ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch Thu, 16 Sep 2021 21:20:45 -0500 en-us MRC Rushes To Defend DeSantis Over COVID -- Again, Part 2 <br><p><img src="" alt="" align="right" />We&#39;ve <a href="">detailed</a> how the Media Research Center once again rushed to the defense of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over his lackluster response to spiking COVID cases in the state. There&#39;s much more where that came from.</p><p>Mark Finkelstein <a href="">lost it</a> on Aug. 6 when commenters on CNN&nbsp; pointed out the ultimate implication for DeSantis&#39; inaction and attempt to punish anyone trying to do anything useful like making schoolchildren wear masks:</p><blockquote><p>Appearing on CNN&#39;s <em>New Day<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span></em>this morning, a Democrat [sic] strategist accused Republicans of wanting &quot;to basically turn Florida into a morgue.&quot;</p><p>But in a mark of just how deep CNN and the Dems have dived into loony-left extremism, the guy, Michael Starr Hopkins, was brought on to represent the <em>centrist</em> wing of the party!</p><p>[...]</p><p>In attacking Florida Republicans, the real target for Hopkins, his fellow Democrats, and the liberal media, is, of course, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, seen as a real threat to whoever the Dems nominate in 2024. </p></blockquote><p>Jeffrey Lord played whataboutism in his Aug. 7 <a href="">column</a>, declaring thatcriticism of DeSantis by CNN&#39;s Chris Cuomo &quot;can quickly be perceived as an attempt, yet again, to use his show to distract from his brother&rsquo;s Covid record by attacking DeSantis,&quot; adding:</p><blockquote><p>To say the least, this isn&rsquo;t good for Chris and it isn&rsquo;t good for CNN. But the idea that his show would focus on attacking DeSantis - while being strangely silent not only on his brother&rsquo;s nursing home scandal or the rest of his mess - but being silent on President Biden&rsquo;s policy that has resulted in thousands of Covid-infected illegals swarming across the US border? All that does is increase the perception that Chris is really about liberal or Democratic Party activism as opposed to journalism.</p><p>The fact is that the surge in Covid cases in the illegal immigrant detention centers is also resulting in a rise in Covid cases around the country. Which is a direct result of Biden&rsquo;s policy of dispersing the migrants around the country. </p></blockquote><p>Again, <a href="">that&#39;s not true</a>.But that didn&#39;t stop Krstine Marsh from <a href="">complaining</a> that CNN&#39;s Brianna Keilar &quot;accused Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Senator Ted Cruz of perpetuating a &#39;dangerous trope&#39; that illegal immigrants were spreading Covid,&quot; insisting that &quot;this isn&rsquo;t a figment of Republicans&rsquo; imaginations.&quot;</p><p>Finkelstein <a href="">melted down again</a> on Aug. 9 over &quot;Morning Joe&quot;: </p><blockquote><p>With Joe away, &nbsp;Mika jumped on his repetition hobby horse on today&#39;s <em>Morning Joe</em>. Her phrase: &quot;death cult.&quot; In the opening segment, Mika used &quot;death cult&quot; no fewer than eight times to hammer DeSantis, Florida, and others over the Covid vaccine. In her melodramatic spiel, Mika veered from haranguing her audience to choking up.&nbsp;</p><p>She seethed, &quot;And in Florida, we have a governor more interested in playing politics than saving lives:<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box">the DeSantis Variant</span>. That&#39;s why nearly one-in-four new Covid cases are coming out of<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box">FLOR-I-DA!&quot; </span></p><p>[...]</p><p>It&#39;s simply false to claim that, because the governor isn&#39;t in love with four-year-olds being forced to wear a mask all day, he&#39;s somehow a death cult-loving anti-vaxxer. </p></blockquote><p>Kyle Drennen <a href="">complained</a> the same day:</p><blockquote><p>After denouncing the Trump administration for banning travel from China in 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, on Monday, CNN&rsquo;s <em>New Day</em> actually promoted the notion of somehow imposing a travel ban on the state of Florida over a recent rise in COVID cases there. Without a sense of irony, the show hyped the notion that travel from the Sunshine State would have already been banned if it were a foreign country.</p><p>[...]</p><p>The leftist media obsession with trying to deflect blame away from President Biden and onto Republican governors is transparently partisan. For CNN to go so far as to hypocritically start throwing around talk of &ldquo;banning travel&rdquo; to certain states just brings it to a whole other level of shamelessness. </p></blockquote><p>On Aug. 10, Gabriel Hays <a href="">declared</a> that actor Bill Burr &quot;revealed his disdain for freedom&quot; by committing the offense of criticizing DeSantis:</p><blockquote><p>Bill Burr is the champion of waffling between good opinions and downright awful ones. On a good day he hates cancel culture or CNN, but on a bad day he targets Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and calls him a &ldquo;piece of shit&rdquo; for blocking mask mandates.</p><p>So DeSantis is a POS for allowing more freedom? Kind of a stupid point to make, Mr. Burr.</p><p>[...]</p><p>So he became the useful idiot and slammed the media&rsquo;s new conservative bogeyman. &ldquo;These fucking piece of shit politicians,&rdquo; he stated, adding, &ldquo;[DeSantis] knows that that&rsquo;s what his fanbase wants him to do, so that&rsquo;s what the fuck he&rsquo;s gonna do. Unbelievable.&rdquo; Oh you mean DeSantis is representing the Republicans that put him in power?&nbsp;You don&rsquo;t say?</p><p>Well why would a lefty elite like Bill Burr understand that concept? His preferred politicians &ndash; those on the left &ndash; want to rule people, rather than represent them. Burr&rsquo;s whole anti-DeSantis diatribe boils down to him bleating like a sheep for government control over his life &ndash; excuse the clich&eacute;. </p><p>It&rsquo;s not like Governor Ron DeSantis is saying that no people in Florida can wear masks, he&rsquo;s making sure that people will not be forced to wear them.