Christian Broadcasting Network CBN

this is a generic category, includes radio and TV

see brody

bachman end times?

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rww

Michele Bachmann is now co-hosting an "Israel Live" podcast on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

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evang {talk?] radio?

Another Climate Summit - VCY.org

VCY.org

Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depot says, “COP 28 is shaping up to be a doubling down on the green agenda despite the massive failure on a ...

penna Dexter

It’s December: time for another UN climate confab. Global socialists who see a climate emergencyin every heat wave are meeting in Dubai for the 28^th annual Conference of the Parties. Marc Morano, publisher of Climate Depotsays, “COP 28 is shaping up to be a doubling down on the green agenda despite the massive failure on a grand global scale.”

These conferences have no effect on climate. They have sparked little significant change in energy consumption. People who have to live with these agendas are starting to push back. Three thousand U.S. auto dealers are asking President Biden to let up on his aggressive electric vehicle push. EV’s are piling up on dealers’ lots. They’re losing money on every EV sold.

Wall Street Journalcolumnist Gerard Baker observes God’s “wicked sense of humor” in that, on their way to the summit, “members of the planetary emergency rescue elite” ran into the early arrival of winter — a facet of the climate they could not control. They were stranded in Munich, where a snowstorm dumped 17 inches on the ground and forced cancellation of most outbound flights.

The private jets and snowbound adventures of attendees is just the beginning of their hypocrisy.

That so much time and money is spent on these conferences would be laughable if the climate mandates were not so damaging.

The Hillpoints out that U.S. climate envoy John Kerry has said, “There shouldn’t be any more coal power plants permitted anywhere in the world.” And yet he’s pushing what Gerard Baker describes as “some grand new partnership with China, which ”is becoming one giant coal-fired power station.”

A Bloombergreport predicts that “developed nations will be told to curb their excessive appetite for meat.” A UN report for mayors recommended a limit of three new clothing items per person per year by 2030 to fight climate change.

Apparently, climate bureaucrats are not content with the destruction of the American auto industry.

The Politics of Lies Regarding Energy and Climate Change

2,405 views

Jul 29, 2022

https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions

shad net bk

Over the past two decades, the American media landscape has been transformed. At the turn of the last century, a hundred-year-old news canon still reigned supreme: professional journalism from wire services such as the Associated Press and leading newspapers set a national news agenda. Magazines, broadcasters, and local newspapers added their own reporting, but paid close attention to the national template. The formula worked: the late 20th century was the Golden Age of the journalism business. Professional news organizations played a powerful role in society, and ad-rich newspapers and broadcasters made record profits.

That all changed in the early 2000’s, when the new digital platforms — including Google, Facebook, and Craigslist — challenged that structure and blew up its business model. Journalism’s mainstays, lucrative display and classified advertising, migrated online with the advantage of reaching targeted consumers. Audiences who had been told “content wants to be free” balked at the paywalls that compensated journalists to report and editors to vet their work.

As a result, between 2000 and 2020, network news divisions closed scores of foreign and national bureaus, and one in five US newspapers failed. Over a thousand counties, most of them rural, were left with no newspaper at all.

But nature abhors a vacuum, and as professional journalism disappeared from thousands of communities, new media models stood ready to take its place. The Radical Right’s media ecosystem was built on previous decades of media development through religious broadcasting and political direct mail. They benefited not just from the news deserts, they also combined with the opportunities presented by new media technologies. These would mushroom into an entire ecosystem of religious fundamentalist radio programs and podcasts, many of them disguised as “news programs,” as well as countless digital platforms and social media initiatives that have been feeding a toxic diet of political propaganda and COVID misinformation to their audiences in recent years.

To understand this ecosystem, it’s useful to explore its roots. Many of these can be traced to a shadowy organization called the Council for National Policy, founded in 1981 in the wake of Reagan’s election. Its founding fathers were strategist Paul Weyrich, networker Morton Blackwell, and mass marketer Richard Viguerie.

The architects of the CNP’s goals were stunningly ambitious: to dominate the United States, and reshape the state as a white fundamentalist institution. They honed their methods with a series of institutional takeovers, beginning with the Southern Baptist Convention, where moderates were ruthlessly purged and hardliners were installed in positions of power. Next in line was the traditional Republican Party. Over the next four years, the CNP leadership would bully moderate Republicans and target the recalcitrant, to the point of supporting their opponents. Once the way was cleared, they would propel CNP protégés into positions of power and influence.

The architects of the Radical Right studied the art of the “soft coup d’etat” – not just to take over the Republican Party, but to weaken various public institutions that challenged their “Biblical values.” These included public schools that taught evolution, universities that advanced climate science, and businesses that supported equal rights for the LGBT community.

They also disapproved of the professional news media, which seemed to bear every trait they spurned: urban, liberal, and more secular by the minute.¹(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote1sym) They resolved to break its hold on the nation’s psyche.

On the eve of the Reagan era, this goal seemed unlikely. The prestige of American journalism was at its apex, after journalists brought down a President with the Watergate investigation, and challenged a war with the Pentagon Papers.

James Squires summarized the role of the press in American history in his 1993 book “Read All About It! The Corporate Takeover of American Newspapers.” His assessment is worth quoting at length:

It fell to the press to stir the colonies to revolution in the first place. A hundred years later, it was the newspaper voices of abolition that ultimately propelled the nation to the twin brinks of destruction and greatness over the slavery question – the Civil War. Another century later, it was dramatic press accounts of oppression in the South that produced desegregation across the land, as well as a public rebuke of the war in Vietnam.

Squires had come to praise journalism, not to bury it. But his paean inadvertently listed the original sins of American journalism as they were perceived by the fundamentalists. The Southern Baptist Convention had been established in defense of slavery; it was the meddling Northern press that fanned the flames of abolition. A century later, they thought the segregated South was doing fine until Northern newspapermen arrived to tell them it wasn’t. (One frequently cited turning point was the arrival of Harrison Salisbury from the New York Times to cover the Birmingham protests, which ignited a national debate on the Civil Rights movement.²(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote2sym))

Squires continued:

Between 1960 and 1974, the press played a vital role in an unprecedented empowerment of the citizenry—the extension of participatory rights to minorities in new civil rights legislation and a similar enhancement of the roles of women and youth by the feminist and peace movements. In such a system, it is the reporting of unfettered truth about how things are and ideas of how they might be made better that motivates a citizenry to act and educates it to courses of action. People cannot govern what they cannot see. And whatever its imperfections, the unquestioned purpose of the old business of journalism was to provide America with an accurate reflection of itself and the understanding necessary to preserve freedom.³(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote3sym)

The 1946 Hutchins Commission report defined news as “a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning.” Here Squires was paying homage to the concept of fact-based reporting.But the CNP’s Morton Blackwell stressed that “being right” was less important than winning.⁴(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote4sym) The power and influence of the national media were mighty, and the fundamentalist challenge might have come to naught – if the “old business of journalism” had not decayed from within.

Modern American journalism is a surprisingly recent phenomenon. Nineteenth century newspapers were generally openly partisan party organs (as reflected by the names like the “Arkansas Democrat-Gazette” and the “Waterbury Republican”). In the Civil War, Confederate reports were often written by officers who exaggerated their victories; many Northern correspondents moonlighted working for the government.⁵(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote5sym)

Professional journalism, along with journalism schools, associations and prizes to uphold its vales, evolved over the next century. Nonetheless, while American journalists benefited from an usual degree of political freedom and legal protection, their outlets were still answerable to business interests and advertising revenues. The twentieth century brought massive growth in the newspaper and magazine industries, and the birth of broadcasting; media companies founded and run by entrepreneurs – in Squires’ words, “men of wealth, power, politics and eccentricity.”⁶(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote6sym)

The Second World War served as a great unifier, as the press became an important component of the war effort. Broadcasters expanded their news divisions as a public service, exempting them from the need to turn a profit, and reaped national prestige in return. The spirit of public service lingered. In 1962 William Paley told CBS correspondents, “You guys cover the news; I’ve got Jack Benny to make money for me.”⁷(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote7sym) News organizations proliferated across the country, most with local ownership. In 1940 there were 1878 newspapers in the US; as of 1946 there were a dozen large magazine companies and competing newspapers in 117 American cities.⁸(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote8sym)

Metropolitan dailies assumed an outsized role. If the New York Times ran with a major story, other media had to follow suit. If it passed on it, other outlets were less likely to follow up. The perspective of midtown Manhattan could be radically different than other parts of the country, and no matter how diligently news organizations pursued fact-based reporting, they could lose sight of their own subjectivity.

Print and broadcast journalism continued to grow in influence and revenue. Newspaper penetration peaked between roughly 1970 and 1990, when the ratio of circulation to American households approached 1:1.⁹(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote9sym) Network news, launched in the 1940’s, reached an apex around the same time, and the evening news expanded from fifteen minutes to half an hour in the early 1960’s. By 1980, 75 percent of American households were tuned to network news programs over the dinner hour.¹⁰(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote10sym)

But this news ecosystem (as some journalism professors called it) was already in trouble. Newspapers were advertising-rich, producing returns of 10-20 percent, outstripping most investments in the manufacturing sector.¹¹(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote11sym) But family-owned newspapers paid a price for their success; when the patriarch died, their descendants faced inheritance taxes of up to 70 percent, prompting many to cash out by selling their papers to corporations. Family owners were answerable to their communities and their peers, but corporations responded to shareholders who were more interested in quarterly earnings than Pulitzer prizes. By the early 2000’s, the new news business was implementing massive cost-saving measures: firing thousands of reporters; slashing circulations in under-served communities with commercially unattractive demographics; refusing to invest in the vital new technologies that were transforming the culture. The new corporate owners squeezed every last penny from their newspapers, in many cases using their revenues to float their debt in other divisions.

