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Friday, July 22, 2022
MRC's Graham Boosts Corporate Narrative Of Jean-Pierre As Incompetent Diversity Hire
Topic: Media Research Center

In case you didn't think that Curtis Houck's hateful narrative of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre as an incompetent official who got her job only because she checked off diversity points for the Biden administration (for being black and LGBT) came straight from the top levels of the Media Research Center, his boss Tim Graham reinforced it in his July 1 column:

The reviews are in for the new White House press secretary, and it’s not good. Politico ran a story headlined “Karine Jean-Pierre’s tough debut: Unforced stumbles and press corps grumbles.”

Reporters Max Tani, Alex Thompson, and Allie Bice wrote “it’s been a rocky first month” for Jean-Pierre, so bad that she’s already “increasingly found herself sharing the podium or splitting briefings with John Kirby,” who appears to be a “co-press secretary."

“Some black communications officials in and outside the administration” complained the White House “has set her up to fail” by having Kirby “hovering nearby and taking the lead on foreign policy."

Worse yet, she’s become a GOP “punching bag,” and “her stumbles in several instances have made her appear underprepared — in moments quickly weaponized by the right.”

Radio host Vince Coglianese calls her “Ka-ringe Jean-Pierre.”

Anyone who tunes in the briefings can see it. She’s woefully under-prepared. She’s like the Kamala Harris of press secretaries. Being a pioneering example of diversity in hiring only takes you so far.

Note that Graham described Coglianese only as a "radio host," failing to note that heis also the editorial director of the right-wing Daily Caller. Graham is trying to hide that most criticism of Jean-Pierre is coming from the right, which was already predisposed to attack her because, as an employee of the Biden administration, she is the enemy.

Graham went on to whine:

It’s clear that the “objective” White House press corps strangely misses the days of Trump, when they could be praised as bold defenders of democracy. Now, all these Biden voters don’t really relish being an “a–hole” and asking challenging questions at the risk of angry tweets from leftists comparing them to those dastardly Fox News questioners like Peter Doocy.

The network bosses have no interest in displaying clips of their correspondents sparring with a Democrat press secretary, as they did under Trump. All we can expect is anodyne press-secretary talking points.

Then again, Graham and the rest of the MRC absolutely loved talking points when the press secretary was the beloved Kayleigh McEnany, who relied on a binder of notes as much as Houck and Graham complain that Jean-Pierre does. And he and Houck certainly didn't spar with McEnany during an April interview, preferring to lob slow softballs instead.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:51 PM EDT
CNS Lets Ron Paul Whine About The Capitol Riot Hearings
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com has spent its time this summer whining about the first hearing of the House committee looking into the Capitol riot, then effectively censoring the rest of them. It also called on Ron Paul -- whom CNS also let rant about NATO and cheer his son's efforts to obstruct U.S. aid to Ukraine -- to complain about the hearings as well. In a June 13 column, Paul invoked the usual right-wing talking points that the hearings are a distraction from problems facing President Biden and that they will hide evidence that so many of them were secret "government informers":

With so much going wrong in areas Americans are most worried about, the Democrats have for some reason decided that the ticket to electoral success in November is to bring back “Insurrection Theater” in the form of new hearings on the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

The House Jan. 6 Committee even hired former ABC News President James Goldston to make a show of June’s primetime hearings. That makes sense, because like all mainstream media productions, these hearings have had nothing to do with getting at the truth behind the events of Jan. 6 and everything to do with trying to drum up more partisan anger and fear.

What we won’t see in the hearings is any of the 14,000 unreleased hours of surveillance. What little we have been able to see so far has raised more questions than answers about the official telling of the events. We also won’t hear anything about how many of the “insurrectionists” were actually government informers or even provocateurs. And we certainly won’t get any answers as to why the police actually seemed to be opening the doors and inviting the people inside.

Maybe that’s because the Jan. 6 Committee is a star chamber, where the only Republicans – the deeply unpopular Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – have been hand-selected by Nancy Pelosi.

Paul also played the trope that the hearings are a failure because nobody was watching them:

As we have seen over the past two years of COVID lies and deceptions, pushing fear and anger can be very effective in politics, and both parties are guilty. But this time it doesn’t seem to be working. Though all major networks except Fox News preempted their prime-time programming to carry the hearings live, Americans did not flock to the production.

While the low-ranked MSNBC and CNN did see a boost in viewers, the Democratic Party production hardly took the U.S. viewing audience by storm. As The Daily Caller reported, “CBS News’s ‘Capitol Assault Hearings’ had 3.36 total viewership and 780,000 in the 25-54 demographic, according to TV Series Finale.”

As we've pointed out, about 19 million people watched the first hearing over all outlets, which puts the lie to the claim that nobody watched it.

Paul concluded by inserting his tired old war against the Federal Reserve:

The Democrats are betting that selling fear and anger is a winning ticket for November. While Republicans share a good deal of the blame for the current economic crisis, pretending it’s all the Democrats' fault will likely bring in big returns.

Meanwhile, no one at all wants to talk about how the Fed, with the participation of Congress, is leading us to economic disaster.

And he's accusing Democrats of desperation?


Posted by Terry K. at 6:02 PM EDT
WND Mourns Death Of COVID Misinformer And Dubious Doc Zelenko
Topic: WorldNetDaily

From the early days of the COVID pandemic, WorldNetDaily was a huge fan of Vladimir Zelenko, a doctor in a Hasidic Jewish community in New York who declared that his treatment of hydroxychloroquine, zinc and other drugs for COVID cured every single patient he tried it on -- never mind the statistical improbability of that, or that he had no competent documentation to prove it. Zelenko departed the community shortly afterward when community leaders rebuked him for making irresponsible claims, but he went on to fame and fortune in the right-wing community that WND occupies, in which legitimate doctors are ignored and denounced and fringe figures like Zelenko whose research is shady at best -- and whose "Zelenko protocol" still lacks any legitimate research into its effectiveness -- are treated as the real experts. WND loved Zelenko so much, in fact, that earlier this year it made a business deal with him to offer readers a discount code to buy a supposed COVID preventer called Z-Stack from his website.

Zelenko died last month -- surprisingly, not from COVID but from cancer -- and chief WND COVID misinformer Art Moore served up a hagiographic obiturary in a June 30 article:

When Dr. Vladimir "Zev" Zelenko countered the government and  medical establishment orthodoxy in his development of a successful treatment for COVID-19, he knew he was on borrowed time.

On Thursday, his colleagues at Zelenko Labs announced "with immense sorrow" that he has died after a four-year battle with cancer.