</p></blockquote><p>It was then Curtis Houck&#39;s turn to <a href="">lash out at criticism of DeSantis</a>, thistime from MSNBC&#39;s Joy Reid: &quot;On MSNBC&rsquo;s <em>The ReidOut</em>, host Joy Reid and lefty guests Tim Miller and Rick Wilson decided on Tuesday to go full Alan Grayson or the late Ed Schultz in proclaiming that not only does Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) not &#39;care&#39; &#39;about the well-being of&#39; Floridians, but he himself is &#39;rooting for&#39; his &#39;strategy&#39; of &#39;killing children in [his] own state.&#39;&quot; </p><p>Finkelstein <a href="">returned to complain</a> about &quot;Morning Joe&quot; again:</p><blockquote><p>Joe, back this morning, bought into Mika&#39;s &quot;death cult&quot; trope. Scarborough was responding to a report from NBC&#39;s Kerry Sanders, who said that a Collier County [Naples area] mom who was sending her children to school without masks was doing so because &quot;we believe our faith will protect us.&quot;</p><p>That set Scarborough off. Scarborough scratched his head at the idea that parents were relying on &quot;Jesus&quot; to protect their children. He also questioned whether Jesus wanted 600,000 people to die from Covid. </p><p>[...]</p><p>It is ugly for&nbsp;Scarborough to call people with deeply-held religious beliefs members of a &quot;death cult.&quot; Would Scarborough have done so if the person sending her kids to school without masks was a devout Muslim? For that matter, Sanders didn&#39;t say that the mom in question was a Christian: Scarborough simply assumed it when &quot;faith&quot; came up.&nbsp; </p></blockquote><p>Houck <a href="">lashed out at Reid again</a> on Aug. 12:</p><blockquote><p>On Wednesday night&rsquo;s <em>ReidOut</em>, MSNBC&rsquo;s Joy Reid decided to double down on her poisonous narrative that not only are right-of-center Americans bad people, but they&rsquo;re murderous terrorists. Along with a series of like-minded guests, Reid insisted these conspiracy theory-laden savages want to overthrow the government while having their Covid-infected children flood schools.</p><p>This came after a deranged Tuesday episode that posited that Governors Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Ron DeSantis (R-FL) are purposefully killing their citizens with Covid.</p></blockquote><p>Tim Graham rehashed much of this in his Aug. 13 <a href="">column</a>, huffing, &quot;This was their 2020 playbook on Trump, that he was killing his own supporters.&quot; He then reignited his war on fact-checkers by complaining they weren&#39;t fact-checking any of this, despite not providing evidence that the statements that so offended him and the rest of the MRC are anything other than hyperbolic criticism not meant to be taken literally.</p> Thu, 16 Sep 2021 21:20:43 -0500 ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch WND Whines That Google Busted It Over The Misinformation It Publishes <br><p><img src="" alt="" align="right" />WorldNetDaily has tussled with Google&#39;s ad program for years. Google f<a href="">irst threatened to pull its ads in 2014</a>, when WND was heavily into Colin Flaherty&#39;s race-baiting, but it agreed to shut off Google ads to those race-baiting articles. Now it apepars Google has finally had enough, and WND can&#39;t stop whining about it. An anonymously written Aug. 6 <a href="">article</a> served up some details:</p><blockquote><p>Google, the dominant advertising service on the internet, stopped serving its ads on WND&#39;s homepage, apparently because the tech giant deemed many of the news site&#39;s stories and opinion columns to contain &quot;unreliable and harmful claims.&quot;</p> <p>Google has an &quot;autocrawler&quot; that searches for violations of its &quot;community standards&quot; and disables its ad server on offending websites.</p><p>After having blocked ads to individual stories for the past several years, Google stopped serving ads to WND&#39;s homepage altogether earlier this month under a new policy that assesses a site&#39;s general content.</p> <p>Google has not specified the content that triggered the move, but in the past it has flagged WND articles that countered the media narrative on the COVID-19 pandemic.</p><p>Among the offending articles was an Aug. 2 opinion column by Wayne Allyn Root titled &quot;The vaccine isn&#39;t working, but the gravy train is.&quot; In it, Root backs his claim by citing a Bloomberg report that there were more than 110,000 cases of &quot;breakthrough COVID-19,&quot; meaning cases in which people tested positive for COVID after having been vaccinated.</p></blockquote><p>WND, needless to say, is misrepresenting the contents of Root&#39;s <a href="">column</a>, pretending a relatively uncontroversial claim is the sticking point. In fact, the thesis of Root&#39;s column is that it&#39;s &quot;a great big lie&quot; to claim that unvaccinated people are driving the current surge in COVID cases. Root touted that &quot;In Singapore, 75% of the new COVID-19 cases are among the vaccinated&quot; -- but that claim lacks context; it <a href="">omits the fact</a> that cases among vaccinated people are not severe, while unvaccinated people are catching severe cases of COVID. Rootalso ranted that President Biden let refugees from countries where the purprotedly &quot;live among filth and squalor&quot; and &quot;bring with them Third World illness and disease&quot; into the U.S., meaning &quot;These are the dreaded superspreaders.&quot; <a href="">That is</a> <a href="">not true</a>.</p><p>The anonymous writer made sure not to mention the <a href="">voluminous</a> <a href="">amount</a> <a href="">of</a> <a href="">COVID</a> <a href="">misinformation</a> WND has published since the pandemic began, which would more than justify Google withdrawing its ads from WND.</p><p>Then the whining realy ramped up: </p> <blockquote><p>Google no longer is flagging WND&#39;s homepage, but the news site&#39;s advertising team has decided to move on from Google and rely instead on supportive advertisers.</p><p>WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah commented on Google&#39;s &quot;community standards.&quot;</p> <p>&quot;I don&#39;t accept Google&#39;s parameters, because they do violence to the First Amendment. Period. End of the story,&quot; he said. &quot;We live in America where the First Amendment is still the law of the land.