Them
Topic: Media Research Center The Media Research Center's Alexander Hall huffed in a Sept. 13 post under the similarly huffy headline "Does Facebook Have Different Rules for VIPs? Report of Leaked Documents Suggest It Does":
Hall's alarmist take might be justified -- if he hadn't censored the fact that Journal made a big point of noting that among the major XCheck beneficiaries has been Donald Trump:
That interferes with the MRC's narrative that Trump was a victim of "censorship" by Facebook -- it rturns out he was given a pass to regularly violate the platform's rules. Because Hall knows that, he made sure to get back on his narrative, huffing further that "Big Tech censorship has disproportionately aided the left in recent years" and citing the Hunter Biden case as an example -- never mind that the Journal article offers no evidence there is any ideological bias in Facebook's XCheck issues, or that it appears the issues actually benefited conservatives like Trump. Hall's censorship of facts inconvenient to his narrative is much closer to actual censorship than many of the claims the MRC has made about purported "censorship" of social media posts, in which it has portrayed a flag about content or demonitization of a post -- but the original posts could still be read -- as "censorship.' And he's definitely not going to tell you that it's attacking Facebook's purported "censorship" while the MRC is bragging about how well its content does on Facebook.
Posted by Terry K.
at 9:05 PM EDT
NEW ARTICLE: CNS' Multi-Pronged War on Nancy Pelosi
Topic: CNSNews.com CNSNews.com has always hated the House speaker, of course, but with Democrats now in power in Washington, its attacks against her have escalated. Read more >>
Posted by Terry K.
at 3:29 PM EDT
WND Puts Its Best Spin On Dubious Ariz. Election Audit Results
Topic: WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily has uncritically repeated misinformation about, and from, the audit of 2020 presidential election voes in Maricopa County, Ariz., so it had high hopes for the announced results. An anonymously written Sept. 23 article tried to work up enthusiasm for it:
WND censored the fact that the citizen canvass report has been discredited, and that the databases accused of being deleted were actually inadvertently hidden by the people runmning the audit, which should offer a clue as to how seriously the audit should be taken. The anonymous WND writer added:
Pulitzer (not his real name) does not have a record that inspires trust: he's a con man, failed treasure hunter and inventor of one of the worst gadgets ever, the CueCat.Not that the anonymousWND writer thought this was worth telling readers, of course. The Sept. 24 article on the actual results -- also written anonynmously -- started out surprisingly balanced for a WND article, though he (or she) made the mistake of basing the story on the notoriously unreliable Gateway Pundit:
Cotton is lying; as county officials stated, "Nothing was purged. Cyber Ninjas don’t understand the business of elections. We can't keep everything on the EMS server because it has storage limits."The anonymous WND writer did acknowledge that "Maricopa County responded with a statement on Twitter saying it 'strongly denies claims that @maricopavote staff intentionally deleted data.'" And, of course, that 57,000 number is a bogus accounting. As the article continued, the anonymous WND writer became content to simply regurgitate whatever bogus claims were made:
As one fact-checker noted, that's not what happened, and "Ayyadurai appeared to have absolutely no knowledge of Maricopa County policies and procedures regarding the early ballot envelopes and signature verification. The audit was proved to be a sham, but it produced the results WND wanted, so it tried to keep the narrative alive. An anonymously written Sept. 29 article hyped the next step:
The article repeated the false claims about data being deleted.
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:34 AM EDT
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