In 2018, Zelenko was diagnosed with pulmonary artery sarcoma, an extremely rare disease that has a 100% mortality rate. He had open heart surgery and lost his right lung, then had very difficult chemotherapy treatment. More surgery and more chemotherapy followed in subsequent years.

In an interview with WND in March 2020, Zelenko said he believed that after having a "foot and a half in the grave," God spared him for a reason.

"My purpose in life has really become to try to relieve pain and suffering. Not to think about myself."

He attributed the discovery of his "Zelenko protocol" for COVID-19 of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, azithromycin, steroids and other drugs to divine intervention.

He published a peer-reviewed paper of his data showing an 84% reduction in hospitalization of high-risk patients with his out-patient treatment. Teaming with Prof. Martin Scholz of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany and Dr. Roland Derwand of Munich, Germany, the paper was published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.

About that "peer-reviewed paper": A blogger reported that Zelenko's co-authors are hydroxycholorquine enthusiast, and the journal where it was published is linked to another HCQ enthusiast, Didier Raoult, which has published other dubious studies on the medication with equally dubious links between the authors and Raoult, raising questions about editorial independence. Raoult also tried to sue and doxx his critics for demonstrating his shoddy research, showing a certain lack of temperament for research.

Moore spent the rest of his article defending the honor of hydroxychloroquine and touting how Zelenko's so-called research got attention from Donald Trump and was criticized by Anthony Fauci. He didn't disclose the business deal WND had with Zelenko.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:49 PM EDT
Thursday, July 21, 2022
MRC Hates Crossover Dems In GOP Primaries -- But Loved Limbaugh's 'Operation Chaos'
Topic: Media Research Center

Media Research Center executive Tim Graham devoted a June 14 post to complaining that not enough attention was being given to Democrats supporting extremist Republicans in GOP primaries in the hope of having an easier candidate for Democrats to defeat in November:

We’ve seen the liberal networks and the top liberal newsmakers lament at great length about the deadly grip that Donald Trump has on the GOP. So let’s put this story on the desk for CNN and the rest: Why are the Democrats funding Trump die-hards in GOP primaries? 

Sophia Cai at Axios reports under the header "Democrats play with fire in GOP primaries": 

[...]

Liberal journalists were highly agitated when Rush Limbaugh ran an "Operation Chaos" campaign in 2008 urging Republicans to vote in open primaries for Hillary Clinton to drag out the primaries. So they should at least report on this.

Kevin Tober similarly grumbled about the tactic in a June 30 post:

On Thursday night's Don Lemon Tonight, Lemon and two of his guests CNN commentator Nia-Malika Henderson and Republican political strategist Scott Jennings discussed anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney's primary challenge and whether she can survive it, or if she will be ousted on August 16. 

"Liz Cheney is doing well in terms of raising tons of money but we all know that that doesn't necessarily translate to votes" Henderson claimed adding that "she's essentially kind of pleaded with Democrats to cross over and help her win this primary in August because she knows that the writing is on the wall for her."

Lemon jumped in and cut her off to claim "that makes sense" and asked "why wouldn't they do it? I mean if they really cared they should do it!"

[...]

Lemon is now using CNN's airwaves to lobby for Democrats to sabotage the Republican primaries in Wyoming. Keep in mind the leftist media melted down when conservative talk radio legend Rush Limbaugh launched "Operation Chaos" and encouraged his listeners to switch parties and vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic Primaries to prolong the process. 

There is a double standard here, of course (this is the MRC, after all): Graham and Tober didn't mention that their employer approved of Limbaugh's operation in 2008. Graham himself was upset when one writer suggersted drossover voting was illegal, and Matthew Balan complained that one news report "brushed aside the possibility that Rush Limbaugh’s 'Operation Chaos' strategy to meddle in the Democratic primaries might be a partial explanation" for why Republicans were becoming registered Democrats. P.J. Gladnick similarly demanded that Limbaugh get credit:

I have to give the Christian Science Monitor credit for at least discussing Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos which is his plan for Republicans to register as Democrats in order to vote for Hillary Clinton so as to cause yet more disorder in the Democrat party [sic]. One can search in vain in Google News for dreaded term "Operation Chaos," but with the exception of the Christian Science Monitor, the mainstream media shuns any mention of it despite the fact that registrations of Democrats in Pennsyvania are at record levels due to "mysterious reasons." Often when reading or watching media outlets describe the record number of Democrat registrations in the Keystone State without giving credit to Operation Chaos, I feel like channeling the late great comedian, Sam Kinison, who was famous for yelling: "Say it! SAY IT!!!"

Graham, ghostwriting for his boss Brent Bozell, declared in April 2008 that "Mrs. Clinton's situation is so dire she's relying on Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos," calling on his multitudes of listeners to vote for Hillary to keep the race going." Gladnick returned to cheer how "Rush Limbaugh's 'Operation Chaos' has caused disarray among the Democrats" and that, again, he should be given credit. Matthew Sheffield hyped somebody's rap video "inspired in part by Rush Limbaugh's Operation Chaos.

Finkelstein himself noticed how then-MSNBC host Chris Matthews "mused about the potential impact of Operation Chaos on the upcoming primaries -- but he did not criticize it like he did Democratic crossover voting. Warner Todd Huston whined that CBS wouldn't give Limbaugh his deserved credit for "egging on these crossovers." Again ghostwriting for Bozell, Graham endorsed the operation by claiming that "Voting for Hillary in the primaries through Operation Chaos is about as naughty as they are willing to be" (years before the Capitol riot proved this benign interpretation of right-wing radio listeners wrong). Noel Sheppard pondered: "Are 'Totally in the Tank for Obama' media members focusing on Rush Limbaugh's 'Operation Chaos' in order to force Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton out of the race?" Sheppard later gushed at the idea a "second phase" might be "in the works" if Clinton challenged Obama at the Democratic National Convention.

Graham reprised his hypocrisy by complaining in a 2012 post that the head of Daily Kos urged followers to ape Limbaugh by adding chaos to the Republican primairies. And Gladnick cheered a possible return in a 2016 post:

Oh you rascal!

Rush Limbaugh today announced that he might launch Operation Chaos 2. For those of you who have forgotten, the original Operation Chaos was launched by Rush during the 2008 primary season in order to help Hillary Clinton with the goal of prolonging the Democrat primary season.

[...]

Keep in mind that for Operation Chaos 2 to work, a Republican candidate will need to be the obvious winner of the primary season early on so that voters can cross party lines, where permitted, in order to cast their votes for Bernie. At the very least this could help make the Democrat primaries more fun to watch as they stretch on and on and.....