&quot;</p><p>Google, which for years has set its algorithm to push WND way down in its search results, has suppressed, de-monetized and branded many of WND&rsquo;s biggest news stories as &quot;dangerous, derogatory or shocking content.&quot;</p> <p>The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, which advises all the major tech platforms as to who is &quot;hateful and extremist,&quot; characterizes WND &ndash; which is Christian and conservative in worldview &ndash; as an &quot;extremist group.&quot;</p></blockquote><p>WND then served up a revisionist take on the 2014 race-baiting that first got it in trouble with Google: </p><blockquote><p>In 2014, Google accused WND of using &quot;hate speech&quot; and threatened to block ads over its use of the term &quot;black mobs&quot; in news stories and columns reporting on a two-year epidemic of racial attacks in the U.S.</p> <p>Farah said at the time that the Google policy was flawed because it &quot;attempts to censor words and phrases that are truthful and accurate from First Amendment-protected media on the basis of political correctness and faulty algorithmic methodology.&quot;</p><p>Two years prior, WND began investigating and reporting on a spree of unprovoked attacks by groups of blacks on non-black victims, spearheaded by accounts compiled by journalist Colin Flaherty, author of &quot;White Girl Bleed A Lot.&quot; The book had been endorsed prominently and repeatedly by celebrated black scholar Thomas Sowell for connecting the dots between hundreds of incidents taking place in cities across the country. Flaherty&#39;s reporting also first identified the phenomenon known as &quot;the knockout game,&quot; in which groups or individual black people targeted non-black victims for unprovoked attacks designed to knock them unconscious with a surprise blow to the head.</p> <p>&quot;The answer to violence, whether motivated by race or some other rationalization, is not to turn away from it and hide it from the public, but to expose it to the light of day,&quot; Farah said.</p> <p>&quot;WND made a determination to do that after examining the overwhelming evidence presented by Flaherty in his research. In response to that kind of reporting, police departments and public officials &ndash; both black and white &ndash; across the country have acknowledged the pernicious ramifications of what&rsquo;s happening and taken action to prevent others from being hurt. What Google is doing, after the fact, is ignoring hard facts and assigning insidious racial motivations for this kind of courageous reporting.&quot;</p></blockquote><p>That&#39;s not really what happened. Flaherty was so obsessed with this &quot;black mob&quot; race-baiting that <a href="">even white people and animals</a> were deemed to be members of &quot;black mobs.&quot; As we <a href="">noted</a> at the time, WND admitted it had published 670 articles referencing &quot;black mobs,&quot; yet it never covered other crime to that extent. Additionally, that Google crackdown had its desired effect: WND distanced itself from Flaherty, and while WND continued to race-bait, it was a little less blatant.</p><p>The article went on to play victim by rehashing WND&#39;s claim that &quot;YouTube, which is owned by Google, de-monetized WND after it posted a single video defending &#39;MyPillow guy&#39; and Trump supporter Mike Lindell.&quot; But the <a href="">likely real reason</a> YouTube demonitized that video is because it included a clip from the podcast of Steve Bannon, who has been banned by YouTube for making false claims about election fraud. </p><p>WND could edit Bannon out of the video and get itself re-monetized, but that wouldn&#39;t fit its victimization narrative ... just as it continues to do the same things -- misinformation, conspiracy theories -- that have brought it to its current point of near-insolvency.</p> Thu, 16 Sep 2021 18:15:42 -0500 ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch NEW ARTICLE: The MRC Loves COVID Misinformation <br>The Media Research Center doesn&#39;t understand how bad it looks to defend lying or misinforming about coronavirus and its vaccines because it&#39;s somehow &quot;free speech.&quot; <a href="">Read more &gt;&gt;</a> Thu, 16 Sep 2021 12:59:44 -0500 ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch CNS Echoes MRC's Meltdown Over (Allegedly) Cross-Dressing Muppet <br><p><img src="" alt="" align="right" />Following in the footsteps of its <a href="">Media Research Center parent</a>, similarly melted down over the idea of a supposedly male Muppet wearing a dress.</p><p>Craig Bannister gave right-wing activist Candace Owens a platform to rant about it in an Aug. 2 <a href="">article</a>:</p><blockquote><p>Conservative commentator Candace Owens says she&rsquo;s in disbelief that even the &ldquo;Muppet Babies&rdquo; childrens&rsquo; cartoon is preaching transgender ideology to kids.</p><p>&ldquo;This is sick and PERVERTED,&rdquo; Owens tweeted on Sunday, embedding a video clip of recent episode of the cartoon, in which the character Gonzo turns into a cross-dressing &ldquo;Gonzorella.&rdquo; &ldquo;You all expected me to look a certain way. I didn&rsquo;t want you to be upset with me,&rdquo; Gonzorella says following the transformation and revelation.</p><p>Everyone should be disturbed by the cartoon&rsquo;s predatory effort to inflict gender dysphoria on children, Owens writes:</p><blockquote><p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t believe I&rsquo;m tweeting this but.. they are pushing the trans agenda on children via muppet babies. This is sick and PERVERTED. Everyone should be disturbed by predatory cartoons meant to usher children into gender dysphoria.</p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem">&ldquo;Bring back manly muppets, anyone?&rdquo;</p></blockquote></blockquote><p>Owens apparently provided no evidence of how she knows Gonzo is a &quot;manly&quot; Muppet who should remain that way. Bannister, meanwhile, was silent about how Owens got <a href="">dragged in social media</a> for her bizarre, hateful comment, where it was also pointed out that Gonzo has <a href="">worn dresses for decades</a>.</p><p>Meanwhile, LGBT-hating Bill Donohue got an entire Aug. 5 <a href="">column</a> to rant about it and invent a conspiracy theory:</p><blockquote><p>Why would Disney, the alleged family-friendly entertainment giant, want to encourage kids to reject their sex? And why aren&#39;t the media covering this story?