The result was devastating. Local voices were silenced, local populations abandoned. Ownership of the newspapers was increasingly concentrated. By 1990, just fourteen companies controlled half of the 1,600 daily papers, and the concentration of ownership would increase.¹²(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote12sym)

Newspapers were losing ground to television, but network news divisions were also troubled. Over the late 20th century the networks were acquired by increasingly diversified corporations. CBS’s Viacom, NBC’s General Electric and ABC’s Disney saw no need to subsidize news divisions and directed them to turn a profit like other divisions. Television news reporting slid into softer stories, shorter soundbites, more reporting tied to entertainment, sensationalism, and human interest. Over the next few decades, the management closed both international and domestic bureaus and laid off legions of reporters. Cable and public broadcasting filled some of the information gaps, but cable channels tended to emphasize opinion, debate, and sensationalism over traditional reporting and cultivated like-minded niche audiences. Public television was worthy but chronically underfunded.

Over the decades the American appetite for news declined, especially among younger people. For much of the 20th century the broader American public had largely been working off the same page, relying on the network evening news and newspapers that followed the wires and the New York Times’ lead, on major national and international stories, but that accord weakened under economic pressure. The worst was yet to come.

The digital revolution was gathering steam.News organizations warily adopted the use of email and online search functions, but print outlets were fatally slow to understand how the upheaval would affect their business model and innovate in response. Display and classified advertising made up their core income; subscriptions were a minimal source of revenue.

In 1995 a newcomer to San Francisco named Craig Newmark launched a digital service that would turn into Craigslist. It took a few years for the impact to hit, but then it was catastrophic. Newspaper advertising revenues, which peaked from 2000, to 2005, utterly collapsed. More digital assaults were underway. Over the 1990’s digital entrepreneurs experimented with advertising approaches that took advantage of their ability to direct advertising to the users most likely to respond. The public moved online, and digital advertising was waiting for them: on their searches, in their emails, on their phones.

Derek Thompson described the collapse in the Atlantic: “Between 2000 and 2015, print newspaper advertising revenue fell from about $60 billion to about $20 billion, wiping out the gains of the previous 50 years.”¹³(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote13sym)

In 2013, the struggling Washington Post would be sold to Jeff Bezos for $250 million, which would cover a middling superyacht. In 2016 the Tampa Tribune went for a paltry $9.5 million, the same price that was paid for a racehorse named Songbird the following year. The paper was subsumed into its rival, the Tampa Bay Times. Since 2004, almost 1,800 US newspapers disappeared altogether, and hundreds of communities became “news deserts” without a single local news organization. These were disproportionately aging communities of lower-income residents without college educations.¹⁴(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote14sym)

The classified and display advertising that had paid journalists’ salaries migrated online. The erratic business model that underwrote professional reporting did not. By 2018, Forbes estimated the worth of Craiglist had grown to nearly $4 billion.¹⁵(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote15sym) It was fairly easy to migrate news content online, and make it easier to update, navigate and personalize. But digital ads sold for a tiny fraction of print ads, and once readers got used to free online content, it was hard to build revenues from paid subscriptions.

The catastrophe was less visible from the Boston-Washington corridor, where the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post built online readerships and began to transition towards a new digital business model – even if the future was far from secure. The rest of the country’s newspaper culture suffered a colony collapse. One of the most significant casualties was statehouse reporting, the traditional purview of mid-sized newspapers in Middle America. Pew Research reported that between 2003 and 2014, the number of full-time statehouse reporters dropped 35 percent.¹⁶(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote16sym) The press corps in many statehouses dwindled, allowing state lawmakers to go about rewriting laws with less scrutiny.

All of this must have been music to the ears of the Council for National Policy. The ongoing disruption of the traditional news industry created a vacuum, and they were systematically building a stable of media partners prepared to fill it. The regulatory environment was working in their favor.

The gutting of the Fairness Doctrine had opened the door for the Salem communications empire, originally founded as a radio operation by fundamentalist broadcasters Stuart Epperson and Edward Atsinger III. Salem and other CNP media partners produced highly politicized one-sided broadcasts. CNP member Donald Wildmon founded American Family Radio in 1991; it would expand into a network of almost 200 stations in 35 states. American Family Radio developed three different programming streams designed for its various markets: AFR Talk, AFR Hybrid, and Urban Family Talk, which employed an African-American staff to target an African-American audience. All three adhered to the statement of faith:

The American Family Association believes that God has communicated absolute truth to mankind, and that all people are subject to the authority of God’s Word at all times. Therefore AFA believes that a culture based on biblical truth best serves the well-being of our nation and our families, in accordance. with the vision of our founding documents…

The organization’s action statement spurred followers to “promote virtue by upholding in culture that which is right, true and good according to Scripture.” Its overtly political goal was to “motivate people to take a stand on cultural and moral issues at the local, state, and national levels.”¹⁷(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote17sym)

Another CNP radio partner was the Bott Radio Network, founded in 1962 by Dick Bott, a former child evangelist, and his wife Sherley. Bott quickly recognized the potential of commercial religious broadcasting, and his radio network grew to over 100 stations in fifteen states, heavily concentrated in the Bible Belt.¹⁸(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote18sym) States like Kansas and Missouri had plenty of news deserts without a daily newspaper, but they were blanketed byBott radio signals carrying the programs of CNP stalwarts like James Dobson and Gary Bauer.¹⁹(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote19sym)

Together, Salem’s Epperson and Atsinger, American Family Radio’s Donald Wildmon, and Bott Radio’s Dick Bott – all members of the CNP – built overlapping radio empires that were all but invisible to the urban northeast. But it was hard to drive very far across the Plains without running into their signals and their increasingly virulent rhetoric.

Wildmon’s American Family Radio network, for example, produced programs with titles like “Infanticide Adopted by Democrats” and “Homosexuality is the Dividing Line Between Light and Darkness.”²⁰(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote20sym) One program asked how Christians should respond to a Muslim call to prayer, and answered “They should take the call to prayer as a call to arms, to go to war in the Spirit against the demon-god Allah and the spiritual deception of Islam.”²¹(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote21sym)

The Salem Radio Network was especially aggressive in acquiring new stations.Atsinger and Epperson developed a successful strategy of purchasing leveraged stations in urban markets. But they ran into an obstacle with the Federal Communications Commission, which prohibited a broadcaster from owning too many stations in one market. Epperson and Atsinger—by now members of the CNP Board of Governors– joined other broadcasters to lobby against the regulations; Salem contributed $74,000 to key legislators. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was written by industry lobbyists, promoted by Newt Gingrich, and signed into law by Bill Clinton.²²(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote22sym) It eased the ownership regulations to the benefit of Salem and other large companies. Salem went on an acquisition binge and created a system of station “clusters” to cut costs.

In 1999 Forbes magazine reported that Salem Communications (as it was now called) owned 57 stations. This made it the eighth largest broadcaster and the largest religious broadcaster in the country, with at least one station in 19 of biggest 25 markets. “Christian radio” had become the third most popular format in the US. (following country music and talk). ²³(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote23sym)

In July 1999 Salem issued an initial public offering. The company was booming. It still reaped half of its revenue – nearly $78 million — from the sale of block programming, but advertising accounted for a third of its revenues, and it was growing. The IPO’s influx of capital allowed the company to acquire more stations.^ ^²⁴(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote24sym)

Salem’s reach extended beyond religious programming, it also rode the wave of conservative talk radio. Local radio stations, like hometown newspapers, had traditionally been owned by – and answerable to — members of the community. In the wake of deregulation, over a quarter of the nation’s radio stations were sold, many passing from local to corporate owners, while new satellite technology facilitated national programming.

Eventually the Salem, Bott, and American Family Radio empires – all owned and operated by members of the CNP – extended to at least forty-six states. (As of January 2019, they owned stations in every state except Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Alaska.) Their programming, including political content produced by CNP members, was utilized by other radio networks, including the Christian Satellite Network and Family Life Radio. In combination with their affiliates, the CNP radio broadcasters covered the entire nation; California and Texas were blanked by all three. ABC, NBC, and CBS began to dump their radio stations, especially in small and mid-sized markets, and their news programs disappeared. The Great American News Desert grew drier by the year.

National Public Radio, founded in 1970, did much to fill in the gap. As it grew to over 1,000 member stations, NPR offered traditional journalism and newscasts that presented multiple perspectives on public issues. Listeners could turn to NPR for detailed, thoughtful interviews with leaders from the leading political parties. Nonetheless, many conservatives in Middle America distrusted NPR as a smugly liberal voice with little interest in their issues, a maddening focus on identity politics, and a propensity to promote the Democrats’ agenda.

NPR tilted urban and coastal for obvious reasons. Its stations, its listeners – and its listener contributions – were concentrated in urban areas, suburbs and college towns. NPR’s weekly listenership would reach 28.5 million by 2017 – but that was still less than ten percent of the national population. Public broadcasting was founded with federal support, but the ongoing assault by Republican administrations whittled that down to almost nothing over the years. NPR responded by basing its budgets on listener contributions. But that meant that urban NPR stations—especially powerhouse stations in New York, Washington and San Francisco— had outsized budgets and programming capacity. Stations in conservative, rural areas – the news deserts that needed them most – got by on a fraction of the funding, with part-time employees and spotty local coverage.