Graham and Tober don't get to accuse people of hypocrisy when theyand their employer have exhibited the exact same hypocrisy. Sit this one out, boys.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:16 PM EDT
Updated: Sunday, October 23, 2022 2:39 PM EDT
Farah Declares WND Is Saved, Doesn't Prove How
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah has been cranking out a lot of money begs over the past few months to try and save WND from the latest "existential threat," insisting he needed $100,000  by the end of June -- while refusing to admit that he is largely to blame for that threat because of his insistence on publishing misinformation, falsehoods and conspiracy theories. In his June 30 column, he abruptly declared that WND has been saved for now:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your support, for all your assistance and comfort, and for the generous bounty and relief granted to WND and all our staffers in the last couple of months.

God is truly answering our prayers for help in transitioning from dependence on Big Tech and the worldly ways of doing the seemingly impossible, to alternate ways of sustaining this mission for the long haul. Through your generosity, we have been given a blessed reprieve from the urgent and imminent financial crisis we have been facing.

[...]

During our recent fundraising campaign, we have raised a little over $200,000 (to be precise, $210,694.42), which has met our urgent needs and taken us out of crisis mode. In addition, we have been promised, by one particularly generous donor, another very significant contribution in the next week. Thank you all so much for your kindness and generosity in stepping up and partnering with WND in this way.

Farah said nothing about who donated to WND or  the identity of the "particularly generous donor" who promised "another very significant contribution." Shouldn't Farah tell us all of this in the interest of full disclosure and transparency about where his money is coming from? Then again, it's not like he has cared about financial transparency before; he rarely discloses the names of the folks who pay for his increasingly frequent bailouts.And, as usual, he doesn't disclose exactly what all this money will be going for -- another important thing given that he has offloaded much of WND's so-called journalism to the nonprofit WND News Center. He also doesn't break down how much went to the News Center and how much went directly to the still-for-profit WND.

Farah then went all gushy:

I am now convinced beyond doubt that WND, America's first conservative, independent, Christian online journalism organization, now in its 26th year, will continue its calling of bringing you the REAL news, grounded in TRUTH, and not in deranged ideology or power politics. Certainly, there has never been an era in American history when lies were more ubiquitous and destructive, and Truth more desperately needed, than right now. So, we are energized and happy to carry on, as we have every day 24-7 since 1997, shouting the Truth from the rooftops, so to speak. HALLELUJAH!

This, of course, is all lies. Remember that WND thought Barack Obama's birth certificate was "REAL news" for eight years, and WND's record on telling the truth is, well, lacking. WND has been rabid supporters of Donald Trump for years, so its claim that it's not based in "deranged ideology or power politics" is a lie as well. And Farah's statement that "there has never been an era in American history when lies were more ubiquitous and destructive" is particularly ironic because the misinformation WND has published about COVID and its treatments have been particularly ubiquitous and destructive (in that there's a good chance a WND reader or two has died because of that).

Farah concluded by gushing:

We will continue to have challenges in this world. But we can and will do all that He requires of us.

Jesus said in Matthew 21:22: "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."

That's what I plan to do – just as Jesus said. Because I have faith in what He promised, for meeting our immediate needs.

Once again, thanks to all of you for proving out God's Word.

Meanwhile, Farah has yet to prove out God's word by asking for repentence for all the lies WND has published over the past 25 years, nor has he given any indication he will change his deceitful methods -- meaning there will be another "existential threat," and more money begs, coming sooner than later.

 


Posted by Terry K. at 7:54 PM EDT
Newsmax's Hirsen Thinks New 'Top Gun' Film Saved Manhood
Topic: Newsmax

James Hirsen spent a good oart of his May 31 Newsmax column gushing over Tom Cruise and recounting the long production process of his new film, "Top Gun: Maverick." He then declared that the filme has saved both America and manhood:

In part because the new movie is a sequel to a film released over three decades ago, it includes themes that a whole lot of people have been hungering for. It is unapologetically pro-America, pro-military and pro-manhood.

Social media posts tell the story of spontaneous hoots and hollers from gleeful movie attendees being emitted at cineplexes around the globe.

In Taiwan specifically, according to the Central News Agency of Taiwan, audiences who were present at the premiere of the film broke into applause and cheered at the sight of their national flag being displayed onscreen in the movie.

[...]

“Top Gun: Maverick” is one of the first slices of entertainment media in quite a while that is not just entertaining. It is a nod to visceral manhood, which over time has been relegated to the cutting room floor.

Hirsen didn't explain what his defintion of manhood is or how the film fulfills that particular vision. Apparently guys flying jets is what passes for manhood in Hirsen's world. Hirsen went on to lament:

Once upon a time Americans had a common bond in the television that they watched and the movies that they viewed. Hasn’t been that way for a while now.

But there really are palpable things that serve to bind any society together as a culture. One of these things is having a common body of literature, or in modern-day terms, a common body of entertainment fare. Something that everyone is tuned into at a given time.

These media components have the capacity to serve as a kind of glue that secures people together in a life experience. It also can translate into a unifying cultural dynamic.

Hirsen didn't mention that conservatives like him did a lot to destroy common culture because they deemed it too liberal. A couple months earlier, Hirsen smeared the Pixar film "Seeing Red" as "occult" because it showed the Chinese culture that millions of people live -- he was apparently mad that they weren't Christians -- and attacked film's allegory of puberty as "debasing" even though it's an experience a full one-half of the planet has.

It seems Hirsen will attack any "common culture" that doesn't reflect his right-wing political sensibilities. If society won't bind around his own personal interests, he would rather ensure it stays unbound.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:52 PM EDT
Shady Men's Rights Activist Still Writing CNS Columns, Hating Women
Topic: CNSNews.com

A few days after we documented the shady history of men's rights activist Edward E. Bartlett after he wrote a few columns that CNSNews.com published, CNS apparently decided that was the excuse it needed to publish more stuff by him. We've already noted Bartlett blaming women for men committing gun massacres, but there's more.

A May 17 column featured Bartlett complaining that "leftists began their long march to politicize and weaponize Title IX, expanding its focus during the Obama Administration to include sexual misconduct. And now we’re seeing Title IX being harnessed for the purpose of promoting a radical transgender agenda." Bartlett clearly despises Title IX, so it's weird to see him defend it against the "radical transgender agenda," which he never actually defines.

Bartlett served up some old-school anti-communism in his May 19 column by ranting about the Frankfurt School, which led him to whine about the purported existence of "critical feminist theory," which he claims is based on "the widely held belief that feminism is working for the utopian goal of 'gender equality.' In reality, feminism has very little to do with promoting equality of the sexes, as revealed by the federal Violence Against Women Act. Anyone who has been following the riveting Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial knows that female-initiated partner violence is a major problem in our society." He concluded by huffing: "Celebrate women, negatively stereotype men, and overturn capitalism. It’s all part of the CFT agenda. And for most persons, it continues to fly pretty much under the radar."