</p><p>The Muppet character, Gonzo, has &quot;transitioned&quot; to a girl, Gonzorella. That is why he is wearing a dress to the &quot;royal ball.&quot; He does more than wear a dress&mdash;he instructs Miss Piggy and Summer that &quot;doing things a little different can be fun.&quot;&nbsp;</p><p>The message to children is: a boy can be a girl, and vice versa. Making this choice, they are told, is not something abnormal, it&#39;s just &quot;a little different.&quot; Moreover, it can be &quot;fun&quot; to reject your sex and pretend that you belong to the opposite sex.</p><p>This needs to be called out for what it is: child abuse. Anyone who is even remotely knowledgeable about what sex transitioning entails&mdash;the physical and psychological problems that boys and girls experience are multiple&mdash;knows how pernicious this process is. Seven in ten of those who transition are girls wanting to be boys, and the extent of their suffering is well documented.&nbsp;</p><p>So why is it that, aside from some gay and conservative news sources, this story is being ignored by the most influential newspapers, as well as the broadcast and cable news networks? Is it their insouciance that is driving their passivity? Or cowardice? </p></blockquote><p>Donohue weirdly concluded: &quot;This is not about treating everyone with respect&mdash;that is not the issue&mdash;it is about shielding our children from those who want to sexually engineer them.&quot; But Donohue has never respected LGBTQ people, so it clearly is an issue with him. He just doesn&#39;t what to be called out on it.</p> Wed, 15 Sep 2021 23:02:51 -0500 ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch Mean Girls At CNN Insist On Immaturely Mocking CNN's Allegedly Low Ratings <br><p><img src="" alt="" align="right" />How do we know that the Media&nbsp; Research Center is a partisan attack dog that cares nothing about actual &quot;media research&quot;? Because actual media researchers wouldn&#39;t engage in abject gloting when a channel&#39;s ratings drop. But that&#39;s what the MRC -- mostly NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck -- has been doing for months when reporting on ratings at CNN.</p><p>Houck immaturely <a href="">cheered</a> back in March under the sneering headline &quot;How Refreshing&quot;:</p><blockquote><p>Showing just how far CNN has fallen as they continue to struggle with symptoms of Trump withdrawal, <em>Reliable Sources</em> and host Brtian Stelter suffered their worst rating of the year on Sunday as Nielsen Media Research showed a scant 936,000 total viewers subjected themselves to his hour of hate<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp;</span>against Fox News and conservative media.</p><p>Worse yet, CNN&rsquo;s ratings overall plummeted to their worst week of 2021.<em>The Washington Post</em>&rsquo;s Paul Farhi dug into the Nielsen ratings on Monday and found CNN had hemorrhaged &ldquo;45 percent of its prime-time audience in the past five weeks&rdquo; with MSNBC down &ldquo;26 percent in the same period&rdquo; and the Fox News Channel only off by six percent.</p></blockquote><p>Houck went on to huff: &quot;On this past Sunday, Stelter&rsquo;s show was more of the same, spewing hate in his never-ending quest to send Fox News employees to the unemployment rolls&quot; -- as if Houck doesn&#39;t want to do the same to Stelter and every other CNN employee -- and complained he said of Fox News, &ldquo;Bottom line here, you are what you watch and it could make you sick.&rdquo; Houck retorted, &quot;Trust us, Brian. The feeling is mutual.&quot;</p><p>In April, Houck <a href="">chortled</a> under the immature headline &quot;Sad Trombone&quot;:</p><blockquote><p>On Monday, CNN&rsquo;s Brianna Keilar began her new gig as <em>New Day</em> co-host after just over two years helming <em>CNN Right Now</em> and the weekday afternoon edition of <em>CNN Newsroom</em>, where she had come to establish herself as a condescending, far-left, Fox-hating, smug pundit with commentaries masquerading as&nbsp;journalism.&nbsp;</p><p>Unfortunately for Keilar, the ratings were in and the show was down 30 percent in total viewership from last year and 33 percent in the 25-54 demographic. This should come as no surprise, but that would mean that the show had&nbsp;continued to reign as the least-watched show on CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC.</p><p>Nielsen Media Research ratings revealed that Monday&rsquo;s debut featured a paltry average total of 495,000 viewers and a minuscule average of 122,00 viewers in the 25-54 demographic.</p></blockquote><p>Houck was back in May to <a href="">mock CNN ratings again</a>:</p><blockquote><p>Along with its ongoing ethical problems, a deceptive marketing campaign, and a continued hatred for non-liberal voices, it&rsquo;s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year for the Jeffrey Zucker-led CNN. And as per the latest Nielsen ratings, CNN has continued to hemorrhage viewers with primetime and entire day total viewership down over 70 percent since January.</p><p>Nielsen Media Research has the breakdown and it&rsquo;s not pretty, no matter how the Zucker Borg would spin it. Since a January high of roughly 798,000 primetime viewers and 530,000 total day viewers in the 25-54 demographic, CNN has fallen off a cliff and into the pit of misery with the network fetching only 229,000 in primetime and 152,000 in total day over the past month.</p><p>That, dear NewsBusters readers, would represent a cratering of 71 percent for both metrics. Granted, January saw the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the second Trump impeachment, and the Biden inauguration, but to lose anything by such a large metric wasn&rsquo;t anything one should brag about.</p></blockquote><p>Houck <a href="">loves to portray</a> Zucker -- who is Jewish -- as CNN&#39;s puppetmaster, an anti-Semitic trope. As if Roger Ailes didn&#39;t do the exact same thing at Fox News, which Houck presumably had no problem with at all. Houck actually uses the racially charged &quot;puppetmaster&quot; insult to mock CNN&#39;s ratings again in a June 2 <a href="">post</a>:</p><blockquote><p>On Monday, one could have diagnosed CNN&rsquo;s <em>New Day</em> co-host Brianna Keilar deciding to eat cicadas as the show&rsquo;s &ldquo;shark jumping&rdquo; moment, but that would have meant that the show was successful to begin with when, in reality, it&rsquo;s been a dumpster fire since its April 19 reboot.