Oklahoma, for example, has six NPR stations, mostly in cities and college towns, while Bott and American Family Radio have a combined twenty stations blanketing the state.²⁵(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote25sym) And radio matters: it remains an important part of daily life for millions of Americans, whether in the home, the workplace, or the car.²⁶(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote26sym)

Salem Communications developed three principle formats for its stations: Christian (fundamentalist) talk, contemporary Christian music, and conservative news and talk. and blocks of religious programming (AM). ²⁷(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote27sym) The company created a syndication service that distributed talk programs and a 24-hour news service to over 2,000 affiliates nationwide. It billed its programs as “Christian Radio’s Definitive Source for News” that “breaks the ivory tower approach of the traditional networks.”²⁸(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote28sym) This was not news about Christianity, it was current events filtered through a highly partisan fundamentalist lens. Salem’s “Christian journalism” was a new genre, unhampered by professional practices of multi-sourced reporting, fact-checking, and corrections.

The Salem, Bott and American Family Radio networks, all run by members of the CNP, bypassed the crisis in business models that afflicted the rest of the industry, buoyed by blocks of airtime sold to fundamentalist churches and advertising sold to CNP affiliates such as the Family Research Council.

Further revenues resulted from the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA, pronounced D-shay), promoted by Senator Orrin Hatch. Hatch and his family had extensive involvement in the nutritional supplements industry, which is based in Hatch’s home state of Utah. DSHEA prevented the FDA from regulating harmful or fraudulent supplements before they hit the market. The Los Angeles Times concluded, “The harvest [of DSHEA] has been a public health disaster.”²⁹(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote29sym) The elderly were especially easy marks. Bott and American Family Radio run ads for products such as “vitamin cures” for impotence and organizations such as the Institute for Creation Research, which argues “Birds didn’t evolve from dinosaurs because they can fly.”³⁰(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote30sym) Salem’s online outlet RedState rented its email lists to the Health Sciences Institute, which used it to promote a product that supposedly “vaporizes cancer in six weeks.”³¹(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote31sym)

Salem’s stations took a regional approach. In Irving, Texas, “The Word 100.7 FM” was overtly religious. Focus on the Family and related programming offered advice from a fundamentalist perspective for listeners’ daily problems of marriage infidelity, alcoholism, and depression, and condemned abortion and homosexuality. CNP member and attorney Jay Sekulow’s programs expounded on policy issues from a fundamentalist perspective.

Beyond the South, Salem’s “conservative news and talk” format built on the success of talk radio’s secular “shock jocks” like Rush Limbaugh, promoting hosts such as Hugh Hewitt, Sean Hannity, and the ubiquitous Sekulow. Salem’s Detroit station, “The Patriot WDCK,” focused on the anxieties of the Rust Belt: “politics, pop culture, the war on terror, education, immigration, and much more.”³²(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote32sym)

Atsinger and Epperson expanded their political footprint along with their radio empire. In 2005 journalist Adam Piore published a detailed history of Salem’s strategy called “A Higher Frequency” in Mother Jones magazine. Piore reported that between 1998 and 2004, they and their company offered $423,000 in federal campaign contributions, 96 percent of it to Republicans. This rendered them the sixth largest donor in the industry.³³(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote33sym)In 2000 Atsinger, Epperson, and a colleague donated $780,000 towards a California state ballot initiative to oppose gay marriage.

Conservative and fundamentalist talk radio served as both the training grounds and meeting place for a new generation of leadership. One beneficiary was a young Indiana lawyer named Mike Pence. Pence, a Catholic who converted to fundamentalist Christianity in college, made two unsuccessful runs for a Congressional seat in 1988 and 1990. In 1991 he accepted a position as president of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation. This was the Indiana affiliate of the State Policy Network, whose members were described as a “mini-Heritage Foundation in each state,” concentrating on influencing state legislation. The State Policy Network funds its state affiliates, and is heavily funded by the Charles Koch Foundation and the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, whose major backers include the Koch brothers and the CNP’s DeVos family.³⁴(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote34sym)

From 1994 to 1999, Pence worked as a host for conservative radio programs, many of them syndicated across the state. Pence used the job to hone his public speaking skills, build a following and promote his image as a self-described “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.” His folksy baritone was well-suited for radio and his youthful face, prematurely white hair and “aw-shucks” manner sold him as a “safe” baby-boomer who respected his elders and drank milk for a nightcap.But he was a stalwart opponent to abortion, Planned Parenthood, and same-sex marriage.³⁵(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote35sym) His mild exterior belied a bigoted streak. While he was president of the Indiana Policy Review, it published an article called “Military Necessity and Homosexuality” stating, “The homosexuals are not as a group able-bodied. They are known to carry extremely high rates of disease brought on because of the nature of their sexual practices and the promiscuity which is a hallmark of their lifestyle.”³⁶(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote36sym)

In 1998 Pence invited a 35-year-old Louisiana state legislator named Tony Perkins to appear on his radio show.³⁷(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote37sym) Perkins had come to Indianapolis to testify before the state legislature on the “covenant marriage “ law he had drafted in Louisiana, which created a voluntary marriage contract restricting the right to divorce. Like Pence, Perkins was a fierce opponent of gay marriage and abortion. He was also one of nine Louisianans who belonged to the Council on National Policy.³⁸(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote38sym)

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Perkins and Pence shared a talent for broadcasting and a thirst for power, though it wasn’t initially clear who would pursue each path. In 2000 Pence ran for Congress again, and this time he won. His radio expertise made him a hot commodity among Republicans on Capitol Hill, and his reactionary position on social issues won him favor with the Council for National Policy.

In 2003, 14 fundamentalists, including CNP stalwarts Paul Weyrich, Donald Wildmon, Gary Bauer, Richard Bott and James Dobson, regrouped in Arlington, Virginia. Worried they were losing ground, the group focused on three issues: abortion, gay marriage and gun rights. Polling showed that the topic where they could get the most traction was same-sex marriage.³⁹(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote39sym)

James Dobson, nearing 70, was slowing down, and he was ready to bring in some new blood. The landscape had changed. The Family Research Council’s new visibility as a Washington lobbying force could undermine the non-profit status of Focus on the Family’s multi-million-dollar operations. In 1992 he separated the two organizations again, creating an independent board that shared three members, including Dobson himself.⁴⁰(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote40sym)

To direct the new FRC in 2003, he turned to Mike Pence’s friend from Louisiana, Tony Perkins: fresh-faced and honey-voiced at 40, with a Southern variant of Pence’s “aw-shucks” manner. Perkins left his tiny hometown of Cleveland, Oklahoma to serve in the Marine Corps. He moved to Baton Rouge, where he joined the police force, then got a job reporting for the television station run by Woody Jenkins, the founding executive director of the CNP. Along the way he attended Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University (though he didn’t graduate until he was nearly 30).

In 1995 Perkins ran successfully for the Louisiana state legislature and was reelected four years later. The CNP’s Richard Viguerie was one of his fundraisers.⁴¹(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote41sym) Perkins also managed the unsuccessful Senate campaign of former CNP director Woody Jenkins. There were bumps along the way. A 1999 federal investigation revealed that Perkins, on behalf of the Jenkins campaign, had contracted the services of a media company partially owned by Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke. Perkins later reported that he was “profoundly grieved” to learn of the association.⁴²(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote42sym) In 2001 Perkins gave a speech to the Baton Rouge chapter of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens (sometimes called the “Uptown Klan”).⁴³(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote43sym) Dobson was unconcerned by the negative press. Such events set a pattern that would be played out in the future. The Council for National Policy and its affiliates would be revealed to associate with unsavory characters, and they would be shocked that such nice folk could harbor such nasty ideology.

As soon as Perkins was hired by the Family Research Council, he launched a new radio program, broadcast on Bott Radio and the American Family Radio network. In the past, the Family Research Council had tried to maintain good relations with Democrats, but “Washington Watch” was unabashedly political, celebrating conservative Republicans and excoriating their Democratic opponents. For all practical purposes, the CNP had anointed the Family Research Council as its public lobbying and organizational front.

Nonetheless, the IRS assigned tax-exempt, 501(c)3 status to both the Family Research Council and American Family Radio—in keeping with the FRC’s stated mission to advance “faith, family and freedom in government and culture from a Christian worldview,” and the American Family Radio’s calling as an “educational organization” devoted to “spiritual development.”⁴⁴(https://flux.community/anne-nelson/2021/05/disinformation-factory-how-christian-fundamentalist-media-brainwash-millions#sdendnote44sym)

:{In recent years, the CNP media affiliates have continued to modernize and proliferate. It’s difficult to say exactly how many there are, or to track all the platforms where they appear. Salem Media, rebranded as the Salem Media Group, has acquired various digital platforms, including TownHall, RedState, and PJ Media.

The Daily Caller, co-founded by CNP member Neil Patel and Tucker Carlson, lists Clarence Thomas’s wife Virginia (another CNP member) as a “special correspondent,” and Tony Perkins makes frequent appearances on its video channel “American Voices.”

CNSNews (originally the Cybercast News Service) was founded by CNP executive committee member Brent Bozell III in 1998 as a division of his Media Research Center. Like many of the other organizations mentioned, MRC is designated a tax-exempt “non-partisan” 501(c)3 organization, despite its unrelenting stream of partisan content.

The movement has been focusing on developing social media platforms, especially since Donald Trump was banned from Twitter in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot. On May 14 the Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump may launch his own platform on July 4, although it’s unclear what form it might take.Tony Perkins has endorsed a relatively new social media platform called Gab, which has been widely reported for providing a haven for QAnon supporters and other extremists.