Bartlett spent his May 26 column complaining about gender identity and cheering right-wing backlash to it: "At long last, however, we are witnessing a culture shift on the issue. Parents are seeing their parental rights eroded into thin air, and female athletes are predictably losing to their stronger and taller transgender counterparts. Even more troubling is when as boys and girls are told that their normal adolescent insecurities are evidence of long-suppressed gender dysphoria."

Bartlett opined more about the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial in his June 6 column, embracing the misogynist narrative that Heard was the evil feminist aggressor and Depp the victim:

Why does progressive gender ideology appear to incline women to mental illness?

Many forms of mental illness are the result of a cognitive disorder -- in other words, distorted thoughts about oneself and the surrounding world.

But feminists do not believe there is such a thing as “objective truth.” One writer revealed the women’s studies courses she had taken “led into an absurd intellectual alcove where objective truth is subordinate to academic theories used as political propaganda.” And one feminist treatise referred to science as a “masculine disorder.”

So imagine abandoning one’s rational faculties, and instead going through life subject to the whims of your feelings -- as well as a series of vacuous slogans such as “gender equality,” “women rule,” and “the future is female.”

Bartlett rehashed that narrative in his June 21 column blaming feminists for allegedly excluding fathers from the lives of their children:

So how do we explain America’s failure to assure the involvement of fathers in their children’s lives? Analyst Robert Franklin reveals the cascade of father-removing policies that begins the day a woman files for divorce:

  • Family courts that fail to abide by common-sense joint custody policies, and judges that refuse to enforce child visitation arrangements.
  • Rules that impose unreasonably high child support payments, unconscionably causing low-income dads to be put in jail for non-payment.
  • The states that allow children to be placed for adoption without even telling the dad.

In addition, domestic violence training programs routinely depict the father as the abuser, when in truth, the majority of partner violence cases involve the woman as perpetrator and the man as victim.

Bartlett blames Marxism for this, of course, for making women think they're people with worth. Can't have that in Bartlett's world. Yet he never demands that men be the kind of person that women will want to stay married to.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:07 AM EDT
Wednesday, July 20, 2022
MRC Attacks Any Discussion Of Gun Regulation As A Call To Grab Guns
Topic: Media Research Center

Part of the Media Research Center's duties in the right-wing media bubble is to fearmonger that any reasonable approach to regulating guns -- or, really, any attempt at all to do so -- is the same thing as total nationwide gun confiscation. That hysteria only grew after a series of gun massacres in May.

Alex Christy complained in a May 25 post that "CBS late night hosts Stephen Colbert and James Corden reacted to the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on their Tuesday-taped shows by urging America to pass gun control and bash America and Second Amendment defenders." Christy then complained that Colbert had on New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, whose country bolstered gun regulations in the wake of a massacre in which a right-winger murdered dozens of Muslims, which Christy vaguely referred to only as "the Christchurch shooting." When Ardern pointed out the country's "pragmatic" approach to gun regulation and that "you don't need a military-style semi-automatic weapon" to fight crime or to hunt, Christy huffed in response:

While New Zealanders may be “pragmatic,” Americans are very protective of their rights and that is before we tackle nonsensical verbiage like “military-style semi-automatic,” a concept that seemed lost on Colbert, “And so what are-- what are the results of that? Has there-- does it feel like a less-free country to anyone down there? Has there been any sort of backlash for this having happened?”

Christy didn't explain why an assault rifle is necessary for hunting.

Nicholas Fondacaro ranted the sdame day:

The Wednesday after the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the cast of ABC’s The View was in a fighting mood. Co-host and Holocaust downplayer Whoopi Goldberg was on the warpath against Republicans. She threatened to physically attack them and deputize people to go after them. She also warned law-abiding gun owners to “get ready” because “they're going to come” for your guns.

Goldberg kicked off the show by spewing the media’s favorite lie from the anti-gun rights Gun Violence Archive. “We are 145 days into the year, and there have already been 212 mass shootings in America,” she proclaimed.

NewsBusters has already debunked the GVA’s deceptive methodology.

As we've documented, the GVA number is not a "lie" -- it's a perfectly valid measure of mass shootings that the MRC hates because it undermines  the right-wing narrative that there aren't enough of them to worry about and consider adding gun regulations because of them.

Kevin Tober used a post to whine that newscasts were talking about guns:

A day after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas in which nineteen children and two teachers were shot and killed, the evening news networks continued their ghoulish coverage of standing on the graves of the children who died to lobby for the Democrat Party’s gun-grabbing agenda. 

The most obnoxious coverage as per usual was from leftist hack and pseudo journalist Rachel Scott who screeched and sneered at Republican Senators for blocking the Democrat’s “popular” gun control laws.

Tober clearly doesn't think it's ghoulish to pretend that guns played no role whatsoever in the slaughter of 19 schoolchidren and two adults, or that it's part of an evil liberal agenda to point that inconvenient fact out. He also didn't explain why Scott reporting that made her a " leftist hack and pseudo journalist."

Fondocaro returned in a May 26 post to screech that merely talking about gun regulations in other countries equals and endorsement of gun-grabbing in the U.S.:

Whenever someone claims “no one is talking about taking your guns,” point them to this CBS Mornings segment from Thursday. Leaning on Holly Williams from across the pond in London, the network pushed for the British and Australian-style of sweeping gun bans and confiscations. And not only were they eager to do away with AR-style weapons but also “all semi-automatic rifles and shotguns” and “private ownership of all handguns.”

[...]

She also spoke to former Australian Prime Minister John Howard who opined: “The greatest civil right you have is to stay alive. Staying alive and being free from random attack is a far more precious civil rights than owning a gun.”

What’s missing is the fact that here in America we have a right to keep and bear arms acknowledged by the Constitution. And part of that is having the ability to ourselves ensure what Howard described as “The greatest civil right you have is to stay alive.”

Coming back from the video portion of the segment, Williams parroted the false line that there have been hundreds of mass shootings this year and added that “here in the U.K., there are so few guns on the streets that even the police don`t generally carry firearms.”

Again, Williams omitted the real facts. The U.K. has a soaring violent crime rate including home invasions and robberies. And with the police going unarmed, it’s not unheard of to have police getting help up and robbed themselves.

Fondacaro didn't explain why he clearly believes discussion of how other countries regulate guns must be censored -- or why he apparently believes  his rage is so precious that it can't be copy-edited, which would have caught missing words that made his rant even more nonsensical.