</p><p>Nielsen Media Research has the numbers and, unless you&rsquo;re puppetmaster Jeff Zucker and his minions with their heads in the sand, they&rsquo;re not pretty with an audience of under 500,000 total viewers for five weeks in a row (with only the first week being north of that).</p></blockquote><p>Houck&#39;s weird CNN-hating obsession continued <a href="">on June 29</a>:</p><blockquote><p>When it rains, it pours. And when it comes to ratings at the Jeffrey Zucker-led clown show known as CNN, it&rsquo;s a monsoon. The second quarter&rsquo;s ratings came out on Tuesday and the immature, noxious, and repugnant network suffered its worst month in total viewers and the 25-54 demo since June 2019. And that&#39;s not to mention that primetime ratings have tumbled 71 percent in total viewers and 78 percent in the demo since January.</p><p>Meanwhile, the Fox News Channel continued to assert its dominance over the competition with its 78th consecutive quarter leading cable news and sixth straight win in all of cable, led in part due to the continued success of shows like <em>The Five</em>, <em>Gutfeld!</em>, and <em>Tucker Carlson Tonight</em>.</p></blockquote><p>Scott Whitlock took tie CNN mocking stick from Houck for a July 23 <a href="">post</a>: &quot;Apparently, Americans don&rsquo;t want to watch 80 minutes of CNN&rsquo;s Don Lemon sucking up to Joe Biden. The July 21 town hall special bombed the ratings, losing not only to Fox News (which would be expected), but even MSNBC.&quot; </p><p>So pathological is the MRC&#39;s hatred of Stelter that it even tried to blame him for tanking the ratings of someone else&#39;s show , as Abigail Streetman did an an Aug. 13 post:</p><blockquote><p>Stephen Colbert is wrong about a lot, but his biggest mistake yet was allowing Clown News Network&rsquo;s Brian Stelter onto his show this week. The Late Show saw a drastic decrease in viewership during Colbert&rsquo;s segment with the news anchor who scrambled helplessly in an attempt to defend Chris Cuomo. </p><p>[...]</p><p>When Stelter appeared on the show, ratings for his interview revealed it as Colbert&rsquo;s least watched segment of the night. Wow, shocker! People hate Stelter&rsquo;s show and it seems like they can&rsquo;t even stand to watch him on Colbert&rsquo;s show.&nbsp;</p></blockquote><p>Demonstrating she&#39;s a Mean Girl with nothing to offer but lame, juvenile insults, Streetman concluded, &quot;The Lame Show will be no more if Stelter ever makes an appearance again.&quot;</p><p>Yet the MRC wants to be treated as serious &quot;media researchers.&quot; Go figure. </p> Wed, 15 Sep 2021 21:35:43 -0500 ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch Newsmax Interview With Nunes Omits Mention Of Previous Failed Lawsuits <br><p><img src="" alt="" align="right" />A Newsmax interview with Rep. Devin Nunes, as summarized in an Aug. 13 <a href="">article</a> by Sandy Fitzgerald, touts the one defamation lawsuit he filed that hasn&#39;t been dismissed outright:</p><blockquote><p>Rep. Devin Nunes, who is suing both MSNBC and The Washington Post over reports they&#39;d made tying him to actions with Russia, said Friday on Newsmax that the legal actions are being taken to &quot;hold the fake news accountable.&quot;</p><p>The California Republican told Newsmax&#39;s &quot;National Report&quot; that he scored a rare win this week, when a Washington, D.C., judge ruled that his libel lawsuit against The Washington Post could proceed.&nbsp;</p><p>In a Nov. 9, 2020 story from the Post about&nbsp;Nunes&#39; one-time chief of staff&nbsp;Michael Ellis, the paper alleged that Ellis, who became general counsel of the National Security Agency, had helped the congressman obtain information from the White House on intelligence files to back his claims that the Obama administration had spied on Trump Tower, reports</p><p>&quot;That was never true that I had, you know, James Bond-style jumped, rolled out of cars, jumped over the fence at the White House at midnight,&quot; said Nunes. &quot;They knew from prior reporting that that was totally false ... they acted with actual malice. They&#39;ve been doing it for years. Thankfully a judge saw.&quot;</p></blockquote><p>But the Post never reported Nunes did &quot;James Bond-style&quot; stuff. The article <a href="">originally stated</a> that Nunes went to the White House in a &quot;midnight run&quot; to find evidence that the Obama administration was spying on Trump Tower, which the Post later corrected to say happened during the day, and misattributed a statement about spying to Nunes instead of Donald Trump. Nunes didn&#39;t tell Newsmax that part of his lawsuit against the Post was dismissed. </p><p>Unsurprisingly, neither Newsmax nor Nunes made no mention of all the other Nunes lawsuits against media outlets that have ended in swift dismissal. For instance, a different suit Nunes filed against the Post last year <a href="">was dismissed</a>. Most infamously, Nunes <a href="">tried to sue Twitter</a> over a couple of parody accounts -- one stating itself to be &quot;Devin Nunes&#39; Cow&quot; -- mocking over his dubious claims of being a farmer, among other tihngs, and failed. Those cases have since been <a href="">completely dismissed</a> as well.</p><p>Nunes is clearly unable to handle any sort of public criticism, so he&#39;s trying to strip his critics of the right to criticise him by forcing them to spend money defending themselves in court. Newsmax doesn&#39;t want to report any of that.</p> Wed, 15 Sep 2021 20:04:23 -0500 ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch CNS Unemployment Coverage Distortion Watch, Vacation Edition <br><p><img src="" alt="" align="right" /> did not serve up a summary of federal employment numbers for August because Susan Jones -- the biased CNS reporter in charge of that monthly duty -- was off that week. (You&#39;d think that a &quot;news&quot; organization would have someone else write that story, given how it&#39;s &quot;news&quot; and all, and how it is a predictable staple of CNS coverage.) Instead, the only article was <a href="">the usual sidebar</a> from editor Terry Jeffrey on government jobs, complaining that &quot;The federal government added 3,000 civilian employees in August.