Other contenders, such as Parler and Frank (launched by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell) also vie for attention. The CNP has tried to develop its own “celebrity spokespersons” to cultivate specific target audiences, such as CNP member Charlie Kirk, who has his own YouTube channel and a radio program on Salem Media targeting youth. CNP member Alveda King (MLK’s niece) is prominently featured on Salem’s TownHall as an African-American opponent to HR1 and voting rights initiatives.

In the distorted mirror of this media system, the violent storming of the Capitol was a “tourist event,” and the illegal efforts to overturn the electoral results were exercises in “election integrity. Tragically, these media initiatives have not limited themselves to political misinformation; they have also been disseminating deadly misinformation about Covid for over a year, and sowing manufactured doubt about the safety of vaccines.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. The battle against Covid may have peaked, but millions of Americans are still vulnerable. The 2022 midterms will determine the fate of the House and the Senate, and in many ways, the future of the nation. These information systems create a growing chasm in America. Thanks in large part to their efforts, Americans are more sharply divided than they have been in our lifetimes — and as Abraham Lincoln warned, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Endnotes

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/david-brody-marjorie-taylor-greene/

cbn defends holo comment

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/did-roger-stone-really-find-jesus

nancy leT

Regardless of what you think about the allegation that Roger Stone was the Trump campaign emissary to Wikileaks, no one would ever claim that he is anything but a despicable person. As the editors of the National Review wrote, “No one would think of letting Roger Stone anywhere near any serious responsibility, and even the Trump campaign in 2016 had the sense to keep him at arm’s length.”

In case you aren’t familiar with his past, I suggest watching the documentary Get Me Roger Stone, which is available on Netflix.

But now all of the sudden, Stone has found Jesus. Apparently while awaiting sentencing on his conviction for lying to investigators and witness tampering, he attended a Franklin Graham rally and became a Christian. After Trump commuted his sentence, Stone made an appearance on the Christian Broadcast Network and was interviewed by David Brody.

That was good enough for court evangelical Ralph Reed, who tweeted, “I am grateful Roger Stone found faith in Christ and is free. His prosecution was an abuse of power. He should never have been charged.”

I am reminded of what theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about cheap grace.

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost!

Roger Stone (and Donald Trump) are perfect examples of how a belief in cheap grace sets white evangelical Christians up to be easy prey for con men (and women). All someone has to do is claim to have accepted Jesus as their savior and nothing else is required. Someone like Roger Stone is welcomed into the fold without ever having to name any of the despicable things they’ve done, much less be held accountable. They don’t have to commit to changing their ways or even say that they’ll try to be a better person.

At one point during his interview with Brody, Stone suggests that he’s already changed because he isn’t interested in seeking vengeance against those who prosecuted and convicted him. That was right before he called them “satanic.”

I am personally someone who believes in redemption. But a spiritual encounter with God would, by nature, lead to a period of soul-searching, self-reflection, prayer, and humility—not an interview on national television that provides the opportunity to attack one’s opponents. Even Richard Nixon’s hatchet man, Charles Colson, had the good sense to devote himself to prison ministry after claiming to have found Jesus.

It is not my job to judge the state of Roger Stone’s soul. But I don’t ever want to be part of a religion that welcomes him with open arms—no questions asked.

320 rww

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/anti-muslim-activist-frank-gaffney-is-a-jerk-national-religious-broadcasters-discover/

gaffney energizer bunny of anti-commie islamophobia?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/ag-barr-and-betsy-devos-rail-against-secularism-and-a-culture-of-disbelief-at-religious-broadcasters-convention/

no lnx

AG Barr and Betsy DeVos rail against secularism and a ‘culture of disbelief’ at religious broadcasters convention

Image via Screengrab.

Written by Alex Henderson February 27, 2020

President Donald Trump views his alliance with the Christian right as essential to his 2020 campaign, and two Trump loyalists — Attorney General William Barr and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — were clearly pandering to religious conservatives this week during a speech at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, which is being held in Nashville, Tennessee and continues through this Friday, February 28.

Barr’s speech was sponsored by the nonprofit group Save the Persecuted Christians, which is headed by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. — a far-right conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe who has claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to infiltrate the U.S. government and impose sharia law. Before Barr spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, Gaffney stressed that he was not sponsoring a panel that would be held later and feature attorney Asma Uddin (who he smeared as a “sharia supremacist”).

During his speech, Barr (who is a Catholic, not a Protestant evangelical) railed against secularism in the United States — telling the crowd, “While most everyone agrees that we must have separation of church and state, this does not require that we drive religion from the public square and affirmatively use government power to promote a culture of disbelief.”

Barr also made the tired claim that liberals and progressives want to encourage dependency on the government — even though, truth to be told, there is a difference between giving someone a hand up (as Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren recommend) and giving someone a handout.

“The tacit goal of this project is to convert all of us into 25-year-olds living in the government’s basement,focusing our energies on obtaining a larger allowance rather than getting a job, and moving out and taking responsibility for ourselves,” Barr told the crowd.

DeVos (the sister of Blackwater mercenary Erik Prince) spoke at the convention earlier in the day and called for more government support for religious schools. Attorney Jay Sekulow, who was part of Trump’s defense team during his impeachment trial before the U.S. Senate, was scheduled to appear on the same panel as DeVos but had to cancel his appearance due to illness.

ref 1

The Christianization of U.S. Foreign Policy

Behind President Trump's Twitter theatrics, there's a growing theme to American diplomacy.

By KATHRYN JOYCE

March 25, 2019

https://newrepublic.com/article/153387/christianization-us-foreign-policy

Last Thursday, Donald Trump announced, via Twitter, a radical shift in foreign policy, saying it was time to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied territory of Golan Heights, seized from Syria in 1981. As international headlines quickly pointed out, the tweet contradicted both international law and a UN resolution; seemed a transparent gift to embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just weeks before he faces re-election amid a corruption scandal; and cheered Israeli conservatives hoping to have Israeli control of the West Bank recognized as well. Upon hearing the news, NBC reported, Netanyahu hugged U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was visiting Israel as part of a five-day tour of the Middle East. Less discussed was the way in which the tweet capped off a week showcasing the Trump administration’s favored relationship with American evangelicals.

MOST POPULAR

The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), among Pompeo’s traveling press team, sat down with the secretary in Jerusalem, and breathlessly reported something quite different from the mainstream press’s legalistic coverage: that Trump might just be “a modern-day Esther, poised to defend Israel and save the Jewish people.”

To convince U.S. evangelicals to overlook Trump’s personal failings, the president has previously been compared to Persian King Cyrus, a nonbeliever in the Bible who nonetheless became an instrument for fulfilling God’s will, conquering Babylon and allowing Jews to return to Israel. The comparison has also resonated elsewhere: Last March, an Israeli organization minted a coin pairing images of Cyrus and Trump, while Netanyahu underscored the comparison in a Washington, D.C., speech thanking Trump for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

Pompeo’s statement elevated the stakes, referring to the biblical story of Queen Esther, who used her beauty and wiles to prevent a massacre of Persian Jews—a feat commemorated in the annual Jewish holiday of Purim, also celebrated last Thursday. Netanyahu, too, declared Trump’s tweet “a miracle of Purim.”

Republicans have ventured the comparison before, with both Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. The story of Esther, journalist Sarah Posner has observed, has long been used by Christian Zionists—evangelicals who believe the return of Christ depends on an apocalyptic scenario in which Jews return to Israel, and convert to Christianity—to argue for an invasion of Iran.

For Trump, it’s a particularly audacious comparison. “Esther’s story is that of a young Jewish woman in the ‘harem’ of the Persian king, and through her wit, grace, and charm ends up as queen—and able to avert the bloodlust of an antisemitic minister,” Steven Gardiner, an anthropologist and senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, wrote to me via email. “In other words, Esther was a woman placed in the terrifying and untenable position of sexual servitude, but nonetheless managed to save her people. No one less resembles that position than Donald Trump.

Much ink has already been spilled over the bargain Christian leaders in the United States made regarding Trump, backing a candidate with a highly questionable personal life in exchange for Supreme Court seats. Less noticed is how the Trump administration, particularly when it comes to foreign policy under the deeply religious supervision of Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence, continually pitches itself to the Christian Right.

Last Monday, just before his departure to the Middle East, Secretary Pompeo held a press call about international religious freedom. Domestically, the Trump administration has chiefly interpreted religious freedom as a matter of exemptions to laws protecting LGBTQ people and women’s healthcare, or efforts to lift restrictions on churches’ political campaigning. Internationally, religious freedom has meant a laser-like focus on Christian persecution, with scant attention to the plight of any other religious minorities: The October release of North Carolina pastor Andrew Brunson, detained for two years in Turkey on terrorism charges, was one high-profile victory.

Monday’s call excluded the entire State Department press corps, restricting participation to a small group of “faith-based” media outlets. When an invitation was accidentally sent to a member of the mainstream press and then rescinded, bringing the exclusive briefing to light, the department doubled down, refusing to provide a transcript of the call or a list of its participants, and arguing that, as a roundtable discussion targeted at “audience-specific media,” it wasn’t subject to normal transparency practices.

Journalists as well as former State Department spokesperson John Kirby were appalled. “These officials are public servants,” Kirby told CNN. “What they say—in its entirety—is inherently of public interest.” Particularly, he added, on a topic as “universally relevant as religious freedom in the Middle East.”