Curtis Houck did pretty much the same thing in a May 31 post lashing out at CBS again for reporting on how Canada has regulated guns:

The liberal media and their allies have made it abundantly clear that their claims about “common sense” gun control measures have been a giant smokescreen for gun bans and confiscations. Such was the case on Monday as CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today trumpeted far-left Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s proposal to ban handgun ownership and institute buybacks for weapons viewed as scary-looking.

Co-host Gayle King seemed enthused at this crippling of private citizens being able to defend themselves, boasting of “a sweeping proposal on gun violence not here but in Canada” with Trudeau having “introduced far-reaching gun legislation that has never gained any traction here in America.”

Like Fondacaro, Houck did n't explain why such reporting must be censored.

Aidan Moorehouse complained the same day that a CNN panel wasn't balanced because there wasn't an absolutist right-winbg gun nut involved:

With a few notable exceptions, most of the liberal media’s coverage of the debate around gun control has been an echo chamber of misinformed, underinformed, or just plain uninformed gun control activists, leaving little room for real debate. Perhaps this slant in coverage was why CNN thought they could somehow frame a friendly discussion between washed-up 2020 presidential candidate/liberal Republican Joe Walsh and gun control activist Fred Guttenberg on Tuesday’s New Day as a balanced perspective on both sides of the issue.

John Berman began by saying that, although the question of gun control is a complex and multifaceted one, “A lot of people look at this and say, ‘Hey, if we can just get rational people in a room together, they could figure out some solutions to this.’” 

[...]

While they’re certainly entitled to their opinions, and Berman noted there wasn’t any yelling, what made this interview so ludicrously biased was its framing. 

Joe Walsh is a political nonentity everywhere outside a liberal newsroom, and thus doesn’t constitute a majority opinion in the pro-gun bloc at all, so to present him as the “rational” side of the gun control debate frames every voice that doesn’t support raising the age of purchasing an AR-15 or doesn’t hate the NRA with a burning passion as undeserving of a voice at the table. Does the media even want an honest conversation?

Does Moorehouse think an "honest conversation" about guns can happen when one of the parties is an Second Amendment absolutist who thinks it's treason to have even the slightest regulation of guns and has no interest whatsoever in compromising or finding middle ground? And who chooses to ignore that a key part of gun massacres are the guns?


Posted by Terry K. at 9:10 PM EDT
ConWeb Throws A Fit When Fox News Is Less Than 100% Transphobic
Topic: The ConWeb

Fox News has very much earned its status as a anti-transgender outlet -- it pushed the hateful narrative about a Loudoun County, Va., student who was "wearing a dress" who assaulted a female student  (in fact, the students had consensual sexual contact before the incident), was one of the leaders in demonizing transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, and it aired dozens of segments maliciously portraying transgender people as "groomers." But that's not enough for the ConWeb -- Fox News must be all-transphobia, all the time.

When Fox News hired Caitlyn Jenner as a commentator earlier this year, trtanphobic WorldNetDaily columnist Michael Brown threw a fit over the channel offering a "celebratory embrace of Jenner as an iconic trailblazer in the LGBTQ+ community" and declaring that Fox News could no longer trusted to hate the same people he does: "In short, just because Fox was pro-Trump doesn't mean Fox was (and is) pro-Bible (as if support for Trump equated with support for the Bible). And just because Fox is more conservative politically and fiscally than CNN or MSNBC doesn't mean that Fox is conservative morally or spiritually."

In darly June, Fox News committed the offense of not spewing hate in a segment about a transgender teen -- and the ConWeb exploded in outrage. The Media Research Center's Tierin-Rose Mandelburg whined in a June 10 post:

Oh come on! Seven million people saw a viral YouTube video of a transgender teenager and none other than Fox News just gave the delusion another platform to spread on.

At the 10 o'clock hour today onAmerica's Newsroom with Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino, the show highlighted the story of Ryland Whittington to show the company’s support of the LGBTQ community during Pride Month.

Dang it, I guess I’m gonna have to find a new channel to watch.

Mandeburg even suggested that it would be better that the teen killed himself rather than transition. In response to the teen's mother declaring that “I’d rather have a living son than a dead daughter,”Mandelburg sneered, "Nobody wants anyone to harm themselves in any way, I don’t think that indulging delusional sense of identity is the way to combat that."

Mandelburg concluded her post with another whine: "The only thing this story led me to understand is that Fox is a bit more woke than I’d like to admit. Prayers go out to the millions of people that saw this segment and think that transitioning the youth isn’t child abuse." Are there any prayers for someone who thinks the only possible response to transgender is to engage in her own form of child abuse by spewing hate and encouraging suicide?

(By contrast, the MRC was silent when former Fox News host Megyn Kelly attacked her former employer over the segment despite actually defending trans rights in a Fox News interview six years earlier.)

Newsmax joined the hate parade with a June 11 article by Jay Clemmons arguing that the Fox News audience (well, right-wing transphobes) was "stunned" that a transgender teen wasn't treated as evil:

Fox News stunned its audience Friday after it aired a sympathetic transgender story about a biological girl who had "transitioned" beginning at the age of 5 to become a boy.

As part of Fox News' special series called "America Together: LGBTQ+ Pride Month," Fox correspondent Bryan Llenas featured a Southern California family who decided to help make their female child a transgender boy named Ryland, now 14.

[...]

Shortly after the Fox report aired, conservative commentator Ben Shapiro slammed Fox for airing the pro-transgender segment as a "complete betrayal."

"Every element of this [Fox News] video is propagandistic, dangerous garbage," Shapiro said.

[...]

Likewise, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles knocked Fox News for spotlighting a controversial issue that goes against the beliefs of its Christian viewers.

"Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer when my conservative news outlets don't encourage parents to trans their little children," he said.

[...]

The sentiment was largely the same among regular Fox viewers.

One commenter wrote, via Twitter, "You're done with me now. Stop pushing the woke trans abuse of children. The media is the enemy of the people. That includes Fox News too. Nobody needs your propaganda."

Clemmons went on to complain that this story, along with the hiring of Jenner, demonstrated how the channel "has been undergoing a transitioning of sorts itself as it moves away from its more traditional base of viewers." Newsmax's TV channel has been gunning for the right-wing audience who thinks Fox News isn't transphobic or pro-Trump enough.

The MRC's "news" divisiobn, CNSNews.com, want a piece of that hateful action too. It published a June 14 commentary by Suzanne Bowdley of the right-wing, anti-LGBT Family Research Council's "news" operation, the Washington Stand, issuing the well-worn complaint about being sad that Fox News doesn't offer the 24/7 homophobia and transphobia she demands:

For the last handful of years, no one’s been under the impression that Fox News is particularly conservative. But at least they were reasonable, many thought. After Friday’s glowing endorsement of transgenderism, the benefits of those doubts are gone.