&quot;</p><p>Instead, Craig Bannister stepped into the breach with an <a href="">article</a> accusing Nancy Pelosi of spinning the &quot;disappointing&quot; numbers to push federal spending:</p><blockquote><p>&ldquo;Today&rsquo;s job report is further evidence of the need to Build Back Better for our economy,&rdquo; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday, reacting to August&rsquo;s steep drop in job growth from its year-long trend reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).</p><p>As the BLS reported in its monthly Employment Situation Summary, August&rsquo;s 235,000 job growth was less than half the average monthly job gain recorded so far this year, coming in at just &nbsp;235,000. To-date in 2021, the U.S. economy has added an average of 586,000 per month:</p></blockquote><p>Bannister didn&#39;t mention that the lower numbers <a href="">were driven by</a> the Delta variant harming restaurant and hospitality jobs. </p> Wed, 15 Sep 2021 14:24:21 -0500 ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch WND's Kupelian Spreads Election-Fraud Lies On Ex-WND Columnist's Show <br><p><img src="" alt="" align="right" />The claims that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump presented in the most recent issue of WorldNetDaily&#39;s sparsely read Whistleblower magazine <a href="">were easily disproven</a> -- but that&#39;s not stopping WND managing editor David Kupelian from trying to promote it, something he rarely goes out to do. So we were graced with an Aug. 15 <a href="">article</a> pushing his dishonest PR:</p><blockquote><p>At a time when even suggesting the November 2020 presidential election was unfair or rigged will get journalists censored, &ldquo;fact-checked&rdquo; and condemned &ndash; and perhaps fired &ndash; WND&rsquo;s popular Whistleblower magazine apparently didn&rsquo;t get the memo.</p> <p>&ldquo;Over at Whistleblower magazine,&rdquo; announced TV host Dr. Gina Loudon on her popular &ldquo;Dr. Gina Prime Time&rdquo; show on America&rsquo;s Real Voice network, &ldquo;they devoted the entire issue this month to election fraud. The front cover says, <a href="" target="_blank">&lsquo;YES, THE 2020 ELECTION WAS STOLEN.&rsquo;</a> That is putting it in no uncertain terms!&rdquo;</p></blockquote><p>Stop right there. WND offers no evidence that Loudon&#39;s show is &quot;popular,&quot; and the article gets the name of the&nbsp; channel wrong -- it&#39;s Real America&#39;s&nbsp; Voice, not America&rsquo;s Real Voice. Also, you might remember that Loudon is a former WND columnist who <a href="">tried to armchair-diagnose</a> President Obama as a psychopath and demonstrated some serious pathology of her own by <a href="">spreading lies</a>. YOu might also remember her for <a href="">trying to make hay</a> off her teenage daughter being in a relationship with a 57-year-old actor-- then later making sure WND <a href="">deleted the column</a> she wrote on it. </p><p>So Loudon was the perfect &quot;popular&quot; host to regurgitate Kupelian&#39;s lies. The article continued: </p><blockquote><p>&ldquo;David,&rdquo; she said to her guest, Whistleblower Editor David Kupelian, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re not crazy! The election <em>really was</em> stolen. And that&rsquo;s a big statement. We&rsquo;ve heard it from some, but most people have been very, very reserved on this. If you say this, you&rsquo;re branded crazy or a conspiracy theorist, David, though it&rsquo;s looking more like those are compliments than insults these days.&rdquo;</p> <p>Asking Kupelian to highlight some of the many ways the 2020 election was rigged, Loudon first prompted Kupelian to explain how Google, with or without voter fraud, can and does swing American elections.</p><p>&ldquo;For this issue of Whistleblower, Gina, we interviewed Robert Epstein, who&rsquo;s the preeminent Google researcher,&rdquo; said Kupelian. &ldquo;He used to be editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, a very sharp guy &ndash; and by the way, a Democrat &hellip; so there&rsquo;s no political motivation here. But he&rsquo;s an honest man and he wants us to have free and fair elections.&rdquo; Epstein, who has developed very sophisticated and accurate methodologies for measuring how Google sways public opinion and therefore elections, determined that Google, &ldquo;because of its tainted search algorithm, <em>swung at least 6 million voters to Joe Biden!&rdquo;</em> said Kupelian. </p><p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re told that the election hinged on 44,000 votes total in three states,&rdquo; added Kupelian, out of &ldquo;161,000,000 votes, a record number of votes cast. Forty-four thousand votes &ndash; that&rsquo;s a close election! Well guess what? Six million is <em>a lot more</em> than 44,000 votes, it&rsquo;s like 130 times 44,000 votes!&rdquo;</p></blockquote><p><a href="">We&#39;ve</a> <a href="">documented</a> how Epstein&#39;s anti-Google reserarch is dubious at best. As for his star claim, as repeated by Kupelian, that&nbsp; Google &quot;turn[ed] an estimated 6 million &#39;undecided&#39; voters to Biden,&quot; the Washington Post&#39;s Philip Bump <a href="">noted</a>: &quot;Of course, the idea that people primarily base their decisions on what they learn from Googling candidates &mdash; particularly at the presidential level &mdash; is dismissible on its face. President Biden got a record level of support from Democrats even as Trump earned near-universal support from Republicans. Which of them was influenced by his or her search results?&quot; </p><p>More from the article:</p><blockquote><p>Citing another example from &ldquo;YES, THE 2020 ELECTION WAS STOLEN,&rdquo; Kupelian told how, after Twitter scandalously banned the New York Post&rsquo;s devastating reporting on Hunter Biden&rsquo;s laptop just weeks prior to the election, &ldquo;the Media Research Center polled Biden voters.&rdquo; It turns out, Kupelian revealed, that &ldquo;36% had never even heard about the Hunter Biden laptop story in the New York Post, thanks to Twitter, and listen to this: <em>4.6% of Biden voters said that they would not have voted for Biden had they known what was in this story</em> &ndash; the dirt, the total corruption not just of Hunter Biden, but of Joe Biden. So that right there would have been enough to have given Trump 289 electoral votes and he would have been elected to his second term.