One of the media organizations on the call, Religion News Service (not itself a faith-based publication, but a secular outlet that covers the religion beat), reported a partial list of other participants, including the Jewish wire service Jewish Telegraphic Agency; the center-right Jewish magazine Algemeiner; the evangelical World Magazine; and two Catholic publications, Americamagazine and the newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City.

Notably missing from this line-up were any Muslim media organizations, remarkable given the call’s reported inclusion of the administration’s soon-to-be-released Israel-Palestine peace plan.

Monday’s call wasn’t the first time that Pompeo’s department has privileged faith-based media over mainstream reporters. Last July, just ahead of the department’s first-ever “ministerial for international religious freedom,” as New York Times religion reporter Elizabeth Dias noted on Twitter, Pompeo had sit-down interviews with four evangelical news outlets, including the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), before a press conference call where evangelical publications World Magazine and Christianity Today were picked first for questions, and mainstream newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, were only invited to pose questions at the end of the call. And evangelical figures have also had enhanced access to policy decisions. In early March, the administration hosted a meeting with evangelical leaders—including prominent (and deeply controversial) Christian Zionist leaders like Pastor John Hagee—to “hear any concerns and red lines” they might have on a potential Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, according to an Axios source, and to reassure them that any plan would protect Israeli interests.

CBN’s sit-down with Mike Pompeo was only the latest episode in the network’s close relationship with the Trump administration—one that, as Al Jazeera argued last fall, is just as mutually beneficial as the better-known link to Fox & Friends, but is often overlooked as a part of the administration’s effective state media because of the niche audience it targets. CBN’s audience, and its interests, both help explain the administration’s policy moves and may exert influence on them, appealing to a president known for being easily swayed by flattery.

CBN’s stated mission is to ready the U.S. “for the coming of Jesus Christ.” To that end, it focuses heavily on Middle East issues. It airs the weekly program Jerusalem Dateline, and regularly features guests like Joel Rosenberg, the author of a series of Middle East-set evangelical apocalyptic or political thriller novels and a member of Pompeo’s inner circle, who has helped broker interviews between the Secretary and the network. Earlier this month, Rosenberg appeared on CBN to discuss his latest work of fiction, The Persian Gamble, which posits that Iran used U.S. money to buy North Korean nukes. Rosenberg said he’d recently explained the book’s plot to President Trump. “How do you know that’s not happening already?” Trump apparently replied.

The steady undercurrent to CBN’s focus is the Christian Zionist conviction that the return of Christ depends on a specific scenario involving the return of Jews to Israel. It’s a belief that Pompeo seems to share, having told a Kansas church audience in 2015 to keep fighting “until the rapture.”

Even amid an administration stacked with evangelical staffers and advisors, Pompeo stands out. As former CIA director he described the “war on terror” as a holy war and said the U.S. “worshipped other gods and called it multiculturalism.” He now readily tells audiences about how he keeps a Bible open on his State Department desk to remind him of God’s truth. One of the driving motivators of Pompeo’s State Department increasingly seems to be what Gardiner calls “well-documented beliefs in the prophetic necessity of the establishment of a ‘Greater Israel’ in order to usher in the End Times”—hardly a stabilizing central principle in an era of nuclear risk. Meanwhile, holding “separate interviews with religious broadcasters,” Gardiner pointed out, means “reaching the white evangelicals who are the single most unwavering part of the voting base of an embattled president.”

It’s easy to get distracted by the secular spectacle of Trump’s manic Twitter feed, filled with arbitrary bits of outrage or lavish praise, depending on whichever leader has flattered him lately. But as last week showed, better than others, there’s a more disciplined administrative force at work behind the scenes, crafting an intensely ideological foreign policy.

Kathryn Joyce is a contributing editor at The New Republic and author of The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption

https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2019/february/muslim-congresswomans-district-reported-to-be-terrorist-recruitment-capital-of-us

FBI statistics reveal that Minnesota's 5th Congressional District, represented by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), is the terrorism recruitment capital of the United States.

According to the FBI, more Somali American men and boys from this district have joined, or have attempted to join, a foreign terror organization in the last 12 years than any other community in the US.

"Forty-five Somalis left to join the ranks of either the Somalia-based Islamic insurgency al-Shabab, or the Iraq- and Syria-based ISIS combined," Fox News reports.

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'Shame on Her': Muslim Cleric Condemns 'Islamist' Congresswoman for Repeated Anti-Semitic Comments

In 2018, a dozen more Somalis were arrested, accused of planning to leave the US to join ISIS.

Ilhan's district is a very insular ethnic and religious community that has not fully assimilated into American society.

"For over a decade, Islamist terror groups have been able to recruit from Minnesota. This is, in part, because Minnesota has a large Muslim population compared to other parts of the US," Robin Simcox, a terrorism and national security expert at The Heritage Foundation, told Fox News.

Federal authorities say they are "highly concerned" about this district's ties to international terrorism. "We are very conscious that there may still be fertile ground for that, and that is could re-start at any time," one official told Fox.

Recruitment for terrorism usually takes place online where jihadists criticize US counterterrorism policies, like targeted assassinations and drone strikes that sometimes kill innocent civilians. A number of these Somali terrorists have become suicide bombers while others are believed to have died on the battlefield.

Congresswoman Omar has a history of being sympathetic to Somalis terrorists.

She defended six Somalis arrested in 2015 for trying to cross into Mexico in an attempt to join ISIS in Syria. As the case moved forward in 2016, the then-state representative wrote a letter to the trial judge requesting "compassion" and a lighter sentence.

"Such punitive measures not only lack efficacy, they inevitably create an environment in which extremism can flourish, aligning with the presupposition of terrorist recruitment," Omar wrote. "The best deterrent to fanaticism is a system of compassion."

In 2013, Omar said al-Shabab's terror attack on a Kenyan shopping mall that killed nearly 70 people and wounded 200 others, was a reaction to US "involvement in other people's affairs."

https://reason.com/2018/01/03/war-on-terror-minnesota-somali-immigrant/

wow, ways to step up eric boehm sp

AN 719

no lnx

Marco Rubio gets pilloried for spreading a vicious and bogus smear about Ilhan Omar

Written by Cody Fenwick July 25, 2019

Once again, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has become the focus of a vicious right-wing smear, this time based on a deceptively edited video.

The video comes from a February 2018 interview Omar gave to Al Jazeera. In its new form, it was resurfaced by Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), which found its way to the Daily Caller report Molly Prince’s twitter feed, as Vox reported. From there, other right-wing figures picked it up, including, most prominently, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).

Omar’s comments went viral because, in the video, she seemed to be saying people should be afraid of “white men” and said the government should be “profiling, monitoring” them. Rubio indicated that the statement was “racist,” and suggested that the media should “hound ever Democrat to denounce” it, apparently expressing frustration that Republicans were pressed to respond to Trump’s recent racist attacks.

But the video Rubio shared was highly deceptive, and it seems clear it was intentionally edited to mislead viewers about what Omar was saying.

When Prince shared the video, in a tweet picked up by Rubio, she included the caption: “Ilhan Omar contends that Americans ‘should be more fearful of white men.'” While the quoted words are accurate, they’re missing essential context. Omar was having a discussion with reporter Mehdi Hasan about Islamophobia, and Hasan had asked the then-candidate to respond to the idea that Americans might “legitimately” be afraid of Muslims because of “Jihadist terrorism.” So when Omar said Americans should be “more fearful of white men,” she wasn’t speaking in the absolute sense of trying to encourage prejudice against white men. She was correctly pointing out that white men have been more likely to be the perpetrators of terrorism in the United States in recent years.

I am sure the media will now hound every Democrat to denounce this statement as racist. Right? https://t.co/UewkblF8Oo

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) July 25, 2019

And indeed, as Hasan said on Twitter, none other than current FBI Director Christopher Wray made a similar point recently when he said: “A majority of the domestic terrorism cases that we’ve investigated are motivated by some version of what you might call ‘white supremacist violence.'”

The second part of Omar’s comments was even more gratuitously distorted. Here’s the full exchange in question:

HASAN: A lot of conservatives in particular would say that the rise in Islamophobia is the result not of hate, but of fear. And legitimate fear, they say, of quote-unquote “jihadist terrorism” — whether it’s Fort Hood, or San Bernardino, or the recent truck attack in New York. What do you say to them?

OMAR: I would say — our country should be more fearful of white men across our country, because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country. And so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe, Americans safe inside of this country, we should be profiling, monitoring, and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men.

The CBN video cut out the phrase “And so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe, Americans safe inside of this country,” making it seem as though she was seriously suggesting that the U.S. should be “profiling” and “monitoring” white men.

Of course, that’s not what she meant. She meant to illustrate the absurdity of trying to use “fear” to justify policy and how it often leads to discriminatory actions against minorities.

And in fact, the uproar over the deceptively edited video actually proves her point. She was using the example of targeting white men as an example of why these policies would be treated with outrage when the subjects are a majority group, even though the policies are often embraced by the right wing when Muslims face scrutiny.

And that’s exactly what happened with the conservative outrage over the video. Conservatives perceived a threatening position coming from a Muslim woman based on a misinterpretation of the facts — and they overreacted. And yet when Trump makes obviously racist attacks, most of the right bends over backward to give him the benefit of the doubt. Omar is continually facing this racist double standard that makes her a perpetual target of suspicion.

Hasan demanded that Rubio apologize for spreading the smear:

Senator @marcorubio will you delete this tweet and apologize? You’re sharing a selectively-edited video from my show @AJUpFront to make @IlhanMN look bad and increase the number of death threats she already gets. Shame on you. Here’s the un-edited clip:https://t.co/1xX5KMns8N https://t.co/9lOAr67iCX

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 25, 2019

Parker Malloy of Media Matters for America noted that the smear against Omar was a case of history repeating.