[...]

Maybe the network was trying to get back into the Human Rights Campaign’s good graces, after being dinged on this year’s Corporate Diversity Index after years of a perfect score. Still, the idea that anyone could be supportive of a movement so sinister and lethal to children is mind-boggling to viewers, who’ve seen the heartbreaking results firsthand. The pain and regret from teenagers who latched on to these new identities because of the adults in their lives is real. 

She then cited examples of transgender people who regret their transition that right-wingers like her are exploiting to fuel their anti-trans hate.

CNS also cheered Shapiro's hate in a June 17 article by intern Janey Olohan:

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro is railing against the Fox News Channel for airing a sympathetic segment highlighting a family that encouraged their young daughter to identify as a boy from the mere age of five, calling the report “despicable,” and “a complete betrayal of anything remotely resembling conservatism or decency.”

In Monday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” Shapiro dissects and refutes, piece by piece, the “insane propaganda” of the Fox News segment, “California transgender teen, family hope to be an inspiration to others,” promoting the transition of the young girl.

[...]

Shapiro called Ryland’s transition from such a young age “child abuse,” stating that, “the vast majority of children who display signs of gender dysphoria desist over time.”

He called the report “horrifying propaganda,” and ridiculed the mother, Hillary Whittington, for referencing her Christian faith to justify transitioning her daughter as an infant.

Olohan even parroted Shapiro calling the teen's mother a liar for defending her child:

“I’d rather have a living son than a dead daughter,” Ryland’s mother told “America’s Newsroom” – a claim Shapiro calls mere propaganda, not fact:

“There is no credible evidence that transition alleviates suicidal ideation among children who identify as LGBTQ+.”
Olohan did no fact-checking whatsoever of Shapiro to make sure he really dod "refute" everything in the segment. She apparently didn't consider the possibility that it was Shapiro and not Fox News who was serving up "propaganda." That's sadly par for the course, given how CNS is teaching its summer interns how to peddle right-wing bias instead of learning journalistic principles.

Posted by Terry K. at 6:20 PM EDT
Jack Cashill Obama Obsession Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

How has WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill been obsessing over Barack Obama and his family lately? Let's take a look. He spent a June 8 column complaining that Obama wanted to install a large propane tank at his Martha's Vineyard property:

On an island that is as prone to storms as Martha's Vineyard, it would not be unusual for a home to have a back-up generator, but no one apparently has a commercial-grade 2,500 gallon tank at a price tag that could range as high as $75,000.

It should be noted that propane is a byproduct of either petroleum refining or natural gas processing. This means propane is subject to the same law of supply and demand as its sources. People who heat their homes with natural gas are told to expect a 54% increase in next year's energy costs, but then again the Obamas stopped looking at price tags long ago.

Proponents like to think of propane as "clean" – which it would be to the average sensible human being – but it is hardly clean by green standards. The fact that it produces only half the carbon dioxide of a charcoal barbecue will not help Greta "How dare you" Thunberg sleep any easier.

That segued into a promotion for an upcoming film by his favorite charlatan filmmaker:

All this being considered, what are the Obamas up to? According to Joel Gilbert's dazzling new film, "Michelle Obama 2024," the Obamas and their globalist friends are grooming Michelle to be elected – or perhaps appointed – president in 2024.

I recently got a sneak preview of the film, which Gilbert will premiere at the National Press Club in Washington in mid-July. Gilbert makes a convincing case that the puppeteers who orchestrated Obama's ascent are prepared to do the same for Michelle, come hell or high water.

[...]

The "hell" is the Obamas to trigger. They did so in 2020 with the George Floyd mayhem, and their language has only grown more incendiary since. Americans voted for Barack Obama in 2008 thinking he could bring the nation racial peace. The Obamas are anticipating that a mule-driven half of America will do the same for Michelle in 2024.

And if things don't work out as planned and America descends into chaos, there are those 2,500 gallons of propane. With heat and light to spare, the Obamas could be more popular than ever.

In his June 29 column, Cashill seemed to be wishing that Obama's mother had aborted him:

If Barack Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, had been alive today, we can be confident she would have been among the loudest voices at whatever pro-abortion protest would have her.

As Obama describes his mother in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father," Ann was "a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal, Peace Corps, position-paper liberalism." And she was all these things before such things were cool.

Her parents were a bit more traditional. In the summer of 1960, they faced a dilemma. Their daughter was pregnant, and she had alerted them that the father was black. Today, a mixed-race couple can make a living just starring in TV commercials.

That crack seems enlightening; one wonders if racism and disdain for mixed-race couples and their offspring is part of what drives Cashill's abject hate for Obama. Indeed, he continued to obsess over Obama's birth:

So bound are they by the expectations of their audiences and their publishers, however, that not even the least sympathetic of Obama's biographers dares pull on the thread that would unravel the whole sacred Obama nativity story.

What if Ann were pregnant before she arrived in Hawaii?

Once that thread is pulled, everything else makes sense. That thread would explain why the family breadwinner, Madelyn Dunham, quit her stable job in the banking business to leave for Hawaii.

That thread, once pulled, would explain the unseemly haste of Ann's alleged hook-up with the already-married Kenyan and his willingness to assume the role of father.

That thread would explain why Stanley Dunham would remain great pals with the Kenyan Obama even after he allegedly knocked up Stanley's underage daughter.

That thread would explain, too, why Ann dropped out of the University of Hawaii when she would allegedly have been no more than two months pregnant and then dropped off the radar altogether.

That thread would explain why not even Ann's personal biographer can account for Ann's whereabouts from February 1961 to the alleged birth in August of that year. It would explain too why no photos of a pregnant Ann or a newborn Barack have surfaced.

That thread would explain why Ann and the Kenyan did not spend so much as one night under the same roof and why Ann hightailed it back to Seattle with a baby allegedly only a few weeks old.

Finally, that thread once pulled, would explain why Barack Obama and the DNC would pay big bucks for the fixers at Perkins Coie – of Steele dossier and Alpha bank fame – to keep Barack's birth certificate out of the hands of anyone who wanted to see it, starting with Democratic attorney Philip Berg.

But Cashill's thread-pulling conveniently ignores the fact that Obama's "long form" birth certificate said exactly the same thing the certificate released before the 2008 campaign did: that Barack Obmaa Sr. was his father. His claim that the Obama campaign paid Perkins Coie "big bucks" solely to suppress his birth certificate is a longstanding, and debunked, right-wing conspiracy theory -- that money paid for all legal services.