&rdquo;</p></blockquote><p><a href="">As we&#39;ve documented</a>, the MRC poll was conducted by McLaughlin &amp; Associates -- the same pollster employed by Trump&#39;s campaign -- so the trust factor is quite low. Kupelian added:</p><blockquote><p>&ldquo;Back in 2016, Gina, I did an <a href="">a</a>rticle on five different Washington Post writers who explicitly compared Donald Trump to Hitler in the run-up to the election. And you ask yourself, why would they do that? It&rsquo;s because, if you and I, Gina, were alive in Hitler&rsquo;s Germany, would we cheat on an election in order to save six million Jews, to slay this dragon and stop a terrible war? <em>Of course we would&rsquo;ve cheated on the election!</em> This was the left&rsquo;s subliminal but undeniable message to America: It&rsquo;s not only that it&rsquo;s OK to cheat &ndash; it&rsquo;s immoral NOT to cheat, if you&rsquo;re getting rid of Hitler, the worst person to ever live, which is what they were saying about Trump.&rdquo;</p></blockquote><p><a href="">We&#39;ve</a> <a href="">pointed</a> <a href="">out</a> how WND -- which, again, Kupelian is an executive at -- repeatedly likened President Obama to Hitler and other Nazis and had no moral qualms about that. (Also, <a href="">the Antichrist</a>.) Is Kupelian saying that by doing so, it was immoral for WND NOT to lie about Obama&#39;s birth certificate and various other things during his presidency? It appears so, making him a raging hypocrite as well as a liar.</p><p>The article concluded:</p><blockquote><p>Added Kupelian, who has been WND&rsquo;s vice president and managing editor since 1999 and editor of Whistleblower the entire time, &ldquo;I just want the gaslighting to stop. This was the most corrupt, dirty election, certainly in our lifetimes, and I believe anybody who reads this issue of Whistleblower &ndash; and I don&rsquo;t care if they&rsquo;re a Democrat or Republican &ndash; if they&rsquo;re just decent, half-way fair-minded people, they <em>will</em> come away believing that this was a stinking, dirty election.&rdquo;</p></blockquote><p>Actually, the only person gaslighting here is Kupelian, and he has no intention whatsoever of stopping -- the grift is just too alluring, even as all those conspiracy theories have pushed WND to the edge of insolvency. </p> Tue, 14 Sep 2021 23:09:38 -0500 ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch MRC Rushes To Defend DeSantis Over COVID -- Again <br><p><img src="" alt="" align="right" />Last year, the Media Research Center <a href="">fawned all over</a> Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his hands-off approach to the coronavirus epidemic in his state -- then had to switch to defense mode when the state became an epicenter of COVID infection. Well, Florida has become an epicenter of the Delta variant this summer, and the MRC is back in defense mode.</p><p>Alex Christy <a href="">complained</a> on July 17 that CNN&#39;s Chris Cuomo spread &quot;disinformation&quot; by &quot;insinuating&quot; that DeSantis isn&#39;t encouraging people to get vaccinated, then made excuses for DeSantis&#39; abhorrent behavior:&nbsp;</p><blockquote><p>DeSantis has been vocal in his opposition to vaccine passports, mandates, and is selling anti-Fauci merchandise, but has never said &quot;don&#39;t get vaccinated.&quot; The anti-Fauci fundraising&nbsp;is&nbsp;about masks and lockdowns, not vaccines. If Cuomo can&#39;t understand the difference between being against mandates and being against vaccines, that&#39;s on him, not DeSantis.</p></blockquote><p>Christy also falsely identified guest Leana Wen as &quot;Planned Parenthood president&quot; -- she hasn&#39;t worked there <a href="">for two years</a>, and even then was the group&#39;s president for only nine months. (the MRC is <a href="">weirdly obsessed </a>with tagging Wen as tied to Planned Parenthood even though it&#39;s irrelevant to her current TV appearances as a health expert.) Christy then justified people who refuse to get the vaccine by blaming others, not them, for their own behavior:</p><blockquote><p>The people who remain unvaccinated need to be convinced and telling them that nothing will change regardless will just confirm their suspicions that restrictions will last forever, or worse, that the vaccines don&#39;t work. That is far more damaging to the vaccination campaign than any anti-Fauci beer koozie.&nbsp; </p></blockquote><p>Christy <a href="">returned</a> on July 31 to portray any criticism of DeSantis&#39; handling on COVID as an effort to derail his potential 2024 presidential camapign:</p><blockquote><p>It is obvious that&nbsp;the media view Florida Governor&nbsp;Ron DeSantis as a 2024 threat; hence&nbsp;every discussion about COVID and the Delta variant must include an implication that Florida is a uniquely dire situation.</p><p>On his Friday show, CNN&#39;s Chris Cuomo blamed Florida for the CDC&#39;s revised mask guidelines, saying the country was being &quot;held hostage&quot; because of DeSantis&#39; anti-science governance. </p></blockquote><p>Mark Finkelstein peddled the same angle in an Aug. 2 <a href="">post</a>:</p><blockquote><p>As the number of COVID cases rises in Florida, opportunistic liberal talk shows are taking more pot shots at Gov. Ron DeSantis, a&nbsp;potential 2024 presidential candidate. It&#39;s never too early to bury him.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p><em>Morning Joe</em> regular Dave Aronberg, the Democrat Palm Beach County State Attorney, twice claimed today that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis&#39;s stance on Covid constitutes&mdash;of all things&mdash;&quot;socialism.&quot;&nbsp;</p><p>Mika Brzezinski melodramatically teed him up by suggesting you&#39;d oppose DeSantis, too, if &quot;you&rsquo;re actually getting correct information on the science, and not a bunch of stupid, crazy, Trump-driven conspiracy theories that could <em>kill</em> you.&quot; </p></blockquote><p>Clay Waters <a href="">complained</a> that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman &quot;pointed out that over&nbsp;10,000 Floridians&nbsp;are currently hospitalized with Covid, then blamed DeSantis,&quot; adding that &quot;Krugman was obliged to note, but strenuously attempted to discount, the inconvenient fact that Florida is actually doing just fine with vaccinations.