This happened with the outrage over Omar saying that American Muslims shouldn’t lose their rights just because some people who share their religion carried out 9/11,” she said. “It was clear what she was saying, but a bad-faith reading got amplified into the public consciousness.”

In a reply to Rubio, she wrote:

Hey, genius, this clip has been selectively edited.

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) July 25, 2019

Others echoed the sentiment:

I am sure you will apologize for falling for a deceptively edited video. Right? https://t.co/Xc8RrbOJva

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) July 25, 2019

A good idea would be for the media to hound every Republican senator who’s circulating a deceptively edited video tweet and ask why they are doing that? https://t.co/GblWB5TAmg

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 25, 2019

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brody_(journalist)

david Brody is an American journalist, and White House Correspondent for the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Brody was born in New Jersey on February 13, 1965,[citation ^needed]^ and grew up in New York City.^[1] He was raised Reform Jewish, but notes neither of his parents were very religious.^[2][3] He converted to Evangelical Christianity in his 20s.^[1]

Brody graduated from Ithaca College (Ithaca, NY) in 1988 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications. He was News Director at ABC affiliate KRDO-TV, Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he won an Emmy Award in 1989.^[4]

In addition to being a frequent panelist on CNN and on NBC's television program Meet The Press, his political blog, The Brody File, is featured on the Christian Broadcasting Network website.

Brody wrote the 2012 book The Teavangelicals: The Inside Story of How the Evangelicals and the Tea Party are Taking Back America.^[5] His book The Faith of Donald J. Trump: A Spiritual Biography, co-authored with Scott Lamb of the Washington Times, was published in early 2018.^[6]

NBC host Chuck Todd blamed Fox News and Roger Ailes for the state of distrust around American media and dinged a Christian broadcaster appearing on "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

“One of the best things going in Donald Trump’s favor — we know this — is the mainstream media,” Christian Broadcasting Network reporter David Brody said. “I hate to say it. I know I’m sitting on a Meet the Press roundtable, but the truth of the matter is 62 percent think the media is biased.”

“The conservative echo chamber created that environment,” Todd interjected. “It has been a tactic and a tool of the Roger Ailes-created echo chamber.”

“So, let’s not pretend it’s not anything other than that,” Todd continued.

“Many Americans distrust the media. It’s not just Republicans," Brody retorted.

“I’m just saying it was a campaign creation, a campaign tactic,” Todd countered. “It’s not based in much fact.”

Watch the segment below:

Recognizing God's Hand in Donald Trump's Election | CBN.com

https://www1.cbn.com/recognizing-gods-hand-donald-trumps-election

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:{For Bible-believing :{Christians:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}:, :{Trump:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: would be the most unlikely candidate anyone ... :{Networks:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: were reporting that polling data showed Clinton's chances of ... “With :{Trump:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}:, what you see on :{television:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: is not what you get behind the scenes.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

CBN TV - President Trump Sat Down with CBN News for an Exclusive ...

www.cbn.com/tv/5302354157001

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CBN TV - The Faith of Donald Trump - CBN.com

www.cbn.com/tv/5734644124001

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Pence Confirms Trump's Christian Faith to - CBN.com

www.cbn.com/tv/5666206603001

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CBN TV - Donald Trump on Religious Freedom - CBN.com

www.cbn.com/tv/4246747370001

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:{The :{Christian Broadcasting Network:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: .... Donald :{Trump:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: on Religious Freedom. Donald :{Trump:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: declares he will be the "greatest representative of the Christians." ...:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

CBN TV - President Trump: 'I will be very angry' if Obamacare Isn't ...

www.cbn.com/tv/5504590118001

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CBN TV - President Trump and Pat Robertson: The Complete Interview

www.cbn.com/tv/5506270955001

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:{The :{Christian Broadcasting Network:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: · The 700 Club .... President :{Trump:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}: and Pat Robertson: The Complete Interview. President ... DONALD :{TRUMP:(style="font-weight:bold;color:#6a6a6a;"):}:: Thank you.:(style="word-wrap:break-word"):}:

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/now-far-right-pundits-are-calling-death-trumps-opponents

While he is notoriously stubborn and self-assured, President Donald Trump is also famous for being susceptible to the power of suggestion.

Trump demonstrates how easily persuadable he is by responding via Twitter to “Fox & Friends" almost every day. His campaign and White House staffers have admitted to this several times, albeit not on the record. But their actions have made clear they believe this: White House chief of staff John Kelly has reportedly prohibited staff members from giving Trump reading materials. More recently, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer asked that presidential aide and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller be kept out of an immigration meeting, lest he shape the president's thinking too much. Even Russian-controlled Twitter accounts have apparently been set to tweet at Trump during times he’s habitually online.

But the relationship between Trump and his admirers goes both ways. It has been observed that the people who have worked closely with the president, either in private or public life, eventually start behaving like him, even when he’s not around. Longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitz certainly demonstrated that when he threatened to stalk a "bitch" emailer. Trump’s personal physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, has also waxed Trumpian at times, describing his patient’s health as “extraordinary” and “astonishingly excellent.”

Given how the president and his close admirers tend to bring out the worst in each other, it’s particularly concerning how the most vehemently pro-Trump media outlets are going far beyond the sycophantic blather of “Fox & Friends” to outright calls for the president to jail or even execute people he doesn’t like -- particularly if they happen to be investigating connections between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia.

In December, Fox News pundit and Trump ally Jeanine Pirro called on the president to implement a massive purge of officials who are not totally loyal.

“There is a cleansing needed in our FBI and Department of Justice — it needs to be cleansed of individuals who should not just be fired, but who need to be taken out in cuffs!” Pirro ranted.

The alleged need for large-scale firings and arrests within America’s intelligence agencies is a subject on which Pirro and her fellow Fox News Trump commentators Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson have opined for many months now.

But Trump did not need months of persuasion to respond, however. As the New York Times reported on Thursday, the president ordered the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller in June, just a few weeks after he had been appointed. Luckily for Trump, White House counsel Don McGahn and other staffers reportedly declined to carry out the order.

But the president’s Fox fans not have been the only right-wing media figures urging Trump to jail various Democrats and government investigators.

On Tuesday, John Guandolo, a disgraced former FBI agentwho has made a second career as an anti-Muslim and pro-Trump commentator, repeatedly told viewers of the Christian television station theDove that anyone who had allegedly promoted the famous “Steele dossier” as a justification for wiretapping Trump campaign officials was guilty of “sedition and treason” and must be given the death penalty.

“People need to be tried, convicted and executed for treason,” Guandolo said, in remarks that were first reported by the blog Right Wing Watch. “They are conspiring to overthrow the government … they need to be charged, sent to jail, executed, etc., if the republic is to survive.”

Though Guandolo is a relatively obscure pundit, he is apparently respected by a number of federal law enforcement agencies who have repeatedly paid for his anti-Muslim training programs.

Fox News viewers have also been introduced to the idea of capital punishment for Trump's critics. In October, Sebastian Gorka, the former White House adviser who is now a “national security strategist” at Fox News, invoked a conspiracy theory about former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's supposed approved of a deal for a Canadian uranium company that was working with a Russian firm.

“If this had happened in the 1950s, there would be people up on treason charges right now. The Rosenbergs, OK?” Gorka told a rapturous Sean Hannity. “This is equivalent to what the Rosenbergs did, and those people got the chair. Think about it. Giving away nuclear capability to our enemies, that’s what we’re talking about.”According to Gorka, American officials who approved the sale are the equivalent of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the American couple executed for selling nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.

As the Russia investigation has continued to heat up, Alex Jones— the conspiracy radio host who shifted from commentary about gay frogs, Ron Paul, and space aliens to spittle-flecked pro-Trump bombast — has begun increasing his own rhetorical vehemence against law enforcement officials.

Even before he became devoted to Trump, Jones had a long history of, such as warning actor Robert DeNiro that he wanted to “tear his nose completely off his face” and threatening to break the jaws of various other people he dislikes.

(While some observers of his program have argued Jones is just acting, during an April episode, he denied that his harangues are purely theatrical. “We’re the most bona fide, hard-core, real McCoy thing there is,” he told listeners.)

As the Mueller investigation has gotten two guilty pleas and numerous indictments against former Trump associates, Jones’ violent outbursts have only increased. He has apparently absorbed every unhinged conspiracy theory about treasonous “Deep State” elites and the ways they are using their supposedly limitless power to overthrow the president.

During the Jan. 19 episode of his program, Jones went on an, saying that Clinton, former president Barack Obama, former FBI director James Comey and a host of others were accusing Trump of acting like a dictator. Jones' suggested remedy: Trump should start doing just that.

“Mr. President, they’re not going to stop, they’ve already started a civil war! They’ve all got to go to prison!” Jones raged in a segment discussing CNN host Anderson Cooper and New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg. “They’re saying you’re a dictator, we all need to be shut down, take our free speech, and then say you’re doing that. They’ve already launched their operations!"

The Infowars founder then alluded to Phil Mudd, a former FBI and CIA official who now is a commentator at CNN who said last August that Trump’s antagonistic remarks about career intelligence officials could result in them wanting to “kill this guy.” It was clearly a metaphor, as host Jake Tapper and Mudd were quick to point out, for the idea that Trump might be inspiring government officials to leak disparaging information about the president.

According to Jones, however, Mudd had instead publicly stated that American intelligence agencies are planning to assassinate Trump. Because of that, Jones suggested, the president needs to begin physically rounding up his political opponents and treating them like violent traitors:

“Phil Mudd is on TV saying he’s going to kill you! All you need to do is go after them now! Turn the dogs loose! They started it! They did it! They’re the foreign power! They’re the enemy! They’re the traitors!”

“Get ’em! Get ’em!” Jones screamed as he pointed at an image of Cooper and Rosenberg on his studio screen.

, Jones revisited the topic of the Trump-Russia investigation, claiming that Obama “needs to go to prison” because “these people aren’t above the law.”

“These aren’t Americans,” Jones continued. “They’re globalists.”

He then tried to answer listeners and viewers who might believe that Trump imprisoning Clinton and Obama could lead to civil war.

“They’re already trying to cause one,” Jones replied. “Justice be done, may the heavens fall,” he said, alluding to the famous Latin phrase that is also a line in Oliver Stone's conspiracy film “JFK.”

The Infowars chief then compared government officials and liberal political figures to the Japanese and German armies America fought in World War II.

“We have to attack them legally and lawfully. ...We have to defeat them all. They’re not going to stop,” Jones continued. “Like World War II, you don’t just kick Hitler back into Germany, he’s going to reconstitute and attack again. You don’t just kick the Japanese out of the Pacific Islands, you’ve gotta go all the way to Tokyo. They started it!”

As he continued, Jones suggested that because of their “treason,” Trump needs to “go all the way” against his opponents.

“Whatever has to happen is going to happen. We’re going all the way against these people, period. We have to do it. There’s no other choice. They’ve all got to politically hang for their crimes,” he said.

“Incidentally,” Jones said as he looked deep into the camera and drummed his fingers to accentuate the dramatic pause. “You know what the punishment for treason is.”

He continued: “These are the foreign individuals that took our country over. They’re the ones who corrupted everything almost to the point of the country’s death. And they’re still trying to strangle the country today. We must stand against them.”

Before the rise of Trump, Jones was an irrelevant conspiracy radio host whose ravings were listened to by a small number of deranged core fans and hipsters with eccentric senses of humor. All of that changed after Jones latched on to Trump during his campaign.

Trump returned the favor, saying publicly that Jones has an “amazing” reputation during his campaign. As president, he has given Jones and his Infowars colleagues prime access to White House officials. According to Jones, Trump has called him multiple times at home during the past few months. The host has also claimed that he knows several personal phone numbers for Trump, including the president’s private suite at Mar-a-Lago.

Nor Jones is the only person associated with Infowars who has deep connections inside the administration.

Trump’s longtime friend and unofficial political adviser Roger Stone is now the host of an Infowars show of his own. Donald Trump Jr., the president's oldest son, posted on Twitter last April that Infowars correspondent and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich deserved a Pulitzer Prize after an administration source fed him a scoop days before the mainstream press. It was one of several important stories the two have broken ahead of legitimate news outlets. Cernovich has also boasted that Donald Jr. and other Trump family members personally give the president printouts of stories from Infowars and other dubious websites.

Given the many strictures on the commander in chief's authority, it is unlikely that Trump could start imprisoning his political opponents even if he wanted to. But the president is far from the only person exposed to a constant diet of violent rhetoric against Democrats, journalists and law enforcement officers. Many disturbed people who voted for him are as well.

Last week, a Michigan man named Brandon Griesemer was arrested for threatening to kill CNN’s “fake news” anchors.In December of 2016, North Carolina resident Edgar Maddison Welch burst into a pizza restaurant near Washington with a rifle and fired off three rounds, in part because Jones and his staff had spent hours telling their followers the place was the center of a global child-sex ring.

Following Welch’s guilty plea last March, Jones begrudgingly and partially retracted his support for the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. His actions since, however, suggest he has no legitimate intention of cleaning up his act.

People have mocked the idea that Trump could become a dictator. What's clear is that many people he likes are telling him to become one.

Matthew Sheffield

proto-fox

he bitter political and religious divides we see today in America have roots that go back many decades. The televangelist Pat Robertson was one of the first to determine how battlelines were drawn. Robertson, now a leading and unflinching Trump supporter, rose to national prominence in the 1960s with hisChristian Broadcasting Network and his hit show The 700 Club.

Terry Heaton, who worked alongside Robertson at The 700 Club and became its executive producer, provides the inside story of how evangelical Christianity forced itself on a needy Republican Party in order to gain political influence on a global level. Using deliberate and strategic social engineering, The 700 Club moved Christians steadily into the Republican Party–and moved the party itself to the right.

With a gospel message that appealed to self-interest, The 700 Club violated numerous laws in an attempt to create a Shadow Government of Evangelicals, all in the name of doing God’s work on earth. The results of this longterm campaign were fully on display in the 2016 electoral season.

222 pages • Paperback ISBN 978-1-682190-83-8 • E-book 978-1-682190-84-5

http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/gospel-self-terry-heaton/

http://www.risingupwithsonali.com/terry-heaton-discusses-his-book-the-gospel-of-self-how-jesus-joined-the-gop-extended-interview/

TERRY HEATON: Televangelist Pat Robertson is not happy that Donald Trump is facing mass criticism for his unprofessional, dishonest, and unconstitutional policies. Robertson said recently, “the Lord’s plan is being put in place for America and these people are not only revolting against Trump, they’re revolting against what God’s plan is for America.”

He added, “These left-wingers and so-called progressives are trying to destroy the country that we love and take away the freedoms they love. They want collectivism. They want socialism. What we’re looking at is free markets and freedom from this terrible, overarching bureaucracy.”

Trump, whose lifestyle isn’t exactly terribly Christian, has embraced evangelical constituencies and their values as stated by Robertson. It is worth, now more than ever, to examine theorigins of the movement that sees capitalism and selfishness as a religious virtue.

Warning sounded by man who helped bring Trump to power

Terry Heaton, above, once a key figure in televangelist Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club, recently announced that he was about to publish a book that would show how right-wing Christian zealots succeeded in hijacking the Republican Party.

He wrote here:

As political events began to take shape last year in the US and specifically with the candidacy of Donald Trump, I began gathering all of the documents from my days as Pat Robertson’s producer in the 1980s. I could sense what was happening and felt a sense of responsibility for at least some of it, for as producer of The 700 Club, I had played a key role in our efforts to influence Republican Party politics.

Lamenting the period in which he helped sow the seeds that led eventually to the flourishing idolatry of the venomous Trump creature, he warned:

The people addicted to Donald Trump are ushering in something they really don’t understand.

Trump supporters represent a serious and significant threat to freedom, and the sad thing is that most of these people formed the core of our audience target back in the early 80s. The fears they express were planted by us, and while I’m not saying it was insincere, cynical, or corrupt, I am stating that it was a deliberate attempt at social engineering. People need to know this, for we preached what I’m calling ‘the gospel of self’.

Well, today I was informed that Heaton’s book, The Gospel of Self: How Jesus Joined the GOP,has just been published. Publicity for the book says:

The bitter political and religious divides we see today in America have roots that go back many decades. The televangelist Pat Robertson was one of the first to determine how battle-lines were drawn. Robertson, now a leading and unflinching Trump supporter, rose to national prominence in the 1960s with his Christian Broadcasting Network and his hit show The 700 Club.

Terry Heaton, who worked alongside Robertson at The 700 Club and became its Executive producer, Provides the inside story of how evangelical Christianity forced itself on a needy Republican Party in order to gain political influence on a global level. Using deliberate and strategic social engineering, The 700 Club moved Christians steadily into the Republican Party – and moved the party itself to the right.

With a gospel message that appealed to self-interest, The 700 Club violated numerous laws in an attempt to create a Shadow Government of Evangelicals, all in the name of doing God’s work on earth. The results of this long-term campaign were fully on display in the 2016 electoral season.

Heaton adds here:

Evangelical Christians were among Donald Trump’s staunchest allies during the 2016 campaign, and they remain a group the President can count on as he implements even the most extreme of the positions he proclaimed would make America great again.

Chief among these for Evangelicals are: religious freedom allowing for rejection of liberal mandates such as being forced to serve those with whom they disagree theologically (and socially); the ability to have their children pray in school and be exposed to Biblical absolutes; returning to a culture within which access to safe abortions is illegal, and this despite the fact that the abortion rate is now where it was BEFORE Roe v Wade; eliminating the threat of evangelism from what they view as the false religion of Islam and in the process making sure their neighborhoods will be Muslim-free; and a return to a time when – in their opinion – the voice of Christianity was sought, heard, and embraced as relevant by the culture as a whole.

Pope Francis is about to issue a historic encyclical urging world leaders to tackle climate change. But meanwhile, the world's largest religious media outlet is inviting climate deniers to spread unscientific lies and accuse the Pope of "confusing" Catholics.

Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) just invited notorious climate denier Marc Morano to "debate" whether climate change is real. Worse yet, during the program, EWTN’s own host denied man-made climate change and attacked the Pope for meeting with top scientists.

Tell the world's largest religious media outlet, the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN): Stop broadcasting climate denial.

The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) is a Christian television network based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, U.S., started by televangelist Pat Robertson in 1961 and known for its 700 Club program.

The mission of CBN and its affiliated organizations, according to its website, is to prepare the United States of America and the nations of the world for the coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth. Our ultimate goal is to achieve a time in history when "the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." ^[1]^

Multi-millionaire heir Joseph Coors serves on the Regent University (formerly called CBN University) Board of Trustees. His wife Holly Coors is on the Regent University Board of Regents. The Coors Foundation has given money to the university (Foundation Grants Index, 15th edition, 1986.)

The National Committee to Draft Pat Robertson for President, which featured Roy Rogers and Dale Evans as spokespersons, held a big fundraiser at the Dallas ranch of millionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt. Joseph Coors supported this run as well.

Contents[hide]

History

According to the CBN website "History Of The Christian Broadcasting Network":

Forty years ago, Pat Robertson, named his broadcasting organization, located in a defunct Portsmouth, Virginia, TV station, The Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Not only was CBN the first Christian television station in Virginia, it was also the first in the nation. Forty years later, it is one of the largest television ministries in the world.Founded on January 11, 1960, CBN first went on the air on October 1, 1961, on WYAH-TV (from Yahweh, the Hebrew name for God), a UHF television station with barely enough power to reach across the Portsmouth city limits. With a modest income from a few local supporters, CBN began broadcasting live half-hour programs from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. every night. Gradually, the broadcast day was expanded to 5:00 p.m. to midnight. Because Robertson refused to accept commercial advertisements, paying for programming was out of the question. A few free travelogue films were used to fill in the blank spots.The first live broadcast of WYAH-TV was on Sunday, Oct. 1, 1961. The station had been broadcasting only a test pattern. There was a short live broadcast on that day. The first minister was Robert W. Garthwaite, a Portsmouth evangelist, along with his two sons, Nevin and Gregory who sang on the broadcast.In the fall of 1963, CBN conducted its first telethon to raise the $7,000 per month needed for the following year's budget. Robertson told viewers that a "club" of 700 contributors, each giving $10 a month, would enable CBN to meet its expenses. As guests appeared to sing and share their religious experiences, Robertson invited the audience to pray for the 700 supporters who would help keep CBN going. Though its financial struggles continued, CBN had taken an important step in building community support for the ministry.A year later, the 700 Club telethon was an important turning point for CBN. This telethon generated more contributions than the previous year's but not enough to meet CBN's growing budget. Then, in the final minutes of the broadcast, a remarkable outpouring of spiritual revival began to sweep through the viewing audience. Throughout the next several days, callers flooded CBN with prayer requests and pledges of financial support to CBN. A year later, Robertson added a program to the end of his station's broadcast day that followed the telethon format prayer and ministry coupled with telephone response. He named it The 700 Club, hoping to build on the audience that had become familiar with CBN's telethons. The program's audience grew as other stations began carrying the show.Today CBN is a multifaceted nonprofit organization that provides programming by cable, broadcast and satellite to approximately 180 countries, with a 24-hour telephone prayer line. Chief among CBN's broadcasting components is The 700 Club, a daily television program featuring Pat Robertson, Terry Meeuswen, Lisa Ryan, Gordon Robertson, Kristi Watts and news anchor Lee Webb. On the air continuously since 1966, The 700 Club is one of the longest-running programs in broadcast history. Seen in 96% of the television markets across the United States, the show's news/magazine format presents a lively mix of information, interviews, and inspiration to an average daily audience of one million viewers.CBN programs have aired in approximately 71 languages from Mandarin to Spanish and from Turkish to Welsh. In 1990 CBN International launched special projects in the Commonwealth of Independent States (formerly the Soviet Union) that included primetime specials and later The 700 Club and Superbook, an animated series of Bible stories. The broadcasts were followed by 190 rallies throughout the region that resulted in the establishment of 190 churches. Similar special projects were implemented in the Philippines and Romania in 1994. CBN International also distributes videos and literature and provides follow-up through international ministries around the world. In 1995, CBN launched CBN WorldReach with a mission of converting 500 million people to Christianity using Gospel programming to targeted international audiences.Middle East Television (METV), a television station in Southern Lebanon, broadcasts news, sports, family entertainment, and religious programming by satellite to a potential audience of 200 million people in 15 nations including Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Cyprus. METV also distributes free videotapes and religious literature and provides food and clothing through CBN's humanitarian affiliate, Operation Blessing Internationalthroughout the Middle East. METV was sold to a like-minded ministry, LeSEA Broadcasting, in July 2001.Here in America, The 700 Club Prayer Counseling Center provides prayer, scriptural counsel, and literature to people who call CBN's toll free telephone prayer line. The center's phones are staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year by a staff of paid, volunteer, and "on call" workers who are trained in offering comfort and encouragement from a biblical perspective.In 1977, CBN started the nation's first basic TV cable network with satellite transmissions of religious and syndicated family TV shows.By 1981, CBN Cable reached nearly 10 million homes. Renamed the CBN Family Channel in 1988, the commercial cable operation continued to prosper and was sold in 1990 to International Family Entertainment Inc. (IFE), a publicly held company that trades on the New York Stock Exchange. IFE was sold in 1997 to Fox Kids Worldwide, Inc.. Disney acquired the Fox Family Channel and it was named ABC Family on November 10, 2001.Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation is an affiliate organization founded by Pat Robertson in 1978. Operation Blessing was originally set up to help disadvantaged people by matching their needs for clothing, appliances, vehicles and other items with articles donated by viewers of The 700 Club. However, as requests for assistance grew, Robertson and CBN's board of directors decided to make a financial commitment to Operation Blessing that reached $1 million in 1982. In 1992 a fleet of refrigerated tractor-trailer trucks was added to Operation Blessing and called the Hunger Strike Force (HSF). The HSF hauls millions of pounds of food and disaster relief across the U.S.. Operation Blessing later purchased and retrofitted an L-1011 airplane into a hospital. "The Flying Hospital" was commissioned in 1996 by former President George H. W. Bush and took its first medical mission to El Salvador. The Flying Hospital was sold to a charitable not-for-profit organization in 2000. However, the Flying Hospital will continue to be an integral part of evangelistic missions with Operation Blessing International.Located in Virginia Beach, Va., :{Regent University:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}: was founded in 1977 by Robertson, who serves as its president and chancellor. Regent is a fully accredited graduate university that offers degrees in business, communication & the arts, divinity, education, government, law, organizational leadership and psychology & counseling. In addition, Regent offers a bachelor's degree completion program. Regent University is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award the bachelor's, master's and doctor's degrees, and has enrollment of nearly 2,600 students. In addition to the main campus in Virginia Beach, Regent has a Graduate Center in Northern Virginia D.C. and offers programs online via their Worldwide Campus.CBN Historical Highlights1960: Pat Robertson opened bank account for CBN with $3.00. CBN was founded.1961: CBN first went on the air on WYAH-TV, taken from YAHWEH, the Hebrew name of God.1963: CBN's first telethon--700 viewers were asked to join "700 Club" by pledging $10 a month to meet CBN's monthly operating budget of $7,000.1966: The 700 Club was born after a successful telethon.1974: National Counseling Center opened, handling calls for prayer 24 hours a day.1977: First Christian ministry to build and operate its own satellite earth station; first satellite broadcast from Jerusalem. CBN began transmitting Christian and family programming 24 hours daily (beginning of CBN Cable--later to become The Family Channel).1978: Operation Blessing International (OBI), humanitarian arm of CBN, was founded.1980: News added to The 700 Club format complete with a news bureau in Washington, D.C.1981: CBN creates "Superbook," the animated, episodic children's tale for a Japanese audience This marks the beginning of CBN's award-winning collection of Christian animated tales used to share the Gospel internationally.1982: Middle East Television (METV) begins operations in southern Lebanon and Israel.1988: CBN receives an Emmy award for "Never Say Goodbye", an After-School Special produced for CBS.1990: CBN sells The Family Channel to International Family Entertainment.1994: OBI's Hunger Strike Force launches a food distribution campaign delivering more than four million pounds of food to 18 major U.S. cities.1995: CBN WorldReach is launched with a torch lighting ceremony at Cape Henry, Virginia. Worldwide evangelism goal is to win 500 million to Christianity.1996: The Flying Hospital is commissioned by former president George Bush. Virginia Governor George Allen launches the first inaugural mission to El Salvador.1997: International Family Entertainment (owner of The Family Channel) sold to Fox Kids Worldwide, Inc.1998: Pat Robertson is honorary co-chairman along with Bill Bright and Vonette Bright, with campus Crusade for Christ, for the 40 Days of Fasting and Prayer Campaign.1999: CBN launches Book of Hope campaign which distributes 10 million books making it the largest Bible reading campaign in America-as well as the largest promotion of any secular or religious book.2002: NorthStar Studios, state-of-the-art broadcast facility, opens its doors in May.-- Pat Robertson presented with The State of Israel Friendship Award by the Chicago chapter of the Zionist Organization of America in July.

Support for Islamophobia

According to the Center for American Progress, the CBN promotes anti-Muslim hysteria in much of its programming. For example, on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" TV show, he claimed that Islam is "a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination." ^[2]^

References

↑ About page, Christian Broadcasting Network, accessed June 2008.
↑ Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and Faiz Shakir, Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America, CAB, August 2011.

Contact details

977 Centerville Turnpike

Virginia Beach, VA 23463

Phone: (757) 226-7000

Web: http://www.cbn.com

Resources

Notable personalities

Current

Pat Robertson – co-host of The 700 Club
David Brody – host of The Brody File
Terry Meeuwsen – co-host of The 700 Club and 700 Club Interactive
Chuck Holton – military correspondent

Former

Ben Kinchlow
Lee Webb – anchor of The 700 Club and CBN NewsWatch (now at Ligonier Ministries)

Christian Broadcasting Network CBN

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Organization History

What does VCY stand for?

The Politics of Lies Regarding Energy and Climate Change

Endnotes

Behind President Trump's Twitter theatrics, there's a growing theme to American diplomacy.

March 25, 2019

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Warning sounded by man who helped bring Trump to power

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