Obama has been out of office for more than five years, and Cashill can't stop making up things about him. The fact that he insists on clinging to fact-free birther conspiracy theories is more evidence that the poor, deluded guy needs some professional help.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:24 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, July 20, 2022 9:36 PM EDT
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC Flips Over Elon Musk, Part 1
Topic: Media Research Center
The quirky, self-promoting mogul was briefly a pariah at the Media Research Center because of his cozying up to China -- but that was quickly forgotten when Musk got interested in buying Twitter. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 1:19 AM EDT
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
MRC Keeps Falsely Pretending Anti-Abortion Ruling Won't Lead To Contraception Ban
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has spent much of its time since the leak of a draft of Justice Samuel Alito's opinion overturning the abortion rights in Roe v. Wade in denial that his reasoning would affect other rights threatened by the right to privacy that underpinned the ruling -- particularly Griswold v. Connecticut, which cited a right to privacy in finding there was a right to contraception, the Obergefell decision affirming a right to same-sex marrage:

When historian Jon Meacham pointed that out, Alex Christy huffed in a May 3 post that "no state is moving to ban birth control, so the Court will not even have to address the question and the current makeup of the Court means Obergefell is almost certainly safe as well."

  • Curtis Houck complained that someone on CNN cited "broad examples" like contraception were cited as being in danger if Alito's opinion stood.
  • Nicholas Fondacaro whined that pointing out that contraception was in jeopardy meant that one was "parrot[ing] talking points personally handed out by President Biden."
  • Kevin Tober declared that noting that gay marriage would be endangered under Alito's opinion was just "repeating propaganda from other people."
  • Kyle Drennen groused that news programs reported the news that President Biden was "warning the conservative court could unravel other privacy rights, like same-sex marriage and contraception," than tried to change the subject by harrumphing that "no mention was made of the 'assault' on theover 63 million babies that have been killed through abortion since the Roe v. Wade decision was issued in 1973."
  • Tober whined that a Democratic senator was allow to "lie about Republicans wanting to ban 'birth control', 'Plan B', and 'IUDs'-- even though some forms of birth control take place after fertilization and, thus, would be considered abortion under some anti-abortion legislation.
  • When former Eric Holder cited contraception as a right that would be in danger under Alito's reasoning, Christy actually didn't deny it, instead stating: "As a former attorney general, Holder should know that except for the contraception example, all the cases he cited are equal protection cases, not privacy ones."
  • Christy followed that with another post claiming a statement that“Contraception is a target now of abortion forces”  is a "false assertion."
  • Tober insisted it whas "a frequent and repeatedly debunked talking point" to claim that "conservatives will seek to ban gay marriage or contraception if Roe v. Wade is overturned."

But that opinion came down mostly intact at the end of June -- and Justice Clarence Thomas issued a concurring opinion specifically stating that "In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence [v. Texas, the ruling that established a right to same-sex sexual acts], and Obergefell," though, oddly, not Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriages like the one Thomas himself is in.

This meant that the MRC's narrative to the same argument suddenly had to change. When a CNN commentator pointed out Thomnas' opinion, FOndacaro retorted in a June 24 post: "So, are they essentially arguing that Justice Clarence Thomas is trying to sabotage his interracial marriage?" Thanks, Nick, for confirming that conservative justices rule on personal beliefs and not the law.

Emma Schultz tried to downplay the importance of Thomas' opinion in a June 29 post, claiming that "no other justice signed on to Thomas’s concurrence. In fact, they all signed on to opinions that said the ruling was limited to abortion." Christy did the same thing in a July 1 post: "Thomas is always writing concurrences saying certain precedents are wrong and should be reversed, but no other justice joined him on this one."

Christy complained in a July 12 post that a news report "played up ill-founded fears that birth control is next," but didn't mention Thomas' opinion suggesting such fears are quite founded.

Michael Ippolito took a different approach: When Meghan Markle expressed concern about "the future of same-sex marriage, contraception access, and many fundamental rights to privacy," he huffed that she was trying to "stoke fears about the potential to overturn lousy court decisions."

In fact, Missouri did, in fact, outlaw some forms of birth control and other states are considering doing the same -- putting the lie to the MRC's claim that nobody's considering outlawing contraception.

The MRC, it seems, can't quite escape reality when making its biased proclamations.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:46 PM EDT
WND's Root Spreads Lies To Justify Bogus 'Treason' Accusations
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Wayne Allyn Root got popular in right-wing circles for promoting birther conspiracy theories about Barack Obama -- with his narrative centered on his never having seen Obama while both were students at Columbia University in the 1980s, though he never provided any reason he would have noticed an unknown Obama at the time -- so it's no surprise that he would dip a toe back into that fetid conspiracy pool again, and he did in his June 10 column, in which he rants that Obama is secretly running the country under the orders of the usual evii cabal that right-wingers love to fearmonger about:

It turns out Sen. Joe McCarthy was right; he was just early. The communist traitors are everywhere in government, political leadership, public education, universities, unions, the mainstream media, social media, Hollywood, judges, lawyers, even in the leadership ranks of the military and police. Communist traitors have infiltrated every level of government, society and industry.

And I know their plan. I learned it at Columbia University, class of 1983. My classmate was Barack Obama. I believe Obama is now the leader carrying out this plan. He is the "shadow president of the United States" – i.e., operating from the shadows while dummy dementia puppet President Joe Biden serves as decrepit front man.

And who is giving Obama the orders? The enemies of America – billionaire, meglomaniac, psychopaths George Soros, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates and the Chinese Communist Party. Schwab, by the way, is not just a globalist and communist but also allegedly the son of one of Hitler's right-hand men. That's right, the billionaire son of a reportedly deranged Nazi is now trying to conquer America. My guess is he's obsessed with finishing the job of his Nazi father. And George Soros is reported to be a Jew who handed over Jews to the Nazis as a boy.

You couldn't make this stuff up. You couldn't sell this in a Hollywood script. Hollywood would call it "preposterous and unbelievable." But real life is stranger than fiction.

Needless to say, Root is making this stuff up. Soros did not "hand over Jews to the Nazis as a boy" -- he was a teenage Jew posing as the nephew of a man inventorying property left behind by Jews who fled Hungary in order to avoid detection by the Nazis. (Add Root to the list of right-wingers who fervently wish that the Nazis had murdered just one more Jew.) And Schwab's father was not "one of Hitler's right-hand men" -- there's no evidence he was ever a high-ranking Nazi official.

The fact the Root tried to throw a little doubt on his false claims by saying they were "reported" or "alleged" does not absolve him of failure to do research before writing his column because right-wing conspiracy theories are too good to fact-check. 

Root went on to rant about "open borders," and "hyperinflation," as well as "the purposeful destruction of the energy industry, supply chain dysfunction and vaccine mandates that cost middle-class Americans their jobs and have made many Americans too sick to fight back, and soon we're guaranteed to see massive food shortages, mass starvation, food riots and a breakdown of society. In the middle of all this, they want to take our guns away." Then Root truly lost it:

 

I repeat: We're not going to make it to 2024.

This is TREASON. Biden and his handlers are radical communist traitors. They are domestic terrorists and suicide bombers. It's time to take the gloves off. These people want us banned, censored, silenced, bankrupt, stripped of all property, stripped of all guns, imprisoned for our political beliefs or dead. You can't compromise with people who want you silenced or dead.

But the first step is to admit: THIS IS TREASON.

There's no reason to admit anything based on the discredited evidence of such an obvious liar.


Posted by Terry K. at 4:48 PM EDT
Newsmax's Greg Kelly Is A Host Gone Wild
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax TV host Greg Kelly is working hard to try and be the most outrageous host on the channel -- no mean feat when you have the likes of Eric Bolling to compete against. He's been working hard on that over the past couple months. In May, he took part in Newsmax's war on upstart Pennsylvania Senate candidate kathey Barnette when she started to threaten primary leader (and eventual winner), the Donald Trump-endorsed Mehmet Oz. Things got a bit crazy after that:

  • Kelly called police in Dallas after seeing a video of children attending a show featuring drag queens, then tweeted the outraged message he left.
  • Kelly smeared Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards, who was knocked unconscious during the Capitol riot, as a wintess who was chosen to testify during the House committee hearings on the riot as nothing more than an "attractive blonde" who wouldn't be criticized and insisted she merely "fell" and "bumped [her] head" during the insurrection.
  • After the committee revealed that Trump tried to contact a witness who was about to testify before the committee, Kelly proffered that Trump may have just "butt-dialed" the person.
  • Kelly attacked New York Gov. Kathy Hochul as someone who "has not really done much of anything, other than, I’m sorry but, be somebody’s wife" while interviewing her Republican opponent, Lee Zeldin, which even the right-wing New York Post seemed offended by.
  • Kelly sicced cops again on something he didn't like, this time on a sex shop that offered sexual instruction to minors.

These stunts are likely designed to attract viewers to the sparsely watched channel, but they do nothing to enhance any credibility Newsmax might have.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:40 PM EDT
CNS Censors Jan. 6 Committee Hearings
Topic: CNSNews.com

We've documented how CNSNews.com, despite portraying itself as a "news" organization, is apparently under orders to not treat the hearings by the House committee looking into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot as news. While it spent a lot of time whining about the first hearing without actually covering what was revealed during it, it has almost completely censored the findings revealed in subsequent hearings. As with the first hearing, no CNS news stories have been devoted to what was covered in the five subsequent hearings. In fact, it barely recognized the existence of those hearings at all -- again, despite them being what most non-biased journalists would call news.

Susan Jones spent a highly biased June 15 article (presented as "news") whining about the committee's purpose:

The carefully scripted, one-sided, anti-Trump work of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is "legislative" in nature, according to one of the Democrats who sits on the committee.

"We're a legislative committee," Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) told CNN on Tuesday. "So the purpose of our work is to provide legislative recommendations to prevent something like this from happening in the future.

"And we're looking at a whole range of things. It is not just this one particular topic (criminal referral) that's been of interest in the last day, but what can we do to protect our electoral system? What can we do to prevent something like this from actually being successful if someone were to try it again in the future?"

But beyond legislative prescriptions, the committee also is digging for evidence of criminality -- a politically motivated hunt.

By contrast, CNS has praised the work of right-wing prosecutor John Durham and how he  too is "digging for evidence of criminality" wthout dismissing his work as "a politically motivated hunt." Jones went on to push the right-wing narrative that the hearings are biased:

Rep. Liz Cheney, one of two anti-Trump Republicans on the committee, likewise tweeted, "The committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time."

[...]

Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Monday he is watching the hearings (the one-sided hearings) with interest.

[...]

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said last week that the committee's work is purely political, and the committee itself falls outside House rules:

"First, Nancy Pelosi has broken a 232-year history of the House by not allowing the minority to appoint anyone to the committee," he said. "This committee does not have 13 members, as the power of the House voted for it to have.

Jones censored the fact that McCarthy was given the opportunity to appoint Republicans to the committee, but when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of his five nominees (for being extreme pro-Trumpers who would like sabotage the committee's work), McCarthy threw a fit and pulled his entire slate. That, on top of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell refusing to create a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the insurrection, means that the Republicans sabotaged their own chances to make the committee less than "one-sided."

The hearings were not mentioned again until a June 30 "news" article attacking another member of the "one-sided" committee:

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, lapped up the applause on "The Late Show" with leftist host Stephen Colbert last night.

Kinzinger is one of two anti-Trump Republicans who joined Democrats in what amounts to a mock trial of Donald Trump, but there is no one on the select committee to cross examine witnesses or refute the carefully scripted, made-for-TV narrative pushed by Democrat politicians.

Kinzinger admitted that the select committee's one-sided investigation is intended to prompt legal action by the Biden Justice Department, although indictments aren't coming as fast as Kinzinger would like:

"I'm frustrated at the speed. I know they (DOJ) have a job to do," Kinzinger said.

[...]

Kinzinger said the select committee is getting new information "every day." And he's already touting what he views as the historic nature of what critics deride as an anti-Trump witch-hunt:

"Yeah, I think we're going to do a couple more hearings. Obviously the investigation will continue," Kinzinger said.

[...]

(The interview ended at that point, with Colbert thanking Kinzinger "for your dedication to representative democracy.")

Jones is clearly one of those "critics," even though she's supposed to be a fair and objective reporter.

The same day came another "news" article by Jones which brought the only specific acknowledgment of a committee hearing other than the first one -- which, of course, was focused on trashing the witness of that hearing, Cassidy Hutchinson, former staffer for then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows:

President Donald Trump says he personally rejected Cassidy Hutchinson for a job with his post-presidency team in Palm Beach, Florida.

And former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Trump supporter, backed up Trump's statement in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday night.

Bondi said she had two conversations with Hutchinson, who "loved President Trump" and was "very upset" she was turned down for a job in Florida.

"She reached out to me because she was very excited she was moving to palm beach to work for the president. She loved president trump well after the election. She loved him," Bondi said.

After uncritically repeating that attack, Jones then surprisingly and fairly summarized Hutchinson's testimony. So Jones does know how to act like a journalist when it suits her purposes to do so -- though, of course, that was buried at the end with the Trump and Bondi attacks on Hutchinson headlining her piece.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:51 AM EDT
Updated: Tuesday, July 19, 2022 2:17 PM EDT

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