&quot; Waters then huffed:</p><blockquote><p>Speaking of life, DeSantis kept Florida schools open, as the luckless children under blue state regimes suffered developmental setbacks and loneliness. How rejecting masks for the upcoming school year could possibly impact&nbsp;case levels in the present day is a baffler, but intellectual consistency has never been Krugman&rsquo;s strong suit. </p></blockquote><p>After MSNBC&#39;s Joe Scarborough pointed out that DeSantis&#39; pandering to his right-wing supporters on COVID made him sound a bit like &quot;Simpsons&quot; character Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel, Finkelstein <a href="">returned to sneer</a>: &quot;Was Joe Scarborough ever a good ol&#39; Southern boy, as he still likes to portray himself? In any case, that persona has definitively disappeared. On today&#39;s <em>Morning Joe</em>, Scarborough exposed himself as the worst kind of condescending Upper West Side snob.&quot;</p><p>As the COVID death toll mounted in Florida, Kristine Marsh <a href="">helped DeSantis distract</a> and play whataboutism while decrying a new nickname for the guy:</p><blockquote><p>Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has increasingly become one of the left&rsquo;s favorite targets. So it should come as no surprise that he drew the ire of the media on Thursday after he fired back at President Biden for lecturing him on his coronavirus leadership.</p><p>After Biden publicly rebuked the governor for banning mask mandates in Florida schools, DeSantis slammed the president for allowing COVID positive illegal immigrants into the country&nbsp;and flying them to states like Florida. Both <em>Morning Joe</em> host Joe Scarborough and <em>The View&rsquo;s</em> Sunny Hostin went after DeSantis this morning in a pathetic effort to defend Biden.</p><p>On <em>The View</em>, Hostin maliciously smeared the Governor as &ldquo;directly&rdquo; responsible for people dying from COVID. She touted debunked allegations that he &ldquo;hid&rdquo; the death toll in his state, calling him &ldquo;DeathSantis:&rdquo;</p></blockquote><p>Christy then <a href="">served up more defense for DeSantis</a> on Aug. 5 by insisting that he&#39;s not terrible on COVID, he&#39;s merely average:</p><blockquote><p>The media&#39;s obsession with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continued on Tuesday as <em>Katy Tur Reports</em> guest host Geoff Bennett let&nbsp;gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried spread multiple untruths about DeSantis&#39; pandemic response. That Fried was allowed to spread such claims was not surprising as Bennett&#39;s questioning relied on similarly false premises.</p><p>Ironically, before the segment even started, Bennett showed why the segment should never even happened as he went to a commercial&nbsp;teasing, &quot;Still ahead, summer surge.&nbsp;At least 42 states are seeing&nbsp;COVID infection rates spike over 100 percent&nbsp;in&nbsp;the last two, we&rsquo;ll go live to the new pandemic epicenter which is Florida.&quot;</p><p>If 42 states are seeing over 100%&nbsp;increases, then it can not simply be boiled down to&nbsp;politics or the governor&#39;s policies, but that didn&#39;t stop Bennett from trying.&nbsp;Leading Fried with&nbsp;a false narrative he asked, &quot;What&#39;s your take-away about&nbsp;what&#39;s to come?...Why are do you think so many&nbsp;Floridians still aren&#39;t vaccinated?&quot;</p>Florida&#39;s vaccination rate is essentially the same as&nbsp;the national average. As of August 3, 58.2% of Floridians have received&nbsp;at least one shot&nbsp;compared to 57.9% of all Americans.</blockquote><p>Christy is rather desperately understating the situation in Florida. As week after his post, Florida alone accounted for <a href="">nearly 18 percent</a> of all new COVID cases in the U.S. And if the vaccination rate of Florida and Texas had been higher, <a href="">70,000 hospitalizations and 4,700 deaths</a> could have been prevented through July. </p> Tue, 14 Sep 2021 21:39:53 -0500 ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch WND Promotes False Conspiracy Theory About 'Fake' Biden Photo <br><p><img src="" alt="" align="right" />Bob Unruh wrote in an Aug. 16 WorldNetDaily <a href="">article</a>:</p><blockquote><p>An online posting that looks closely at a recent image released by the White House &ndash; of Joe Biden in a situation room, sitting alone at a large table, with a series of screen images on the monitor on the wall, is raising questions about photoshopping.</p> <p>You know, that computer trick where you can insert the image of a person in a room where he actually isn&#39;t. Or you can remove someone from a picture of an event where he actually was.</p><p>And other assorted tricks.</p> <p>It is Citizen Free Press that has posted several images, and pointed out that there is a problem.</p><p>Under the headline, &quot;Did the White House use photoshop in Biden image?&quot; the commentary openly wonders how much about the image is accurate.</p><p>Because the image shows London time at 16:29, and Moscow time as 19:29.</p> <p>Of course the two cities are not in the same time zone.</p><p>Nor are they three hours apart, the Citizen Free Press explained.</p><p>&quot;Moscow will not be three hours different than London until November 7, 2021,&quot; the report explained. </p></blockquote><p>Citizen Free Press, by the way, is a far-right Drudge-esque news aggregator run by an <a href="">anonymous perso</a>n, so it hasn&#39;t really earned the right to be trusted. And it can&#39;t be trusted on this either.</p><p>Because Unruh has put WND&#39;s hate-Biden agenda before the truth, he dismissed the most obvious possibility: one of the clocks was wrong. As a fact-checker <a href="">pointed out</a>:</p><blockquote><p>Moscow is sometimes three hours ahead of London. However, the United Kingdom is currently on British Summer Time, a period when the clocks are turned ahead an hour so that there&rsquo;s more daylight in the evenings and less in the mornings.&nbsp;</p><p>We found no evidence the photo was staged, and claims that say so ignore a more likely scenario &ndash; that the clock was not updated for British Summer Time.</p></blockquote><p>But Unruh -- and WND as a whole -- clearly despise Biden so much, they&#39;d rather embrace a conspiracy than report the truth. </p> Tue, 14 Sep 2021 20:12:15 -0500 ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch