WND WJC 2

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main label broke?

MERRI OK

alyssa farah and women // cassidy hutchinson

INCUBATOR JRNL INTERN? PAID

1020 who owns now? floyd brown? wjc?

bak but also remap for trump era

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ggl ai 6 26

• The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Owned historically by the late billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, this news outlet has been a major voice in conservative journalism. While it does not offer a combined "Koch-WJC" internship, it regularly hires reporters and interns for local Pennsylvania news coverage. Prospective applicants should check local career portals or university journalism boards. [1, 2, 3, 4]

• Western Journalism Center (WJC): Founded by Joseph Farah, the WJC is a non-profit foundation that has historically supported investigative reporting and philosophical diversity. In the past, the WJC has sponsored paid internships and educational projects aimed at training students in professional media environments that emphasize free enterprise and American values.

• Koch Internships: The Koch network (such as the Charles Koch Institute) is well known for professional training programs that focus on limited government, market-based economics, and free enterprise. The Charles Koch Institute offers dedicated Koch Associate Programs and paid internships in public policy, media, and organizational strategy. These programs place students at various think tanks, advocacy groups, and media outlets. [1]

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As four co-defendants in former President Donald Trump’s Georgia election subversion case recently pleaded guilty and agreed to testify for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, right-wing media twisted the facts to further their “witch hunt” narrative.

• • Four co-defendants in the Georgia election subversion case — Scott Hall, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jenna Ellis — pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Trump and the other defendants. By accepting the plea deals, they were able to avoid being charged under Georgia’s RICO act. The Hill, [10/22/23; The Washington Post, 10/24/23]
  • Testimony from these individuals will “give Willis and her prosecutors more bricks to use against Trump at trial,” which explains why the DA would be willing to drop other charges in their plea deals.The prospect of testimony from Powell, Chesebro, and Ellis is particularly “ominous” for Trump and the other co-defendants, as the three “could paint a detailed collective portrait of Mr. Trump’s activities in the postelection period.” New York magazine, [10/25/23; USA Today, 10/21/23; The New York Times, 10/24/23]
  • Legal expertise suggests that these deals are not out of the ordinary, as plea bargaining “makes up the vast majority of criminal justice transactions today.” Cynthia Alkon, a law professor at Texas A&M University School of Law, told The Conversation that “prosecutors rely on plea bargaining at times to strengthen their cases by offering deals contingent on a defendant agreeing to testify against another person,” indicating that Willis’ decision to offer pleas to Powell, Chesebro, and Hall is fairly typical. Vera Institute, [9/2020; The Conversation, 10/23/23]

• ## Right-wing media insist that the leniency of the plea deals is proof that Willis “overcharged” the defendants and that she has a “weak” case
  • National Review published an article titled “Sidney Powell’s Guilty Plea Points to a Faltering Case in Atlanta.” The article by Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy claimed, “While the media spin will be different, my first impression of Sidney Powell’s guilty plea in the Fulton County election-interference case is: It signals that District Attorney Fani Willis’s much-heralded RICO indictment — in which 19 are charged, including Powell’s famous co-defendant Donald Trump — is a dud.” National Review, [10/19/23]
  • The Washington Examiner’s Byron York suggested that Willis dropping “the super-duper grand conspiracy charge against an alleged key player” was suspicious.His full post read, “For you lawyers out there: Wasn't Sidney Powell charged with taking part in the super-duper grand conspiracy that Fani Willis alleged in the Trump election indictment? A felony, of course. And now Willis drops the super-duper grand conspiracy charge against an alleged key player?” Twitter/X, [10/19/23]
  • Former co-host of Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast Raheem Kassam posted that Powell’s plea deal “suggests their case was not as strong as they originally believed.” Kassam wrote, “Corporate media will crow about Sidney Powell's plea deal. But the fact she's being fined $6,000 and being made to write an apology letter suggests their case was not as strong as they originally believed…” Twitter/X, [10/19/23]
  • Conservative influencer Will Chamberlain claimed that Powell and Chesebro’s plea deals are a “a pretty serious embarrassment for Fani Willis.”His full post read, “So both Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro get plea deals for zero jail time. They were facing a mandatory minimum of five years on the RICO counts and a maximum of 20 years. This is a pretty serious embarrassment for Fani Willis.” Twitter/X, [10/20/23]
  • Conspiracy theory outlet WDN, formerly WorldNetDaily, published an article titled “Prosecutor offering plea deals to Trump co-defendants to bag the 'real target.'” The article quotes William A. Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor and founder of the conservative website Legal Insurrection: “While the prosecution’s willingness to accept plea deals may reflect they have been ‘overcharging defendants,’ Jacobson said they are keeping their eyes on the ‘real target’ — the former president.” The Daily Caller also quoted Jacobson’s claim about Willis “overcharging.” WND, [10/23/23; The Daily Caller, 10/21/23]
  • WND quoted Molly McCann Sanders, Powell’s previous co-counsel, who claimed, “The fact that Fani Willis dropped all 7 felonies tells the tale. She had no case, but she did have the coercive power of the state.” Conservative Brief also included the Sanders quote and claimed that Powell’s guilty plea “could be good for Trump.” WND, [10/22/23; Conservative Brief, 10/20/23; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 10/19/23]
  • The Federalist published an article titled “Sidney Powell’s Plea Proves Fulton County Prosecutor Went Nuclear To Get Trump.”The article argues, “That the Fulton County prosecutor settled for these misdemeanor charges when Powell faced seven major felony counts — including an expansive RICO conspiracy count — confirms the criminal justice system was weaponized to get Trump.” The Federalist, [10/20/23]
  • Newsmax guest and former Trump administration official Theodore Wold claimed on Wake Up America that “this isn't the architecture of a massive RICO conspiracy as they lead us to believe over the last few months,” predicting the latest plea deal “isn’t really going to harm the president’s defense strategy.” Host Michael Grimm then asked right-wing attorney Jared Roberts if “this actually proof that the DA overcharged?” Roberts answered, “I think it’s definitely proof that they overcharged. These charges have been baseless since the beginning.” Newsmax, *Wake Up America*, [10/22/23]

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https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/facebook-right-leaning-pages-lead-discussion-about-home-invasions-right-wing-media-and-nra

mma 4 23

no pix lnx

On Facebook, right-leaning pages lead discussion about home invasions, with right-wing media and the NRA praising homeowners who shoot suspected intruders

Right-leaning Facebook pages earned 65% of total interactions on posts about home invasions, despite sharing only 25% of them

Special PROGRAMS

GUNS & PUBLIC SAFETY

WRITTEN BY NATALIE MATHES

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM CARLY EVANS

PUBLISHED 04/26/23

On Facebook in the last year, right-wing media outlets have amplified sensational posts that praise people who have shot, and in some instances killed, alleged home intruders.

In a new study, Media Matters compiled and analyzed Facebook posts about home invasions from news and politics pages in the last year and found that right-leaning pages earned 65% of total interactions on posts about home invasions, despite sharing only 25% of them. Among these right-leaning pages are right-wing media outlets and the National Rifle Association.

A series of recent shootings have refocused the nation’s attention on so-called “castle doctrine” — the idea that a person doesn’t have a “duty to retreat” before using deadly force to defend themselves when in their home — and “stand your ground” laws that apply this idea outside the home, using what critics call a “shoot first, ask questions later” model that allows “anyone who believes their life to be in danger to use lethal force in an act of self-defense, without any duty to retreat.”

On April 13, an elderly man in Kansas City, Missouri, shot teenager Ralph Yarl in the head after Yarl mistakenly rang the home's doorbell while he was trying to pick up his siblings. On April 15, a homeowner in rural New York shot and killed 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis when a car she was riding in pulled into his driveway by accident while searching for a friend’s house. On April 18, a man in Florida shot a 6-year-old girl, her parents, and another neighbor after a basketball accidentally rolled onto his property. The next day, a man in Texas shot two high school cheerleaders who had mistaken his car for their own after a late-night practice.

According to an April 22 report by Insider, gun violence experts say that these recent shootings are “a larger symptom of a distinctly American culture that empowers people to open fire, even when there's no real threat.” This violent culture stems from the NRA’s decades-long campaign pushing “stand your ground” laws across the nation.

Most Americans are not satisfied with existing gun laws, but right-wing media continue to defend the role guns play in America. For example, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed in January that assault weapons “are not a threat to anybody,” and the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles said that guns had “nothing to do with” a recent mass shooting in Nashville. Salem Media Group’s Dennis Prager has falsely insisted that “there's no way to stop the ubiquity of guns” in America, and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk has claimed, “It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.”

By defending the role guns play in America and working to convince Americans that there is no real possibility of passing stronger gun control measures in the U.S., right-wing media encourage the false belief that the only way to make ourselves safer is to take matters into our own hands and further arm ourselves. This provides cover for politicians who work with the NRA and, conveniently, creates bigger business for gun sellers.

In the last year — from April 20, 2022, through April 20, 2023 — Facebook has enabled the NRA and right-wing media outlets to sensationalize and amplify stories about alleged home invasions across its platform. Several of these stories pushed the narrative that people need to own guns in order to defend their families, and even praised people who shoot and kill alleged home intruders. 

In the last year, right-leaning Facebook pages shared only 25% of posts about home invasions but earned 65% of total interactions

In the last year, Facebook pages that regularly post about U.S. news and politics shared at least 8,100 posts about home invasions, earning over 6.5 million total interactions. Right-leaning pages shared only 25% of these posts (about 2,000) but earned 65% of total interactions, amounting to over 4.2 million.

Several of these posts praised elderly homeowners in particular for shooting, and in some instances killing, alleged home intruders, with Rumble’s Steven Crowder captioning one such post “nice shot.” Others celebrated instances when it was revealed that homeowners would not be charged for shooting and killing people who trespassed on their property.

Home invasion Facebook posts praising elderly

Home invasion Facebook posts celebrating no charges

Ideologically nonaligned Facebook pages shared 72% of posts (nearly 6,000), but earned only 30% of total interactions (nearly 2 million). Left-leaning pages shared only 3% of posts (about 200) and earned 5% of total interactions, amounting to 294,000.

Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled a list of 1,773 Facebook pages that frequently posted about U.S. politics from January 1 to August 25, 2020. For an explanation of how we compiled pages and identified them as right-leaning, left-leaning, or ideologically nonaligned, see the methodology here. The resulting list consisted of 771 right-leaning pages, 497 ideologically nonaligned pages, and 505 left-leaning pages.   Using CrowdTangle, Media Matters compiled all posts about home invasions from the pages

The NRA earned 17% of total interactions on Facebook posts about home invasions in the last year, despite sharing just 0.1% of them

The NRA's official Facebook page earned the most total interactions on posts about home invasions during the time frame studied. The page earned over 1.1 million total interactions on just 9 such posts, meaning the NRA shared just 0.1% of Facebook posts about home invasions from U.S. news and politics pages over the last year, but earned 17% of total interactions.

After the NRA, the 6 Facebook pages that earned the most total interactions on posts about home invasions were pages for right-wing outlets, organizations, and personalities. In order, they include Blue Lives Matter, Fox News, Breitbart, Ben Shapiro, Colion Noir, and TheBlaze.

home invasion other top 6 collage

The top 6 posts that earned the most total interactions were from the NRA, and all featured headlines praising homeowners for shooting alleged intruders.

NRA Facebook posts about home invasions

The NRA has also run at least 115 ads on Meta platforms over the last year on an additional Facebook page. These ads endorsed midterm candidates it claimed would defend your “right to protect your home and family” and attacked candidates it claimed would “leave your family defenseless.” Facebook earned at least $500,000 on these ads, which reached an estimated audience of up to 60.9 million users.

NRA Meta Ads home invasion

Networks of Facebook pages operated by right-wing outlets amplified numerous stories praising homeowners for shooting, and in some instances killing, alleged home intruders

Facebook has a history of profiting from networks of right-wing pages that exploit its platform to amplify various right-wing talking points — including conservative narratives around gun ownership.

The Western Journal shared nearly 350 posts about home invasions in the last year across 19 Facebook pages, collectively earning nearly 160,000 total interactions. Some of these posts featured an article praising a resident for sending suspects “running for their lives,” while others claimed, “You know what they say — real gun control means hitting your target. And this homeowner did just that.”

Western Journal home invasion collage

TheBlaze shared 195 posts about home invasions in the last year across 10 Facebook pages, collectively earning more than 300,000 total interactions. Some of these posts featured an article claiming that “armed home invaders wearing ski masks” shot a homeowner, but that homeowner also had a gun and shot “both crooks dead.” Others featured an article headlined, “Video: It’s all smiles before crooks invade home; seconds later it’s all backsides as they run for their lives from homeowner firing ‘AK-47-style’ gun at them.”

TheBlaze collage of home invasion posts

The Daily Wire’s network shared 160 posts about home invasions in the last year across 7 Facebook pages, collectively earning at least 285,000 total interactions on these posts — some of which cited “castle doctrine” as protecting a woman in Texas who fatally shot an alleged home invader.

The Daily Wire home invasion collage

Fox News shared 24 posts about home invasions in the last year across 3 Facebook pages, collectively earning more than 200,000 total interactions. Some of these posts praised elderly homeowners for turning the tables on suspected home invaders.

Fox News home invasion collage

Methodology...

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carmine sabia boosted jan 6:

https://www.westernjournal.com/about/

History

Mission / Coverage Priorities

Values

Ownership / Funding Sources

Actionable Feedback Policy

Ethics and Editorial Standards

Masthead

History

The Western Journal was founded in 2009 as WesternJournalism.com, a project of the Western Center for Journalism. At the time the site simply linked to other content producers and served as a hub for the discussion of important current events in the political and media spheres. The site was established to provide an alternative for readers fed up with the overt leftism of establishment media outlets. Over time, the audience grew and writers began submitting original pieces to be published in full.

In 2011, Western Journalism began publishing political news and commentary on its new Facebook page. It wasn’t until 2013, however, that Western Journalism hired its first full-time staff writer and branched into publishing original content. During this time, the site grew rapidly, reaching several hundred thousand readers daily by the end of 2013.

The beginning of 2014 marked a strategic turning point for Western Journalism, as the staff began focusing heavily on its Facebook audience, experimenting with engaging titles, and analyzing results in real time. By May 2014, over four million unique visitors were reading Western Journalism each month.

In mid-2014, the director of marketing for the Western Center for Journalism, Patrick Brown, left to found Liftable Media Inc. and its first brand, the uplifting lifestyle site Liftable.com. Liftable Media’s founding mission is to be a positive influence on culture. Patrick took what he’d learned in building social media-optimized content on Western Journalism and by November five million unique visitors were reading Liftable.com each month.

Liftable Media maintained close contact with the Western Journalism staff, and, recognizing the overlap in audience and mission, soon offered to buy WesternJournalism.com. The offer was accepted and Liftable Media made its first acquisition, officially integrating WesternJournalism.com into Liftable Media on Jan. 1, 2015.

Not long after, Liftable Media was approached by the founder of ConservativeTribune.com, a conservative opinion blog that had also seen success on Facebook. The founder, Shaun Connell, wanted to work on other projects and asked if Liftable Media was interested in buying Conservative Tribune. In April 2015, Liftable Media made its second large acquisition, buying ConservativeTribune.com.

In November of 2017, WesternJournalism.com was rebranded as The Western Journal and moved to WesternJournal.com. In April of 2018, Conservative Tribune, Liftable, and The Wildcard, a sports site established in 2017 and also owned by Liftable Media, were integrated into The Western Journal as sections of one overarching site, The Western Journal.

Mission / Coverage Priorities

The Western Journal is an online publication consisting of news, commentary and analysis. The Western Journal focuses on topics that Heartland Americans care about. As many Americans continue to lose trust in the purportedly unbiased nature of older newspapers and networks, The Western Journal fills the gap as a trusted source of news and information for the stories and views that remain untold by establishment news sources.

As a values-based news organization, we believe that it is vitally important that we are transparent about our beliefs and how they may affect our coverage priorities. We believe that we should be open about values we hold. Founded in the context of a establishment media that in general reflects a politically liberal worldview, we make editorial choices to tell stories to help compensate for the biased coverage priorities of most establishment media outlets.

In our news coverage, we do not support political parties, politicians or candidates. In our opinion and blog sections, we sometimes support ideas that those parties or personalities espouse. Even more important than supporting policies we agree with editorially is our obligation to our readers to give a complete picture of the truth regardless of our beliefs. We therefore sometimes report facts at variance with points of view we may hold, letting the facts speak for themselves and allowing readers to make up their own minds.

Editorially, The Western Journal upholds traditional Christian values as articulated in the Bible. These values include beliefs in original sin, the fallen nature of man, the exclusivity of Christ, the need for government to restrain men from injuring each other, the fundamental value of every human life (including those of the unborn), a rejection of racism in all forms and the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. Politically, The Western Journal advocates for broadly conservative positions on most issues, including abortion, national defense, small government, marriage, tax policy and individual freedom.

Values

All Ethics and Editorial standards stem from the following values.

Truth

All our content should be true. No value is more important than this.

This does not preclude the use of opinion — opinion is vital to political and cultural commentary. But all opinions expressed must be identified as such and supported by truth.

Respect

Our content should never denigrate a person or people due to circumstances beyond their control. We should always treat everyone we report and opine on as human beings, deserving of the respect due to those created in the image of God.

Excellence

All Western Journal content should be excellent, both in production and in the promotion of virtue.

Courage

We must have courage to expose the truth about powerful interests that may be angered by our coverage.

Within the context of our broader values, The Western Journal encourages its employees to speak up when they disagree about a company decision or editorial position that they think contradicts or compromises the organization’s mission in any way.

Creativity

Every person in our news organization has unique gifts, a unique background, and a story that can contribute to the excellence of the overall company. We encourage everyone in our company to speak their minds, and we do not shoot down the discussion of ideas but always encourage honest debate.

We are not afraid to try new things. We bring up new ideas when we see a solution that others don’t. We experiment, analyze results, and try again. We encourage those in our organization to make big bets and fail.

Ownership / Funding Sources

The Western Journal and its parent company Liftable Media are 100 percent owned by members of the Brown family, with no outside investors, grants or funding. The Western Journal is funded by paid advertising, subscriptions and donations to provide a credible news source for our readers.

Actionable Feedback Policy

We believe that public feedback is not a one-way street — that is, simply publishing your comments or letters would be inadequate. Though we lack the resources to respond directly to every communication, we are committed to engaging with readers and taking appropriate action based on suggestions, complaints and other feedback. You may help develop an individual story or line of coverage, answer questions that a story may raise, identify related or under-covered issues, and teach us about new and diverse sources, experts and perspectives.

In line with this, we are committed to providing transparency about how our news is produced and offering regular points of contact and interaction. We believe that news organizations have a responsibility to engage with the public on the values, issues and ideas of the day, and that we have much to gain in return.

You can reach us through the following ways:

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https://www.mediamatters.org/congress/numerous-gop-candidates-are-raising-money-through-conspiracy-theory-site-best-known

numerous Republican candidates, including Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Madison Cawthorn, and John James, have been advertising in the email list of conspiracy theory website WorldNetDaily. The right-wing website gained notoriety and readers by leading a smear campaign regarding President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and has also pushed virulently anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim content.

WorldNetDaily is led by right-wing publisher and conspiracy theorist Joseph Farah. Alyssa Farah, the current White House communications director, is Farah’s daughter and a former writer for the site.

The Southern Poverty Law Center states that WND is “devoted to manipulative fear-mongering and outright fabrications designed to further the paranoid, gay-hating, conspiratorial and apocalyptic visions of Farah and his hand-picked contributors from the fringes of the far-right and fundamentalist worlds.”

WND was one of the main promoters of the false claim that Obama was not born in the U.S. The site ran numerous articles casting doubt on Obama’s birth certificate and organized a billboard and petition campaign asking “Where's the Birth Certificate?" The country’s most-famous birther, President Donald Trump, is a fan of the site’s birther stories.

The site has peddled white nationalist propaganda. It has also frequently posted hate content against LGBTQ people and Muslims.

The Washington Post reported in April 2019 that the WorldNetDaily empire has collapsed since its birther heyday because of financial problems.

The site is still trying to make money by renting out its email list to various politicians. In 2020, Media Matters has received fundraising emails from the following congressional candidates through WND’s email list:

• Sen. Thom Tillis (incumbent running for reelection from North Carolina)
• Madison Cawthorn (running for the House from North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District)
• John James (running for the Senate from Michigan)
• Rep. Elise Stefanik (incumbent running for the House from New York’s 21st Congressional District)
• Rep. Jim Jordan (incumbent running for reelection from Ohio’s 4th Congressional District)
• Laura Loomer(running for the House from Florida’s 21st Congressional District)
• Kathy Barnette (running for the House from Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District)
• Lacy Johnson (running for the House from Minnesota's 5th Congressional District)
• Kyle Van De Water (running for the House from New York’s 19th Congressional District)
• Tre Pennie (running for the House from Texas’ 30th Congressional District)

The Trump Make America Great Again Committee, which is “a joint fundraising committee authorized by and composed of Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and the Republican National Committee,” has also advertised on WND’s list.

Like writers for WND, Loomer has frequently pushed anti-Muslim bigotry. The right-wing commentator has described herself as a “proud Islamophobe,” has stated that she didn’t “care” about the anti-Muslim mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, and has said that she would like to see “more” migrant deaths.

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https://theintercept.com/2020/08/15/white-house-plants-pro-trump-conspiracy-theorists-among-reporters-briefing-room/

IN  AN APPARENT effort to make his daily news conferences even more like campaign events than they already are, the White House press office has been packing the briefing room with supporters of President Donald Trump from far-right media outlets who can be relied on to toss him softball questions and initiate attacks on his political rivals.

Clearly in on the plot, Trump solicited a question each day this week from one of the guests invited by his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, to stand at the back of the room — where representatives of One America News, The Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit compromised the health of reporters by violating social distancing and mask-wearing guidelines.

On Monday, Trump called on Chanel Rion, a far-right Republican operative and conspiracy theorist now working as a correspondent for One America News,a San Diego cable channel dedicated to spreading lies about Joe Biden and elderly protesters battered by the police.

Rion gave Trump the opportunity to unleash a familiar riff from his pre-pandemic rallies by suggesting to him that Biden might have been considering President Barack Obama’s former national security adviser, Susan Rice, as his running mate because, “she can best cover up a lot of the Obamagate surveillance crimes that have taken place during your campaign.” Trump responded by accusing Obama and Biden of “probably treason.”

The next day, Rion triggered another familiar Trump diatribe by asking for his take on the resignation of Carmen Best, the first Black woman to lead Seattle’s police force, after the city council voted to cut her department’s budget. “What does this say about our country?” Rion asked Trump. “And what does this say about the Defund Police movement?” The president replied by repeating the lie that Seattle’s Democratic mayor had let “a radical left group, Antifa and others, take over a big portion of the city.”

On Wednesday, Rion drew Trump’s attention to what looked like a fairly lame conservative prank — the fact that the obscure website antifa.com was suddenly redirecting traffic to Biden’s campaign site. Suggesting that this stunt might somehow indicate support for Biden from the loose network of antifascist groups Trump has falsely portrayed as a shadow army, Rion asked if the president thought Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, should “publicly denounce the Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization?”

[twt]

They should,” Trump replied. “I think they’re afraid to. In my book, it’s virtually a part of their campaign: Antifa.” There was nothing remotely surprising in Trump making the absurd argument that Biden, a centrist Democrat, is secretly part of an antifascist subculture, but Rion’s play-acting as a White House correspondent is not intended to elicit any new information from the president. The point of these exchanges is to shield Trump from what tough questions about his failure to lead a coordinated federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic and to give him an opportunity to repeat lines he has already rehearsed, delivered as if they were answers to questions of vital importance.

Rion, who has been attending briefings as a guest of the White House press secretary since April, previously traveled to Ukraine with the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to promote false accusations about Biden spread by the pro-Russian lawmaker Andriy Derkach. An American intelligence assessment released last week concluded that Derkach was involved in a Russian plot to undermine Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party by “spreading claims about corruption — including through publicizing leaked phone calls” from 2016 between the former vice president and Ukraine’s president.

On Thursday, shortly after Trump praised the crackpot legal scholar who invented a racist conspiracy theory that Harris was not eligible to be vice president, even though she was born to immigrant parents in Oakland, he turned again to Rion. This time, however, she asked if he would, instead, take a question from Emel Akan of The Epoch Times, another of his press secretary’s guests from an equally rabid pro-Trump media outlet.

When Trump agreed, Akan asked him how the U.S. would respond to “the recent attack on press freedom in Hong Kong,” specifically the arrest of the publisher of the popular Apple Daily tabloid news site, Jimmy Lai, who has been an outspoken critic of the pro-Beijing leadership in the semiautonomous Chinese city. Lai could be charged with “collusion” with the United States for meeting Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington last summer to discuss Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protest movement.

Although Trump began by saying, “Well, I think it’s a terrible thing,” he appeared to have little familiarity or interest in the subject of press freedom, or democracy in Hong Kong, pivoting quickly into his stock complaints about China’s trade policies. He even seemed to gloat a bit when he said that, as a result of the U.S. withdrawing the “tremendous financial incentives” for businesses based in Hong Kong, American companies might profit from the crackdown on the territory.

“We’ve now withdrawn all of those incentives. It’s going to be very hard for Hong Kong to compete,” Trump said. “And I will tell you that the United States… will end up making a lot more money because of it, because we lost a lot of business to Hong Kong,” he added. “We made it very convenient for people to go there, for companies to go there. We’ve withdrawn all of that and the United States will be a big beneficiary from an economic standpoint.”

While Trump’s answer was not the kind of stirring endorsement of press freedom Akan might have expected from an American president, inciting an attack on China’s government was probably gratifying to the owners of The Epoch Times. The paper is owned by members of the dissident Chinese Falun Gong spiritual movement who have spent heavily to promote Trump as a useful battering ram against their ultimate enemy: the Chinese Communist Party that considers the banned sect a cult. An Epoch Times echoes Trump’s rhetoric that China is to blame for the global pandemic, but urges people to call it not “the China Virus,” as Trump does, but the “CCP Virus.”

The White House press secretary’s invitation to the Epoch Times writer to participate in the briefing alongside reporters and photographers from some of America’s leading news organizations is remarkably brazen given that last year, when The Epoch Times was outside of the president’s own campaign, the site spent heavily to promote the baseless conspiracy theory that Biden had abused his power as vice president in 2016 to protect his son’s business interests in Ukraine.

Since then, the site has been banned from advertising on Facebook, after NBC reported that the newspaper had secretly placed Facebook ads promoting President Trump.Last week, Facebook also removed 303 fake accounts linked to The Epoch Times for spreading misinformation about Covid-19 and pro-Trump conspiracy theories about supposedly shadowy figures behind the ongoing racial justice protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

On Friday, after Trump twice refused to answer a question from The Associated Press about whether he believes the QAnon conspiracy theory in which he is a central figure,he from Alicia Powe, who writes for the far-right Gateway Pundit blog.

Powe, who has claimed that the Clinton Foundation controls the FBI and is stifling investigations of child sex-trafficking rings and the murder of Seth Rich, asked Trump to comment on the accusation that Biden had claimed credit for the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

[vid]

powe’s question was based on a blog post by the founder of Gateway Pundit, Jim Hoft, which amplified an attack on Biden from the Kremlin-owned site Russia Today. Hoft’s post also quotes the analysis of Heshmat Alavi, a supporter of a militant Iranian cult called the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, who, as my colleague Murtaza Hussain revealed last year, is a fictional character.

McEnany did not respond to a question about whether she or someone else in her office invited Powe to the briefing on Friday, but Powe is a former blogger for WorldNetDaily, the far-right website that helped create the racist “birther” conspiracy theory to undermine President Barack Obama. Alyssa Farah, the White House director of strategic communications, is the daughter of Joseph Farah, who founded WorldNetDaily. In the 1990s, Joseph Farah was a leading proponent of the conspiracy theory that deputy White House counsel Vince Foster might have been murdered.

The presence of Rion, Akan and Powe also infuriated the White House Correspondents Association, whose members have agreed to send only 14 reporters a day during the pandemic, to maintain safe social distance.

The WHCA, which normally decides which accredited journalists are allowed in to the briefing room on a given day, also wants the aisles at the sides and the back of the room to be open for photographers and video crews to operate safely. “It is outrageous that the White House continues to invite ‘guests’ to press briefings, putting the health and safety of everyone in that workspace at greater risk,” the WHCA president, Zeke Miller, said in an email. “The WHCA’s social distancing guidelines were crafted in consultation with the White House based on the recommendations of the CDC and the nation’s leading public health professionals. Trampling on those guidelines endangers the critical work of reporters who have maintained independent press coverage of the presidency throughout the pandemic.”

Until April, OAN was a member of the correspondents’ association but the cable channel was expelled after Rion kept showing up at briefings when it was not her turn. Since then, she has attended press events as a guest of the White House press secretary.

Unlike the original, freewheeling coronavirus task force briefings — which came to a sudden halt in April when Trump mused that doctors should “check” to see if injecting patients suffering from Covid-19 with bleach or isopropyl alcohol, or exposing them to ultraviolet light, might cure them — the president’s current news conferences are much shorter and seem designed mainly to get his lengthy, written opening statements on the air and get him out of the briefing room after taking just a handful of questions.

Trump’s opening statements at the latest briefings are often nakedly political in nature, featuring crude, jarring attacks on Biden and other Democrats. “Today, we saw Joe Biden continue to politicize a pandemic and to show his appalling lack of respect for the American people. That’s what it is,” Trump said at the start of Thursday’s briefing. “At every turn, Biden has been wrong about the virus, ignoring the scientific evidence and putting left-wing politics before facts and evidence.”

After then blatantly lying about Biden’s suggested response to the pandemic in the most idiotic terms — “Sleepy Joe rejects the scientific approach in favor of locking all Americans in their basements for months on end” — Trump concluded, with a stunning lack of self-awareness: “To Joe, I would say: Stop playing politics with a virus. Too serious. Partisan politics has no place here. It’s a shameful situation for anybody to try and score political points while we’re working to save lives and defeat the pandemic.”

Trump’s prepared remarks at these briefings almost always feature highly misleading health and economic statistics intended to convey the false impression that the federal government’s pandemic response is the envy of the world.

At Tuesday’s briefing, for example, Trump said in his opening statement: “Since the end of July, the seven-day average for cases in the United States has fallen by nearly 20 percent, but the virus continues to increase in nations across the globe. Last week, France and Germany both recorded their highest daily number of new cases in three months — not that I want to bring that up, but might as well explain it to the media.” While those statistical measures of the increase by percentage of new cases in Europe and decrease by percentage in the U.S. were accurate, what they hid was the fact that, in raw numbers, the pandemic is obviously far less under control here than there.[shillenberger pat m cherrypick]

The day Trump made those remarks, 53,315 new Covid-19 infections were confirmed by testing in the U.S. Germany’s highest number of daily infections in three months, recorded this week, was 1,445. Cases are down more in the U.S. but from a very high level to a slightly less high level. In much of Europe, cases are rising but from very low baseline. Adjusted for population, the U.S. recorded 154 new cases per million on Friday, while France had 41 and Germany 17.[graf]

While the pandemic is resurgent in many parts of the world, Trump has been unable so far to brow-beat the public into accepting his obviously false claims that things are better in the United States than in Europe or Asia. A new poll released by Monmouth University on Thursday showed that 52 percent of Americans “think the United States’ handling of the pandemic is worse than other countries,” while just 15 percent feel the U.S. is doing a better job than others and 29 percent say it is doing about the same.

Having complained on Wednesday about what he called “a wiseguy question” from a reporter who noted that two top Federal Reserve officials “said that the economy hasn’t recovered strong enough because the country hasn’t contained the virus,” Trump devoted part of his opening remarks at Thursday’s briefing to falsely complaining that Biden, who, “never takes questions.”

“I take questions; he never takes questions,” Trump continued. “And you sort of wonder what’s going on, because they’re not that difficult. Some can be nasty, but they’re not that difficult.”

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https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/04/17/hate-groups-and-racist-pundits-spew-covid-19-misinformation-social-media-despite-companies

Hate groups and racist pundits have pushed misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic on mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube throughout the crisis, despite companies pledging to fight fake news about the virus.

Among some of the false claims propagated on social media include the notion – based on unproven race science – that persons of East Asian descent were predisposed to suffer from COVID-19, erroneous assertions that the virus was originally designed to be a bioweapon and arguments supporting the idea that racism can protect against global pandemics.

Hatewatch has chosen to repeat some of these posts in full to demonstrate the nature of the problem.

This deluge of COVID-19-related misinformation cuts against a pledge made by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter in February 2020, when representatives from some of the world’s largest tech companies convened with members of the World Health Organization (WHO) to discuss tampering the spread of false information related to the virus. The group was gathered, in part, in response to what a representative from the WHO dubbed an “infodemic” in an interview with CNBC – the new wave of false information on major social media platforms.

Groups such as Change the Terms, a coalition of civil rights organizations including the Southern Poverty Law Center, have pushed to bridge this gap. Change the Terms advocates for social media companies to adopt a reasonable standard of care regarding regulation, which aims to constrain hate activity without stifling communities arbitrarily. But there is work yet to be done. Companies, as the 2019 “Year in Hate” report found, still struggle “to prioritize public safety over the freedom of their users to post extremist content.” The moderation of hate groups across all platforms is often inconsistent as well. Some groups, such as white nationalist publication American Renaissance, have been banned from Twitter and Facebook for hate speech for years, but have nevertheless continued to operate on YouTube.

As Hatewatch found in a survey of numerous hate groups tracked by the SPLC’s Intelligence Project across three major social media platforms – YouTube, Facebook and Twitter – racism and disinformation has continued to fester. In addition to spreading racist memes and fake news about Asian Americans and other minority groups, hate groups have used all three platforms to boost a slew of conspiracy theories, fake cures (including one that has resulted in a death in Arizona) and anti-immigrant rhetoric.

When considering the real-world threat posed by social media companies’ inability to enforce their own guidelines on misinformation and fake news, Chloe Colliver, the head of digital policy and strategy at ISD, told Hatewatch that “three main risks came to mind.” These included the risks posed not only to public health by the proliferation of fake cures, but also to institutions as a result of a preponderance of conspiracy theories. She also cited the danger of “target attacks” against minority groups and others.

“None of which are new,” she added. “They fit the patterns of platforms’ inability to deal with [these] specific kinds of attack and disinformation content.”

Most, if not all, of the groups spreading this content have been given a pass to do so under existing social media policies.

“Obviously, the historical reticence of these companies to promote evidence-based or expert information above other kinds of information has come back to bite [them] now, as we’ve seen,” Colliver continued. “The platforms themselves acknowledged that their policies aren’t up to scratch in a crisis like this.”

Facebook

VDARE, a white nationalist site that has had a promotional page on Facebook since 2012, has seized upon this climate of instability to push its racist agenda. More than 50 posts on its promotional page referred to the epidemic in some capacity.

“There is now scientific evidence that Africans (and Whites) are more resistant to [COVID-19] than Asians and that this is for genetic reasons,” one post from March 5 said. It included a link to an article from pseudonymous New York-based contributor “Lance Welton,” titled “Chinese Scientists Find MORE Evidence That Coronavirus (a.k.a. COVID-19) Discriminates By Race.”

“I’m sure the health authorities do have this information,” VDARE editor Peter Brimelow contended in an article posted to the site on March 12 as a follow up to “Welton’s” piece. Using debunked race science, Brimelow posited that COVID-19, as well as its predecessor, SARS, were “Oriental-specific.”

“Are some racial groups more prone to catching the Chinese pathogen – and are some races more severely affected when they do?” asked another Facebook post from March 31 – the same day officials announced that deaths in the United States had officially surpassed those of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The same post included a link to an article featuring a section titled “Coronovirus [sic] and the Mexican Race.”

VDARE, which has often referred to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan flu” (or “Wuflu”), defended Trump’s own use of the term on March 17 as well, arguing in a March 17 post that any opposition to such nomenclature was born out of a world where “white people are blamed for all . . . problems.”

Fake cures, not to mention misinformation regarding the source of the virus and government efforts to contain it, have been featured on a number of pages belonging to hate groups and extremist groups monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

WorldNetDaily (WND), a conspiracy-minded outlet and active antigovernment extremist group with over 840,000 likes on Facebook, has boosted a number of articles featuring antisemitic dog whistles, fake cures and other disinformation. Recent WND headlines include: “Coronavirus is being weaponized by Soros, others behind anti-Trump ads”; “Clyburn: Democrats must use Chinese virus to restructure America ‘to fit our vision’”; and “Newt Gingrich’s question for Biden exposes Obama’s undeniable role in N95 mask shortage.” Another proclaimed that a three-drug cocktail promoted by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko had a “100% success” rate in treating 350 patients with COVID-19. The article, which was shared to WND’s Facebook on March 24, includes an embedded video from Dr. Zelenko himself, which has since been removed by YouTube for violating community guidelines.

Though the particular combination of drugs – which includes hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial treatment – has been used by some doctors, the rapid spread of misinformation regarding the drugs’ use has raised some concern, especially for patients who may attempt to administer them themselves.

On March 31, WND published an article titled “‘Cover-up’: Chinese researched bat virus near Wuhan market,” which posited that the virus may have originated in a research lab near Wuhan.

Several antigovernment groups, including militias, peppered their pages with misinformation implying that the virus would result in a communist takeover of essential industries and/or attacks on the Second Amendment. These fears are central to the antigovernment movement’s opposition to the “New World Order.” This far-reaching conspiracy theory, which features prominently in antigovernment and other far-right circles, posits that a small, secretive cadre of elites are behind a rising totalitarian, one-world government.

“We’re not going down the road that leads to tyranny, and that’s what this whole crisis is about,” James Stachowiak, otherwise known as “Johnny Infidel,” said on a video on Facebook that sought to inspire “lone wolves” to take action.

“KLAYMAN: LEFT USING COVID-19 TO INSTALL GOV’T DICTATORSHIP!,” screamed a post on Freedom Watch’s page – a group run by far-right extremist Larry Klayman – in a post from March 25.

Still others encouraged users to view the virus as a vast “globalist” conspiracy. This antisemitic euphemism is frequently used by groups such as WND and Infowars, and has its roots in the centuries-old antisemitic image of Jews as “puppeteers” in complete control of society. One post from anti-LGBTQ extremist Scott Lively, published on March 22, claimed that the coronavirus outbreak had been “orchestrated” by the elites. Their goal, he contended, was to target “small business because it is a cornerstone of American self-sufficiency and serves as a barrier to the complete Marxist takeover of our society.”

Twitter

“Now think of a country the size of China . . . and think of its multi-thousand-year habit of eating some very strange creatures – basically a zoo is a menu in China, it seems. What are the odds that coronavirus just happened to emerge within a stone’s throw – in a giant country – of its only level four bioweapons lab?” asked white nationalist YouTuber and self-proclaimed philosopher Stefan Molyneux in a video clip posted to his Twitter on March 30.

“The odds, of course, are virtually zero,” he said. He claimed the virus appeared to be “engineered,” possibly for “transmission and lethality.”

Molyneux – who runs a verified account on Twitter with over 450,000 followers – has spread racist or pseudoscientific disinformation about COVID-19 for weeks.

“Open borders guy reaps fruit of open borders,” he tweeted on March 7, after the head of Italy’s Democratic Party tested positive for the virus.

Then, on March 25, Molyneux released a video accusing the media of turning “attention away from the mass infiltration of academia, of media, of Hollywood, [and] of real estate [by] Chinese citizens, often with illicit money from the criminal actions of the Chinese government.”

Finally, when asked by a follower why German hospitals weren’t “overwhelmed,” Molyneux encouraged followers on March 26 to “go look up average IQ by country.”

Molyneux, a well-known proponent of scientific racism, has as recently as Oct. 7, 2019, stated that the “average IQ in Syria is 83. Turkey is 90. They will never ever be like the West.” In 2018, he also cited “racial IQ differences” as a method to “push back against Third World immigration without succumbing to racism.”

Molyneux has made his affinity for a white “monoculture,” to borrow his term, widely known. In late 2018, Molyneux said he had endeared himself to white nationalist beliefs after visiting Poland, which he referred to as “an all-white country,” according to a Right Wing Watch report from Dec. 21, 2018.

Other prominent far-right accounts have sought to downplay the threat posed to Americans by the virus in various ways.

Far-right social media personality and Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe produced a series of videos featuring him driving to different COVID-19 testing sites and hospitals in the New York City metro area on March 27. The videos, which were published on both O’Keefe’s personal Twitter with over 710,000 followers, as well as Project Veritas’s verified account with some 460,000 followers, include O’Keefe pressing a national guardsman to call the media coverage of the crisis “overblown.”

Though one of the videos was removed from O’Keefe’s Facebook on April 1, they remain on Twitter.

VDARE, which has evaded waves of Twitter bans targeting white nationalists, advertised on April 3 that they had created a “special archive” for posts related to COVID-19 and race. According to the white nationalist site, the “race-denying ruling class” – as one author called them in a March 28 article quoted on Twitter on April 1 – has supposedly denied the role of pseudoscientific racial differences in the spread of the disease.

“Ruling Class concedes it’s ok to Notice that Coronavirus discriminates by gender, but NOT that it discriminates by race. Why?” the account tweeted on Feb. 21.

VDARE also pushed the same anti-Asian rhetoric that has led to a wave of hate crimes across the country. “575,000+ Chinese call NYC home,” it posted on March 22, along with a link to an article titled “Is NYC Coronavirus Ground Zero Because Massive ‘Be Strong Wuhan’ Feb 9th Chinese New Year’s Parade Helped Spread the Chinese Virus?”

Twitter has, at times, cracked down on disinformation on the platform. On March 25, Twitter removed a post from the far-right site the Federalist, which advocated for spreading the virus through “chickenpox parties.” A March 27 tweet from Turning Point USA head Charlie Kirk, which echoed the president’s endorsement of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment, has since been removed from the platform for a terms of service violation. Two tweets from the far-right populist president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, were removed on March 30 for spreading misinformation.

YouTube

“We actually have sound, instinctive reasons to be xenophobes,” American Renaissance head Jared Taylor told viewers in a YouTube video posted on March 12. He continued:

Everyone knows about the body’s immune system, which fights disease. We also have a behavioral immune system. All people everywhere instinctively avoid certain things that could make us sick. Piles of feces. Rotting flesh. People with running sores. Part of this behavioral immune system is an instinctive fear that people who act or look strange could be carrying disease.

“Xenophobia,” Taylor concluded, “can save your life.”

Taylor followed up on March 27, noting in a video titled “What the Virus Means for Us” that “everything teaches ‘identitarian’ lessons, including the coronavirus.”

“Professor Giorgio Palu, former president of the European Society of Virology, says that early on there was a proposal to isolate people coming from China, but they didn’t do that because people would’ve said that was ‘racist.’ Professor Polu believes that a large level of the devastation [in Italy] was caused by that: fear of being called racist,” Taylor said later in the same video.

Though Palu did acknowledge that a proposal to “isolate people coming from China” was shot down in a statement to CNN on March 18, he also explained that the breadth of Italy’s outbreak arose from the government lagging on both testing and enforcing lockdowns.

Despite being banned from Twitter since 2018, American Renaissance’s YouTube channel and its 126,000 subscribers have remained.

Jason Köhne, a white nationalist podcaster and vlogger known online as “No White Guilt,” blamed “anti-whiteism” not only for coronavirus spreading throughout the United States, but also for ensuring that many medicines and medical products were produced abroad.

“This is an anti-white issue,” he said in a video posted on March 24. “You can say there’s an economic component to it, but the bottom line is that the . . . incentivization structures have been put in place to capitalize on the harm inflicted on Western kind.”

Molyneux, meanwhile, used his channel to flesh out the idea, also propagated on his Twitter, that the virus was a “bioweapon.”

“[COVID-19] is kind of like the perfect virus from a weaponization standpoint, and if it was related to eating bats, it’s not like people in China started eating bats last October,” he said in a podcast from Jan. 25.

In a live stream aired March 27, Molyneux, along with his guest, Dr. Paul Cottrell, who received his Ph.D. in finance from the online, for-profit school, Walden University, discussed whether “the Wuhan virus is the bioweapon” that Cottrell contended had leaked out of a lab near Wuhan in 2015. Molyneux later pondered whether the virus’s spread throughout the world ought to be considered an act of “manslaughter” or even “homicide,” presumably on China’s part.

A day later, in a now-unlisted YouTube video linked to on Molyneux’s Twitter he declared a sort of victory for the racist, anti-immigrant right.

“All the people who were called ‘xenophobic’ and ‘racist’ for wanting to talk about immigration – who said that it was possible to stop it relatively easily – they’ve all been proven right,” he said in the March 28 video.

“Now the walls go up because it affects those in power,” he said

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/hiding-in-plain-sight-the-white-nationalist-who-toiled-inside-a-right-wing-media-powerhouse

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Right Wing Watch

Trending Donald Trump Impeachment Immigration White Nationalism

Hiding in Plain Sight: The White Nationalist Who Toiled Inside a Right-Wing Media Powerhouse

By Jared Holt | February 3, 2020 9:00 am By Angry White Men | February 3, 2020 9:00 am

The following article was reported in collaboration with Angry White Men. It also appears on Angry White Men.

Michael J. Thompson demanded that someone turn down the “horrifying music” so that he could introduce Scott Greer, then editor of The Daily Caller, whose first book Thompson had helped publish. He took nervous pulls from a can of Coors Light beer as he addressed the crowd assembled in the offices of the right-wing publication, mixing self-deprecating jokes about the “Walmart spread” of food offered to guests and seemingly earnest calls to action.

“Do not underestimate the value of your voice in influencing people in the Trump administration. You’ve got to keep fighting, because guess what, no one else is gonna do it. You have to do it,” Thompson told the crowd of people assembled on a March 2017 evening in downtown Washington, D.C., in remarks captured in a Periscope video.

Less than 24 hours before the party, an article appeared on a blog operated by Thompson; the author, writing under the name Paul Kersey, claimed to know why people were supposedly afraid to go travel to Baltimore, Maryland: “Blacks. Nothing more. Nothing less.” The closing kicker of the blog post stated the writer’s prejudice in stark terms: “No blacks, know peace; know blacks, no peace. It’s really this simple.” It is just one of more than 3,500 analogous articles that exist today on Thompson’s blog, “Stuff Black People Don’t Like.”

Thompson is just one of many members of the white nationalist movement in the United States that attempted to reinvent its public image with the “alt-right” moniker and rose to a flash of influence in Republican politics amid the 2016 presidential campaign of? Donald J. Trump. Leading up to that political moment, a clique of the movement’s believers had situated themselves inside GOP-aligned institutions and media outlets in and around Washington, where they used the resources at their disposal to advance their cause. Thompson’s career took him inside the Leadership Institute, a pillar of the conservative movement for more than 40 years, and ultimately to the right-wing tabloid-style website, WorldNetDaily.

The story of Thompson’s career is not one of a random internet blogger; it’s a blueprint that others have followed.

A barely underground member of the white nationalist movement, Thompson has toiled undisturbed, until recently, in conservative spaces, even as a number of his associates have since been exposed for supporting the movement that left blood in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, at the 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist gathering.

Right Wing Watch and Angry White Men, a not-for-profit blog tracking figures in the white supremacist movement, can report that Thompson is the previously unknown author of racist material that has appeared on blogs and the best-known white nationalist publications for more than a decade under the Paul Kersey pen name. Angry White Men contributed in-depth research to this article while Right Wing Watch completed the investigative reporting.

Entering the Nucleus of Conservative Media

Michael J. Thompson with friends, including white nationalists Kevin DeAnna and Scott Greer. (Photo courtesy of Katie McHugh)]

The halls of The Leadership Institute’s headquarters are lined with photographs of its distinguished alumni, visual markers of its place in conservative politics. Headshots of notable graduates–figures including Ralph Reed, Rep. Jim Jordan, and even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Vice President Mike Pence, among others–are arranged in a single row on each side of a long corridor, all in identical frames. On any given week, young conservatives can attend events in its offices in Arlington, Virginia, for training in skills like public speaking, creative design, campaigning, and fundraising, and opportunities to hear distinguished guests from Capitol Hill and conservative media. On its website, the Leadership Institute claims to have “trained more than 200,000 conservative activists, leaders, and students” since its founding in 1979. It was there that Michael Thompson appears to have entered conservative politics, working as a member of the organization’sCampus Services Program,according to a 2010 press release.

During his tenure at the Leadership Institute, it also appears Thompson wrote articles for its Campus Reform media outlet.Articles bearing his byline have since been deleted but were cached via Google site-search results. Working at the Leadership Institute, Thompson grew close to white nationalist Kevin DeAnna, who was a leader of the Leadership Institute’s campus leadership program and began writing his blog, “Stuff Black People Don’t Like” (a play on the name of an internet-famous early 2000s satire blog, “Stuff White People Like”). In 2011, Thompson authored his first column for the racist publication VDARE, whose editor, Peter Brimelow, is a regular speaker at far-right conferences and has participated in panel discussions with Jared Taylor, founder of the white supremacist American Renaissance website, and Richard B. Spencer, the alt-right impresario who led the 2017 tiki-torch march at the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville on the eve of a violent gathering of far-right groups in the center of town.

You will barely find a trace of Thompson’s years at the Leadership Institute on its website—or anywhere, really. Neither Leadership Institute Communications Coordinator Sarah Morrison nor Campus Reform Editor-in-Chief Cabot Phillips responded to inquiries from Right Wing Watch seeking basic information on Thompson’s position with the organization.

After he left the Leadership Institute, Thompson joined the staff of WorldNetDaily, a right-wing conspiracy-theory website aligned with the Republican Party, where he worked in the marketing department. The site is helmed by founder Joseph Farah, a Trump associate who helped the then-presidential hopeful advance the false claim that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

Thompson’s name appeared on WorldNetDaily’s masthead as early as Jan. 29, 2012, and as late as Nov. 18, 2018, as preserved in online snapshot archives. Throughout his entire tenure at the digital publication run by one of Trump’s loudest boosters, Thompson was moonlighting under a pseudonym at racist and white nationalist publications run by Brimelow and Taylor. Thompson’s work was scrubbed from the WorldNetDaily site, but some of it ?was archived. WorldNetDaily editors, including Farah, ?failed to respond to Right Wing Watch’s emailed requests for comment.

Thompson found himself at WorldNetDaily during the pinnacle of its ascendance in the Republican Party. In its heyday, Farah sought to expand WorldNetDaily into a conservative media powerhouse, publishing books by? Rep. Devin Nunes?, who is now the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and right-wing activist Phyllis Schlafly, ?who died in 2016, not long after she endorsed Trump for president. Farah even launched a documentary filmmaking company? that produced feature-length movies about gun issues, Christianity, and the supposed secret plots to undermine Western civilization. When Thompson was employed there, Farah and his outlet were enjoying a renaissance of sorts, establishing WorldNetDaily as a mill for the “birther movement,” as the racist narrative questioning Obama’s birth certificate came to be known.

Using his WorldNetDaily position for access, Thompson rubbed shoulders with high-profile Republican politicians and publishers. In 2012, Thompson interviewed Joe Arpaio,then the sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, about Barack Obama’s birth certificate and other birtherism theories for WorldNetDaily (the video has since been deleted from WorldNetDaily’s website?).

During an appearance on “The Hagmann Report” in 2017, Thompson boasted that he had been in contact with former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon before Bannon joined the Trump campaign. Bannon did not respond to our request for comment.

“You know, I used to share emails three or four times a week with Steve Bannon before he was invited to become part of the Trump campaign,” Thompson told “The Hagmann Report” hosts Joe Hagmann and Jon Robberson.

In one email provided to Right Wing Watch and Angry White Men by former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh, Thompson can be seen pitching conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsias a potential guest on the SiriusXM radio program produced by Breitbart News, which Bannon hosted at the time. Bannon declined, writing back, “Zero interest,” and “Not a fan.”? However, Bannon also instructed Thompson to send “all your other books” from WorldNetDaily authors, presumably for their radio-guest potential....

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https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/laura-ingraham-lifezette/

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EXTRAORDINARY PHENOMENON of fake news spread by Facebook and other social media during the 2016 presidential election has been largely portrayed as a lucky break for Donald Trump.

By that reckoning, entrepreneurial Macedonian teenagers, opportunists in Tbilisi and California millennials have exploited social media algorithms in order to make money — only incidentally leading to the viral proliferation of mostly anti-Clinton and anti-Obama hoaxes and conspiracy theories that thrilled many Trump supporters. The Washington Post published a shoddy report on Thursday alleging that Russian state-sponsored propagandists were seeking to promote Trump through fabricated stories for their own reasons, independent of the candidate himself.

But a closer look reveals that some of the biggest fake news providers were run by experienced political operators well within the orbit of Donald Trump’s political advisers and consultants.

Laura Ingraham, a close Trump ally currently under consideration to be Trump’s White House press secretary, owns an online publisher called Ingraham Media Group that runs a number of sites, including LifeZette, a news site that frequently posts articles of dubious veracity. One video produced by LifeZette this summer, ominously titled “Clinton Body Count,” promoted a conspiracy theory that the Clinton family had some role in the plane crash death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., as well as the deaths of various friends and Democrats.

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Another LifeZette video, picking up false claims from other sites, claimed that voting machines “might be compromised” because a voting machine company called Smartmatic, allegedly providing voting machines “in sixteen states,” was purchased by the liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros never purchased the company, and Smartmatic did not provide voting machines used in the general election.The video, published on Facebook from LifeZette’s verified news account, garnered over 400,000 shares and 14 million views.}:

One LifeZette article misleadingly claimed that theUnited Nations backed a “secret” Obama administration takeover of local police departments. The article referenced Justice Department orders that a select few police departments address patterns of misconduct, a practice that, in reality, long predates the Obama presidency, is hardly secret, and had no relation to the United Nations.

Another LifeZette article, which went viral in the week prior to the election, falsely claimed that Wikileaks had revealed that a senior Hillary Clinton campaign official had engaged in occult rituals. Ingraham’s site regularly receives links from the Drudge Report and other powerful drivers of Internet traffic.

But LifeZette, for all its influence, pales in comparison to the sites run by Floyd Brown, a Republican consultant close to Trump’s inner circle of advisers. Brown gained notoriety nearly three decades ago for his role in helping to produce the “Willie Horton” campaign advertisement, a spot criticized for its use of racial messaging to derail Michael Dukakis’s presidential bid. Brown is also the political mentor of David Bossie, an operative who went to work for Trump’s presidential campaign this year after founding the Citizens United group. In an interview this year, Brown called Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway a .”

Brown now produces a flow of reliably pro-Trump Internet content through a company he co-owns with his family called Liftable Media Inc.,which operates a number of high-impact, tabloid-style news outlets that exploded in size over the course of the election. One of Brown’s sites, Western Journalism, is the 81st largest site in the U.S. with 13 million monthly unique monthly visitors, according to rankings maintained by the site Alexa. Another, called Conservative Tribune, is the 50th largest site with over 19 million monthly unique visitors. Liftable Media is run on a day to day basis by Brown’s son, Patrick, who is the president of Liftable Media.

As the fact-checking website Snopes was quick to note, it was no signal of surrender and the bleached white version of the White House logo, complete with a white flag, was not even an Obama creation. The white logo dates back to as early as 2003, under the Bush administration, which used it for official documents.Brown’s sites churn out bombastic headlines with little regard to the truth. One viral piece shared by Brown’s news outlets claimed that President Obama had redesigned the White House logo to change the American flag to a white flag, “a common symbol for surrender, which has many people wondering if Obama was trying to secretly signal to America’s enemies that he was surrendering.” The Facebook post touted the article with the line, “We all know Obama hates the United States, but what he just did to the White House logo is beyond the pale.”

The Conservative Tribune and Western Journalism provide a steady stream of similarly deceptive, eye-catching headlines.

“BREAKING: Muslims Ordered to Vote Hillary,” is the headline for one election post that grossly mischaracterized a mundane article about a Pakistani American activist going to door to door to help Clinton’s campaign. “Obama Urges Illegal Immigrants to Vote Without Fear of Getting Caught,” blared Western Journalism, claiming that President Obama had suggested in an interview on issues facing Latino millennial voters that noncitizens could vote and “will never get caught if they do.” The article left out the part of the Obama interview in which he said noncitizens “can’t legally vote, but they’re counting on you to make sure that you have the courage to make your voice heard.”

The hits go on, with posts on a regular basis making claims ranging from the assertion that Clinton went on a “drug holiday” before the Las Vegas presidential debate to rumors that Obama’s birth certificate is under serious scrutiny.

Thanks to views sourced largely to referrals from Facebook, Brown’s websites now outrank web traffic going to news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, CBS News, and NPR, according to data compiled by Alexa. Both Western Journalism and Conservative Tribune are certified by Facebook as bonafide news providers.

Trump’s relationship with one particularly influential online news site with a history of fabricated stories couldn’t be much closer. Steve Bannon,the chairman of Breitbart News, took a leave of absence from the organization to become the chief executive officer of Trump’s presidential campaign and has been tapped to serve as Trump’s chief strategist in the White House. Trump himself regularly promoted Breitbart stories, including a tweet used to justify his campaign to prove Obama was not born in the U.S.

Breitbart News blends commentary and journalism with inflammatory headlines, in many cases producing fake stories sourced from online hoaxes. The site once attempted to pass off a picture of people in Cleveland celebrating the Cavaliers as a massive Trump rally. The site furiously defended Trump’s false claim that “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey were “cheering” the 9/11 attacks, a claim that multiple fact-checking organizations have thoroughly debunked.

Other conservative content farms, including WorldNetDaily, maintained ties to the Trump election effort. Campaign finance records show that Great America PAC, aTrump-backing Super PAC, paid WND, known as the largest purveyor of Obama birth certificate conspiracy theories, for “online voter contact.”

The surge of fake news has been much commented on in the mainstream media — and its effect on Trump’s election victory has been widely debated — with little mention of the purveyors close to the Trump campaign.

A Buzzfeed News article that came out shortly before the election famously traced more than 100 pro-Trump websites to young entrepreneurs in a single town in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, who discovered that the best way to generate clicks — at a fraction of a penny per click in ad revenue — is to get their politics stories to spread on Facebook. After the election, New Yorker editor David Remnick described President Obama as “talking obsessively” about that article, and quoted him bemoaning its significance. “[T]he capacity to disseminate misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, to paint the opposition in wildly negative light without any rebuttal, ” Obama said, “that has accelerated in ways that much more sharply polarize the electorate and make it very difficult to have a common conversation.”

The Washington Post interviewed Paul Horner, the “impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire,” who sounded somewhat aghast when he said, “I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything.”

Another Washington Post story described two Southern California slackers turning their website of made-up pro-Trump clickbait in a virtual goldmine. The New York Times profiled a fake news operation run by three brothers in Tbilisi, Georgia, who experimented with a variety of content, sometimes lifted from other sites, at other times made up from whole cloth, finding that pro-Trump material was the most popular, and therefore the most profitable.

Finally, a Washington Post story this week alleged a Russian government role in spreading fake news to help Trump. But its sources were not remotely credible. For instance, it cited a list that characterized as “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda” a number of well-established and well-respected websites including Truthdig, a site published by award-winning journalist and long-time Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer, Naked Capitalism, and Truth Out.

The growth of fake news isn’t confined to Trump or to conservative sites. A number of left-wing political sites have trafficked in demonstrably false stories, including deceptive pieces stoking fear about vaccines. Earlier this year, when critics called for Clinton to release the transcripts of her three paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, as well as to other interest groups, Daily News Bin, a new liberal website specializing in viral hits, published a piece titled, “Video surfaces of Hillary Clinton’s paid speech to Goldman Sachs, and it’s completely harmless.” The video embedded in the piece, however, was not one of Clinton’s paid speeches; it was a public event sponsored by Goldman Sachs. The article was shared over 120,000 times.

“We live in a time when people don’t care about facts,” said Judy Muller, professor of journalism at the University of Southern California.

During the last three months of the campaign, Buzzfeed News found that the top 20 best-performing hoax stories related to the election had more Facebook engagement than the 20 best-performing stories from major news outlets.

Facebook has responded to the recent outcry over fake news websites with promises to crack down on obvious phony sites. Many critics are still worried that Facebook is not doing enough to counter outright lies promoted by the platform; meanwhile, others are concerned that such efforts risk suppressing critical information.

Muller said that if Ingraham is nominated by Trump to be his spokesperson to the press, she will have to distance herself from her growing Facebook content empire.

But the demand for fake news is unlikely to subside.

A recent study by Stanford University researchers found that students have difficulty discerning between fake content, corporate sponsored advertorial content posing as journalism, and legitimate news.

“People only care about opinions that support their own biases,” said Muller. “So they’re not reading other people’s facts, they’re not checking the facts, and they don’t want to know — and that’s the scariest development to me.”

==

Write For Western Journalism

:{by Patrick Brown February 6, 2012

Western Journalism Correspondents have a unique opportunity.

With more than 13 million unique readers a month, and with more than 35 million total monthly page views, WesternJournalism.com has experienced unprecedented growth. If you believe like the great abolitionist Wendell Phillips when he said, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” and you want to write, you may have what it takes to be a Western Journalism correspondent.

Our editors would love the opportunity to consider publishing your work. Our submission process requires a short biography, a brief explanation of your expertise and basic contact information. Please note that spelling and grammar will also be evaluated as part of the article selection process. So get started today and submit your first piece. Please keep your submission between 250 and 1000 words, or we will not consider it for publication.

Western Journalism correspondents choose where, when and what to write about. Write from home, school or wherever inspiration strikes!

Don’t worry if publishing online is new to you. Western Journalism.com provides the training and tools needed to publish and promote articles. Access to our unique platform will help you grow your audience and brand, as well as provide a forum where you can connect with other Western Journalism readers.

Our most successful Western Journalism correspondents also spend time promoting their content to their social and business networks using tools such as Twitter, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, email lists, message boards and word-of-mouth. If you are unfamiliar with these networking tools, Western Journalism.com provides the resources you need to learn and master online marketing.

We simply request that you keep your topic fresh and relevant, so we suggest 3-4 posts per week to help you build an interested audience. On average, an active and successful Western Journalism correspondent spends 4-6 hours per week writing and publishing content for Western Journalism.com, responding to comments from readers, and marketing. Some Western Journalism correspondents choose to invest more time, even publishing multiple articles per day. The time you spend is truly up to you, but frequent publishing is one major key to the success.

If you are trying to grow traffic on your own blog or website, feel free to include one link to it at the end of each post.

What do you gain as a Western Journalism Correspondent?

Through their contributions, Western Journalism correspondents often gain local, national and international media coverage and have appeared on The Today Show, NPR, E!, CNN, Fox News,  MSNBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many others. The exposure that Western Journalism correspondents receive from their articles can lead to numerous career opportunities from full-time jobs to being approached to write for major publications, work on books, and other rewarding projects.

Western Journalism correspondents have access to professional development, including training and support on various topics such as: How to write for the Web, Social Marketing, Photo Editing, Using Web 2.0 Tools, and many others.

Will I be asked to purchase anything or pay a fee?

Never! You may choose to purchase business cards, t-shirts or other official Western Journalism.com items if you desire to do so.

==

wnd1116

==

floyd brown fake news

Other conservative content farms, including WorldNetDaily, maintained ties to the Trump election effort. Campaign finance records show that Great America PAC, a Trump-backing Super PAC, paid WND, known as the largest purveyor of Obama birth certificate conspiracy theories, for “online voter contact.”

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/laura-ingraham-lifezette/

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WND j farah (ed Sac Union which gave him access to sillican vly, but paper went belly up, went to WJ ctr (huff on bd)  got pal RL to write cols for SU. 8 mill unique vis 400mil$ merchandize (dirt form temple mt, TP 135  claimed broke BO ayers, Hamas endorse BO and investigate BO chic church 136 BO will bring back inqusition and destroy capitalism Van J but also crazy h1n1 microchip imppamnts and FEMA conc camps 136 creationsit: fossil fuels do not come from fossils 136 BO coke and gay sex, hillary bisex, survival seeds and crisis cooker (no power, so at least green?]  JF admits he does not read cols 137it before or even after publ; prayed for BO to fail b/c his cap "evil" hitler, stalin, chavez abd castro natl health care 139

==splc 11/16

mong its enduring storylines is the "birther" theory advanced by columnist Jerome Corsi, who asserts that President Obama is ineligible to serve because he was not born in America, a baseless claim long since abandoned by most of the political right.

In Its Own Words

"It’s important to understand – and this is hard for most of us – that crime and mayhem and lawlessness are actual goals of transformational socialists."

—Joseph Farah, “Another Theory About Obama’s Domestic Army,” Feb. 10, 2013

"Jesse Jackson and Al Not-So-Sharpton would be lisping their ebonic mumbo-jumbo that the policy and the president are racist and bigoted."

—Ted Nugent, “Republican Murdering U.S. Citizens,” Feb. 10, 2013, on what would happen if a GOP president authorized drone strikes against U.S. citizens

"I hate that this man [Obama] has done everything he can to demean and diminish the role and influence of Christians in this country, despite the fact that Christians were critical in the formation of the country and, like it or not, they’re the majority.”

—Barbara Simpson, “What Happened to My Country?”, Jan. 6, 2013

"Friends, people need to realize that homosexual marriage is not about homosexual marriage; it is about overturning law by a totalitarian government."

—Bradlee Dean, quoted approvingly in “YouTube Pulls Plug on Homosexuality Exposé,” May 17, 2012

Background

WorldNetDaily is a 15-year-old online publication founded and edited by Joseph Farah with the stated goal of "seeking truth and justice and revitalizing the role of the free press as a guardian of liberty." Serving up a daily dose of conspiracy theories, apocalyptic alerts and anti-gay rhetoric, WND was ranked by Alexa in 2012 as the 1,832nd most popular website in the world and the 423rd in the U.S. That ranks just above Nickelodeon and a few spots below Victoria’s Secret.

Fear-mongering is WorldNetDaily's specialty. It regularly publishes paranoid fantasies billed as fact, such as a baseless six-part series claiming that soybean consumption causes homosexuality. It has heavily promoted The Pink Swastika, a wretched opus by gay-basher Scott Lively that claims gay men orchestrated the Holocaust. WND also fingered Satan as the first leftist, and trumpeted a secret 20-point Muslim plan “for conquering the United States by 2020.” Another secret plan WND has warned about concerns international elites’ alleged intention to create a “North American Union” that merges Mexico, the United States and Canada.

Theories about when and how the government — and the world — will collapse are regular WND fodder. It seems to bother no one on the staff that most of these theories are conflicting. WND repeatedly uncovers (manufactures is a better word) sinister government plots, trumpeting them with scare headlines such as "Feds Accused of Fomenting Blood in Our Streets" — standard fodder for adherents and sympathizers of the conspiracy-oriented, antigovernment “Patriot” movement. As the government allegedly prepares to turn on the citizenry and intern them in already built secret camps, WND’s readers are advised in breathless advertisements to invest all their assets in gold and buy as many guns as they can.

"How do authoritarians and totalitarians usually gain power?" asked Farah in a February 2013 column. "One of the tried-and-true methods is to foment social chaos. It happened in the Bolshevik revolution. It happened in Adolf Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s. It happened in Mao’s 'cultural revolution.' It’s important to understand – and this is hard for most of us – that crime and mayhem and lawlessness are actual goals of transformational socialists."

One of WND's longest running "controversies" concerns whether President Obama is a “natural-born” U.S. citizen, originally stirred up by WND columnist Jerome Corsi. Long after the president’s “long-form” birth certificate was released, Corsi continued to pursue the “birther” nonsense. Corsi, incidentally, was also the architect of the “Swift boating” of John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign.

In addition to Corsi, WND columnists comprise a cross-section of reactionaries and fringe wingnuts, including arch-conservative Alan Keyes; actor and mud-slinger Chuck Norris; failed presidential candidate Rick Santorum; race-baiting and  homophobic ex-Major Leaguer John Rocker; radio hothead Rush Limbaugh; and white nationalist writer Pat Buchanan, who was named WND's 2012 Man of the Year. (Trumping that honor was libertarian U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who was named WND's Man of the Decade.)

Santorum is one of the newer WND columnists, following his failed bid for the GOP nomination. His weekly column began in December 2012, kicking off with a familiar refrain: his controversial opposition to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Bottom line: Santorum has a disabled daughter, but argued that the treaty is wrong because it cedes "our sovereignty" to the United Nations. To the surprise of many, the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the treaty soon afterwards, with 38 Republicans voting no.

As a career politician who still harbors presidential ambitions, Santorum is more cautious than some of his WND stablemates. Inane guitar slinger and gun nut Ted Nugent stirred up a hornet's nest of criticism after he wrote a WND column opposing the use of government drones. The topic is fair game, except he took things to an extreme by theorizing what would happen if a Republican president were to authorize drone attacks on U.S. citizens: "Jesse Jackson and Al Not-So-Sharpton would be lisping their ebonic mumbo-jumbo that the policy and the president are racist and bigoted. They would organize protest marches in front of the White House, where they would burn effigies of the president."

Nugent subsequently was invited to attend Barack Obama's 2013 State of the Union address as the guest of Texas Republican Rep. Steve Stockman.

The WND Superstore

Like many large websites, in addition to selling online ads, WND also profits through book and merchandise sales.

The WND Superstore, linked from the main website, offers “Unique Products for Discerning Minds.” Such minds apparently crave items like the NRA-endorsed Second Amendment Range Pack, designed to hold four pistols and 36 magazines in an attractive carry-all imprinted with the words of the Second Amendment. The superstore also offers 830 books on “history, theology, philosophy, political science, education, natural science, society, and family.” These are “thoroughly examined” by WND’s “review board” to “enlighten and empower you in your personal quest to protect your family, engage the culture, speak out against injustice, and fight for what is right.”

Discerning readers will want to pick up books such as Jerome Corsi's The Late Great USA, subtitled as "The North American Union and the Threat of a Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada." Another potboiler is Richard Wurmbrand’s Marx & Satan, hailed by Joseph Farah as “a book that changed my life and worldview,” which details how the young Karl Marx “received the rights of initiation” of a “secret Satanist church” and became the Devil’s “elect servant.”

Bestselling videos at the superstore include a Farah-produced documentary titled "The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment: Is There An Ancient Mystery That Foretells America's Future?," and "Dreams from My Real Father," a documentary purporting to explore the origins of President Obama's supposed Marxism.

Taking America Back

WND’s “Taking America Back National Conference” (also the title of a book by Farah) was launched as an alternative to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, which Farah boycotted because an LGBT Republican group was included. Far-right luminaries in the 2010 speaker lineup included U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Victoria Jackson, former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), anti-gay hate group leader and Christian Reconstructionist theologian Gary DeMar, and R.C. Sproul Jr., a mover-and-shaker in the theocratic Christian “patriarchy” movement and a prominent homeschooling advocate.

Behind the Scenes

As WND's publisher and editor-in-chief, Joseph Farah writes a daily column and stirs this toxic stew. After a checkered newspaper career, culminating in his ill-advised attempt as executive editor to turn the Sacramento Union into a fundamentalist Christian, anti-gay mouthpiece, Farah founded the Western Center for Journalism (WCJ) in 1991. A nonprofit entity whose purpose was “to encourage more philosophical diversity in the news media,” WCJ spawned WorldNetDaily in 1997. Two years later, WND became an independent for-profit company with $4.5 million from an unnamed investor.

Not surprisingly, WND’s board members are politically active in a variety of right-wing causes. In addition to Farah and his wife Elizabeth, the board includes Wayne Johnson, Norman Book, James Clark and Richard Botkin.

Johnson, who has been on WND’s board since 1999, is a Sacramento political consultant whose firm, according to TheRawStory, coordinated the campaign for California’s Proposition 8, which sought to outlaw same-sex marriage in that state. Until June 2002, he was a board member of the Chalcedon Foundation, a Christian Reconstructionist outfit and anti-gay hate group.

Book, who joined the board in 2008, is WND’s executive vice president of finance and technology. As an undergraduate at Stanford University, he co-founded The Stanford Review, which according to his LinkedIn profile was a conservative student weekly meant to “add balance to Stanford’s stifling liberal atmosphere.”

Clark, a board member since 1999, was difficult to track down. Based on the address he listed on WND’s tax form, he appears to be a recently departed lobbyist for the American Bankers Association (ABA). According to his LinkedIn profile, he served as ABA liaison to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a controversial and highly secretive group of far-right state legislators and business lobbyists that writes and pushes model bills and is funded by the far-right Koch brothers. One of those ALEC-backed bills was the pro-gun “Stand Your Ground” law that authorities cited as their reason for not immediately recommending charges against George Zimmerman, the Florida man who shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in February 2012.

Least noteworthy is Botkin, a Sacramento-area financial advisor and former Marine who has been on the board since 1999 and is an occasional contributor to conservative candidates. According to ConWebWatch, he worked with Farah in 2004 during a short-lived effort to revive the Sacramento Union as a magazine. His book about the Vietnam War was published by WND.

From 2000 to 2002, the board also included Robert Beale, an MIT grad who made his money in computers, served as the Minnesota campaign manager for televangelist Pat Robertson’s 1988 presidential bid, and eventually came to sympathize with the radical antigovernment “sovereign citizens” movement. In 2008, Beale was convicted of tax evasion, conspiracy, and fleeing authorites, charges he attempted to evade first by hiding from the law and then by conspiring to intimidate the judge — who, he said, God had commanded him to “destroy” — by filing fraudulent liens and issuing fake “arrest warrants” against her.

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/worldnetdaily

==

The Western Journalism Center (also called the Western Center for Journalism) was co-founded by Joseph Farah and James H. Smith, the "former publisher of the Sacramento Union (and former CEO and publisher of the revived Sacramento Union operation)."[1]

also:

Eric M. Jackson, later wrote The PayPal Wars and became Chief Executive Officer of WND Books, the publishing arm of World Net Daily. He then went on to co-found CapLinked, focused on linking companies and investors.[12]

Eric M. Jackson is the co-founder of CapLinked, focused on linking companies and investors.[1] He was founder and former CEO of WND Books (formerly World Ahead Publishing) and a former vice president of marketing at PayPal. He is one of the PayPal Mafia, a growing number of PayPal alumni who have started new ventures after eBay bought the online payments firm.[2]

In 1998, Jackson received a B.A. in Economics with honors from Stanford University.[3] He served on the board of directors of The Stanford Review.[4] Jackson maintains the book publishing industry blog called Conservative Publisher.[5]

As a publisher, Jackson has been known to embrace controversial books and tactics. A bestselling children's book published by World Ahead, Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under my Bed penned by Katharine Debrecht, portrayed Hillary Rodham Clinton as a cartoon villain, prompting a verbal clash with Clinton's spokesman. He once accused Google of political bias for censoring online ads for a book critical of Bill Clinton, a charge Google denied,[6] and he later paid to send Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick to the Bill Clinton Presidential Library along with the book's author.[7] In October 2006, Jackson and Joseph Farah, the founder of WorldNetDaily, announced that World Ahead Publishing would be partnering on the influential WND Books imprint.[8]

Jackson's own book The PayPal Wars (ISBN 0-9746701-0-3) chronicles PayPal's origins and discusses the legal, regulatory, and competitive threats entrepreneurs must overcome in today's business environment.[9] It won the 2005 Writers Notes Book Award for best business book.[10] It has been profiled by Reason Magazine,[11] the Washington Times,[12] the Mises Institute,[13] Tech Central Station,[14] and Tom Peters.[15]

Jackson frequently appears as a conservative commentator on radio and television programs. In his public comments he is frequently critical of eBay, the company that purchased PayPal. He has been quoted in Forbes,[16] BusinessWeek,[17] TheStreet.com,[18] US News & World Report,[19] and Publishers Weekly, [20] among other publications.

References

^ Eric Jackson

^ "The PayPal Exodus". Forbes. July 12, 2006.

^ Jackson, Eric M. (June 6, 2003). "Stanford: Where Does the Money Go?". Stanford Review.

^ [1][dead link]

^ ConservativePublisher.com

^ Google Defends Not Running Anti-Clinton Banners - Direct Marketing News

^ "Clinton's Accusers Tour His Library". Fox News. October 26, 2005.

^ New publishing partner for WND Books

^ Paypalwars.com

^ "2005 Writers Notes Book Awards Announced". PRWeb. 30 March 2005. Retrieved 2 April 2012.

^ Who Killed PayPal? - Reason Magazine

^ 20th-century evils, Silicon Valley wars - Washington Times

^ "The Genius and Struggle of PayPal". Mises Daily. 4 January 2005. Retrieved 2 April 2012.

^ TCS Daily : Technology - Commerce - Society

^ PayPal | tompeters!

^ "PayPal's Growing Pains". Forbes. April 14, 2005.

^ PayPal Spreads Its Wings

^ eBay Grooms Another Phenom | The Signal and The Noise News | Print Financial & Investing Articles | TheStreet

^ Washington Whispers - US News and World Report

^ "'Liberals' Selling Right and Left". Publishers Weekly. 21 October 2005. Retrieved 2 April 2012.[dead link]

Contents

[hide]

1 Staff

2 Background

2.1 WorldNetDaily

3 Contact

4 Articles and resources

4.1 Related SourceWatch articles

4.2 References

4.3 External resources

4.4 External articles

Staff

The Center is currently headed by conservative political operative Floyd G. Brown.[2]

Also on staff is Caleb Heimlich, Director of Programs.[3]

Background

"The center provided Christopher Ruddy with 'additional expense money, funding for Freedom of Information Act requests, legal support and publicity' during his investigation of the death of Vince Foster while working as a reporter for the New York Post and the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. This included buying full-page ads in major newspapers reproducing Ruddy's work and co-producing a video about the Foster investigation with Ruddy. The center accepted $330,000 in donations from Scaife-connected foundations in 1994-95. The center has been involved in an ongoing lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over a tax audit it alleges was politically motivated. Farah is, like [Brent] Bozell, also a member of the secretive Council for National Policy," ConWebWatch reported.[4]

In March 2009, the Center sent out an email to conservatives promoting conspiracy theories regarding Barack Obama's citizenship.[5]

WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily was "started in May 1997 as a project of the Western Journalism Center. WorldNetDaily describes itself as 'a fiercely independent newssite committed to hard-hitting investigative reporting of government waste, fraud and abuse.' WorldNetDaily.com, Inc., headquartered in Cave Junction, Ore., but incorporated in Delaware, was spun off in 1999 as a for-profit subsidiary of the non-profit Western Journalism Center with the backing of $4.5 million from investors. Farah and the Western Journalism Center own a majority of WND, according to Farah; the rest of the stock is owned by about 75 private investors," ConWebWatch reported.

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Contact

Western Center for Journalism

4109 Bridgeport Way Ste. E-2

University Place WA, 98466

Phone: 202.370.6366 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              202.370.6366      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Website: http://www.westernjournalism.com/

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

References

? "The ConWebWatch Primer," ConWebWatch, accessed April 2, 2009.

? "About" Western Journalism Center, accessed April 2, 2009.

? The Team :. Western Journalism.com. Retrieved on 2010-01-03. “Caleb Heimlich is the Director of Programs for the Western Center for Journalism and a professional blogger. He joined the Western Center for Journalism in January, 2009. He holds a Bachelors degree in Political Economics from Hillsdale College. Caleb worked as a Policy Analyst at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in Washington D.C. before running for State Representative in Washington’s 25th legislative district.”

? "The ConWebWatch Primer," ConWebWatch, accessed April 2, 2009.

? Terry Krepel, "The Return of the Western Journalism Center" ConWebWatch, accessed April 2, 2009.

External resources

External articles

Western Journalism Center website

"The ConWebWatch Primer. Who's behind the conservative news sites that ConWebWatch watches?".

Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Western_Journalism_Center"

Categories: Politics (U.S.) | Media | Journalism

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Joseph Farah and WorldNetDaily

Farah worked for a number of daily newspapers prior to the creation of WorldNetDaily. In 1990, Farah became editor of the now-defunct Sacramento (Calif.) Union, owned for several years by Richard Mellon Scaife, though he did not start work there after Scaife sold the paper to two Sacramento real estate developers, Daniel Benvenuti Jr. and David Kassis. They along with Farah were accused of taking the paper in an even more conservative direction than it had been under Scaife and skewing stories to reflect conservative ideas. Farah resigned as editor 15 months later; under his editorship, the paper's circulation declined nearly 30 percent, from 72,000 to 52,000. (The Sacramento Union closed in 1994; it was revived in 2004 as a web site and magazine.) Farah has also served as executive news editor of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner (now defunct) and served as editor-in-chief of a group of California dailies and weeklies.

Farah is the co-author, with former U.S. Rep. Richard Pombo, of "This Land is Our Land," and in 1994 he collaborated with Rush Limbaugh on his book "See, I Told You So." In 2003, he wrote the book "Taking America Back"; in 2007, he wrote "Stop the Presses! The Inside Story of the New Media Revolution."

Farah co-founded the Western Journalism Center with James H. Smith, former publisher of the Sacramento Union (and former CEO and publisher of the revived Sacramento Union operation). The center provided Christopher Ruddy with "additional expense money, funding for Freedom of Information Act requests, legal support and publicity" during his investigation of the death of Vince Foster while working as a reporter for the New York Post and the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. This included buying full-page ads in major newspapers reproducing Ruddy's work and co-producing a video about the Foster investigation with Ruddy. The center accepted $330,000 in donations from Scaife-connected foundations in 1994-95. The center has been involved in an ongoing lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over a tax audit it alleges was politically motivated. Farah is, like Bozell, also a member of the secretive Council for National Policy.

WorldNetDaily started in May 1997 as a project of the Western Journalism Center. WorldNetDaily describes itself as "a fiercely independent newssite committed to hard-hitting investigative reporting of government waste, fraud and abuse." WorldNetDaily.com, Inc., headquartered in Cave Junction, Ore., but incorporated in Delaware, was spun off in 1999 as a for-profit subsidiary of the non-profit Western Journalism Center with the backing of $4.5 million from investors. Farah and the Western Journalism Center own a majority of WND, according to Farah; the rest of the stock is owned by about 75 private investors. As of late 2001, WorldNetDaily employed 25 people. Farah has said that about 80 percent of WND's revenue comes from the sale of books and videos through the site.

In 2002, WND created a book publishing division in partnership with Thomas Nelson Publishers, a prominent Christian publisher; authors include Katherine Harris and Michael Savage. That partnership ended in late 2004, and Nelson was replaced by Cumberland House Publishing. WND replaced partners again in early 2007, to conservative publisher World Ahead Publishing. WND acquired World Ahead in January 2008. The company claimed in 2001 that it expected to turn a profit in 2002. WND has approximately 20 employees.

WND also operates the subscription-only "intelligence resource" website G2 Bulletin.

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Western Journalism Center - This organization was owned and operated by Joseph Farrah (Executive Director) and financed by John Smith. [8] It was supposedly:

...dedicated to the ideals of "free enterprise, limited government and American values [as a] nonprofit, conservative organization which aims to be "a vehicle for changing the culture of America's newsrooms and for returning the press to its traditional role as watchdog of government."

Farrah and his associate Christopher Ruddy were the fanatics behind the claims that the Clintons had murdered Vince Foster.[9] As the B-M document says:

Recently the WJC has been involved in investigative projects surrounding the deal of Vince Foster and the Lippo Group financial controversy.

WJC does accept corporate donations, and the company (ie Philip Morris) could benefit by being involved with a forum, seminar or internship sponsorship. The company has already donated over $100,000 in unrestricted grants over the past three years. However, the fact that the WJC does exhibit a conservative bias could affect the credibility of its research[citation needed]

This [2] only tells a fraction of the story. As part of the Arkansas Project Philip Morris passed extra money via its think-tank paymaster Roy Marden, to the Pacific Legal Center, then to the Western Journalism Center, and on to the journalist Ruddy.

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sued irs w/ jud watch

http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg25164.html

In 1998, the Center sued the IRS claiming it was audited in 1996 for political reasons. The lawsuit was thrown out, with appeals denied. A lower court ruled that the IRS could not be sued on allegations of politically motivated auditing practices, while a federal appeals court ruled that the Center's lawsuit was barred by the statute of limitations.[3] wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Journalism_Center

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WorldNetDaily (WND) is an internet news and commentary site founded in May 1997 by Joseph Farah, a former editor of several major-market daily newspapers and a founder of the conservative non-profit Western Journalism Center. The site became a for-profit arm of the Center in October 1999.[1]

The WND mission statement describes its role as a watchdog on government: "We remain faithful to the traditional and central role of a free press in a free society – as a light exposing wrongdoing, corruption and abuse of power. We also seek to stimulate a free-and-open debate about the great moral and political ideas facing the world and to promote freedom and self-government by encouraging personal virtue and good character."[2]

WND operates the G2 Bulletin website, a subscription-only website described as an "intelligence resource" for "insights into geo-political and geo-strategic developments." It also operates a book-publishing division, WND Books, which has published books by Michael Savage, Katherine Harris, Joseph Farah, and Jerome Corsi, among others. In January 2008, WND announced it had acquired its publishing partner, World Ahead Publishing.[3]

Contents

[hide]

1 Libel lawsuit

2 Anti-Global Warming Contest

3 Personnel

3.1 Staff[12]

3.2 Columnists[13]

4 Contact information

5 Related SourceWatch Resources

6 References

7 External links

7.1 General Information

7.2 Articles posted by WND

7.3 Articles & Commentary

Libel lawsuit

On September 20, 2000, WND published an article[4] claiming that Clark Jones, a Tennessee car dealer and fund-raiser for then-Vice President Al Gore, had interfered with a criminal investigation, had been a "subject" of a criminal investigation, was listed on law enforcement computers as a "dope dealer," and implied that he had ties to others involved in alleged criminal activity. In 2001, Jones filed a lawsuit[5] against WND; the reporters, Charles C. Thompson II and Tony Hays; the Center for Public Integrity, which had underwritten Thompson and Hays' reporting on the article and related ones[6]; and various Tennessee publications and broadcasters who he accused of repeating the claim, claiming libel and defamation. The lawsuit had been scheduled to go to trial in March 2008[7], but on February 13, 2008, WND announced that a confidential out-of-court settlement had been reached with Jones.[8] A settlement statement jointly drafted by all parties in the lawsuit states in part:

"Discovery has revealed to WorldNetDaily.com that no witness verifies the truth of what the witnesses are reported by authors to have stated. Additionally, no document has been discovered that provides any verification that the statements written were true.

"Factual discovery in the litigation and response from Freedom of Information Act requests to law enforcement agencies confirm Clark Jones' assertion that his name has never been on law enforcement computers, that he has not been the subject of any criminal investigation nor has he interfered with any investigation as stated in the articles. Discovery has also revealed that the sources named in the publications have stated under oath that statements attributed to them in the articles were either not made by them, were misquoted by the authors, were misconstrued, or the statements were taken out of context."[9]

Anti-Global Warming Contest

In 2008 WND Books -- formerly known as World Ahead Publishing -- sponsored what was dubbed "'The Sky's Not Falling" video/essay contest'", named after the book by Holly Fretwell, The Sky's Not Falling: Why It's OK to Chill About Global Warming. "The two grand prize winners in both categories will receive $200. Second place winners will receive $100, and third place winners will receive $50. Plus, all 6 winners will receive copies of "The Sky's Not Falling: Why It's OK to Chill About Global Warming" to donate to their child's classroom and school library, and a copy of the hard-to-get DVD "The Great Global Warming Swindle," World Ahead stated on their website.[10] WorldNetDaily stated that the DVD prize was being sponsored by junkscience.com, the website run by Steven J. Milloy.[11]

Personnel

Staff[12]

Joseph Farah, Editor and CEO

Elizabeth Farah - Senior Vice President for Marketing and Administration

David Kupelian, Managing Editor

Joe Kovacs, Executive News Editor

Les Kinsolving, White House Correspondent

Aaron Klein, Jerusalem Bureau Chief

Jerome Corsi, Senior Staff Writer

Chelsea Schilling, Staff Writer

Jay Baggett - News Editor

Art Moore - News Editor

Bob Unruh - News Editor

Felicia Dionisio - News Editor

Drew Zahn, News Editor

Ron Strom, Commentary Editor

Columnists[13]

Joseph Farah

Michael Ackley

Doug Powers

Craig R. Smith

Vox Day

Barbara Simpson

Chuck Norris

Ellen Ratner

Pat Buchanan

Janet Folger

Les Kinsolving

David Limbaugh

Mychal Massie

Dennis Prager

Dave Ramsey

Ann Coulter

Nat Hentoff

Burt Prelutsky

Roy Moore

Ben Shapiro

Walter Williams

Jill Stanek

Jack Cashill

Jane Chastain

Larry Elder

Rebecca Hagelin

Craige McMillan

Hal Lindsey

Ilana Mercer

Melanie Morgan

Bill Press

Phyllis Schlafly

Pat Boone

Jonathan Falwell

Henry Lamb

Greg Laurie

Star Parker

Ellis Washington

Erik Rush

Michael Savage

Alan Keyes

Thomas Sowell

Contact information

PO Box 1627

Medford, OR 97501

Phone: (541) 474-1776

FAX: (541) 474-1770

Website: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/

Website: http://www.wnd.com

Related SourceWatch Resources

Repent America / Michael Marcavage (see articles)

References

? World's 'No. 1 website' goes for-profit. WorldNetDaily. Retrieved on February 24, 2008.

? "About WND", WorldNetDaily, accessed March 20, 2008.

? WND acquires World Ahead Media. WorldNetDaily. Retrieved on February 24, 2008.

? Thompson II, Charles C., and Hays, Tony. Officials say Gore killed drug probe. WorldNetDaily. Retrieved on February 18, 2008.

? Second Amended Complaint. Retrieved on February 18, 2008.

? Krepel, Terry. WorldNetDaily on Trial. ConWebWatch. Retrieved on February 18, 2008.

? Unruh, Bob. Future of reporting scheduled for trial. WorldNetDaily. Retrieved on February 18, 2008.

? WND settles $165 million libel case. WorldNetDaily. Retrieved on February 18, 2008.

? WND settles $165 million libel case. WorldNetDaily. Retrieved on February 18, 2008.

? "Kids & Globaloney Contest", undated, accessed May 2008.

? "Al Gore's global warming debunked – by kids!: Winners announced in 'The Sky's Not Falling' video-essay contest", WorldNetDaily, April 26, 2008.

? "Who's Who at WND", WorldNetDaily, accessed March 26, 2008.

? "WND Columnists, WorldNetDaily, accessed March 26, 2008.

External links

General Information

WorldNetDaily in the Wikipedia.

Articles posted by WND

Aaron Klein, "Mideast terror leaders to U.S.: Vote Democrat. Withdrawal from Iraq would embolden jihadists to destroy Israel, America," WND, November 2, 2006.

Jim Rutz, "Soy is making kids 'gay'," WND, December 12, 2006.

Articles & Commentary

Pete M., "World Net Daily Explains Sex," The Dark Window Blogspot, November 9, 2004.

Terry Krepel, "Soft-Hitting Journalism," ConWebWatch, February 7, 2005: "Why doesn't WorldNetDaily want to tell the full story of the lead protester in the 'Philly 5' case? Plus: Joseph Farah flip-flops on what should happen to people who blame America for 9/11, and what to expect from WorldNetDaily's new Jerusalem bureau."

PseudoCyAnts, "World Net Daily: 'Google has 'Liberal' Bias'," TPM Cafe, May 24, 2006.

Joseph Watson, "World Net Daily Forced To Issue 9/11 Hit Piece Retraction," PrisonPlanet.com, August 18, 2006.

Terry Krepel, "Who's Behind WorldNetDaily?" ConWebWatch, March 1, 2007.

http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2008/wndliar08.html

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Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has joined the website World Net Daily as a columnist, the outlet reported on Sunday.

"Rick Santorum—the former U.S. senator who ignited grass-roots conservatives as a Republican candidate for president this year—today joins WND as an exclusive columnist," an unsigned announcement on the site reads. "His commentaries will be featured each Monday."

The conservative site is best known for promoting conspiracy theories, most notably about President Barack Obama's birthplace.

Santorum published his first column on Monday, which argues against the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

A former Pennsylvania senator, Santorum won 11 primaries and caucuses during his race for the Republican presidential nomination earlier this year. He said last month that he is considering running for president again in 2016.

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Media fairness

From SourceWatch

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"Media fairness" is a public relations catch-phrase for the common desire that polluting and harmful industries have for a compliant media which publishes only non-critical material on big corporations.

In 1996-97 Burson-Marsteller promoted the idea to Philip Morris that it lead an industry attack on the credibility of the media using such things as the recent outrage over paparazzi after the death of Princess Diana. It sought to use the credibility of some media watchdog organizations for lobbying purposes, suggesting:

...[T]hose we feel should be targeted for a potential partnership are starred on the chart on the following page. The characteristics these organizations share is a credible mainstream ideology, high-profile presence, and history of working on corporate-funded projects.[1]

The days when the popular media were seen as allies of tobacco in support of the Freedom to Advertise campaign, were long gone, and, as B-M explained, "the vexing question is not IF there is a need for greater media fairness, but rather HOW we will achieve this goal."[2]

Contents

[hide]

1 Media surveys

1.1 Favored Media Watchdogs

1.1.1 Credibility is the key

2 Other Watchdog Organizations

3 Media Training Organizations

3.1 References

Media surveys

In the late 1990s, Phillip Morris (PM) had funded a Louis Harris poll of 3004 adults, which found that only 51% of adults think the media "usually get the facts right." PM saw this as an opportunity to get into bed with Press Clubs and journalistic schools, which were also becoming highly critical of the media moguls and the tabloidization of the American press. They identified a number of possible targets:

Denver Press Club, for instance, was seen as being "receptive to partnerships, sponsorships and exhibits for all of its activities," while the

Milwaukee Press Club - "has periodic civic/social dinners, holds an annual meeting and awards scholarships to journalism students. Sponsorship opportunities may exist for one of these events."

New York Press Club - "holds numerous business and social events including monthly meeting, debates, seminars, an awards dinner, a holiday party and a summer boat trip. These events offer a plethora of opportunities to propose speakers and sponsorships. [S]ponsorship is solicited for the annual Christmas party and for the annual Installation Awards Dinner held in May."[3]

Favored Media Watchdogs

National News Council: In 1973, the National News Council was formed with a $100,000 grant from the Twentieth Century Fund to counter the "unfair reporting" of the Nixon Administration.[citation needed] The council, however, never enjoyed the support of the journalism establishment. It lasted only a decade because of opposition from prominent journalists like Walter Cronkite, and the two key publishing groups, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.[citation needed]

Philip Morris's strategy document for December 1997 list seven media watchdog groups which it viewed as potential partners in "media fairness initiatives during 1998" (e.g. establishing a study of the "liberal media") to cost $20-30,000. The study was to be conducted in "the top 10 media markets (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Washington DC, Dallas-Fort Worth, Detroit, Atlanta)."

Their list including:

The Annenberg Public Policy Center (at the University of Pennsylvania);

The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press,

Politics and Public Policy (Harvard University);

The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research (University of Connecticut);

Center for Media and Public Affairs - (supposedly non-partisan, but took money from PM to run Louis Harris survey) [4]

CMPA has shown an interest in investigating issues of media fairness, and has done so at the request of Philip Morris in the past.

The Media lnstitute - This was the outfit of Republican right-winger Leo Brent Bozell III (See below)

The Twentieth Century Fund - supposedly a nonpartisan foundation involved in "progressive public policy". But also the fund which, In 1973, gave the the National News Council $100,000 to counter the "unfair reporting" of the Nixon Administration.[citation needed]

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press is an independent opinion research group that studies attitudes toward press, politics and public policy issues. The Center conducts regular national surveys which measure public attentiveness to news stories, as well as general trends in values and political and social attitudes. The Pew Center is sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Since the Pew Research Center is fully funded by a Pew Charitable Trusts grant, the possibility of a direct corporate donation is unlikely, although the company could publicly support Pew initiatives.[citation needed]

Credibility is the key

This shows the way in which the lobbying industry chooses to use a highly credible organization as its front. Those watchdogs with the most credibility,(according to B-M) were The Pew Center, followed by the Center for Media and Public Affairs and the Roper Center, and:

In addition, the modus operandi of these three organizations most closely parallels the objectives of this strategy, in that they are all oriented towards research in the public interest.[citation needed]

In this case, Philip Morris was not intending to use corrupt intermediary institutions at all, but to turn to their own advantage those with high credibility. The manipulation would come after the survey, when they planned to control the promotion of the findings:

Once the study is completed, we recommend holding a C-SPAN televised press conference at the National Press Club to announce the results and the call to action.

PM's sponsorship of the study and press conference should be fully disclosed, with the disclaimer that the company is taking a totally hands-off approach to the study and initiatives stemming from it.

Their assumption that, following the "independent survey" there would necessarily be a "call to action", suggests that they had no intention of "taking a totally hands-off approach". They then planned to spend another $75-100,000 to:

... launch a roadshow of the study in these markets. The goal of the roadshows would be to create the want for news councils in targeted communities and gain buy-in from local business leaders and media organizations [using] several press/business clubs that would be ideal partner for PM in this initiative, they include: The Atlanta Press Club; City Club of Cleveland; Denver Press Club; Economic Club of Detroit; Milwaukee Press Club; New York Press Club; and the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania;

They clearly expected to see business-oriented conservative forces controlling these new local News Councils, and, in Stage 3, they would move into journalism training:

Journalism schools are not only the training ground for future reporters, they also have the potential to serve as hotbeds of controversy regarding stories that appear in campus newspapers. In order to lay the groundwork for the understanding of the importance of a fair and accountable media among the journalists of the future, we recommend working with a professional news organization to establish a scholarship contest for student-designed media fairness programs.[citation needed]

Other Watchdog Organizations

These were media watchdog groups that seemed to be rejected as a suitable partner for the survey project, probably because they were too obviously partisan.

The Media Institute (TMI) is a nonprofit research foundation specializing in communications policy and the First Amendment.. Burston-Marsteller points to the value of the tobacco industry maintaining its contact because:

TMI hosts a Communications Forum luncheon series with luncheons held eight times per year. Attendance at the luncheons is by invitation only, but Philip Morris is a sponsor of the Forum and could potentially place a speaker in the future. Also, the luncheons are not planned far in advance so next steps could be rapid. The next series will be held November 20, 1997 and will feature panelists discussing copyright protection policies. No series are planned beyond that date.[citation needed]

Communications Research Corporation (CRC) - a daughter organization to TMI, which is actually a:

...private consulting practice which provides advice, strategic planning, and implementation services for a wide range of communications issues from the standpoint of policy and public affairs. TMI also links to the Freedom of Expression Foundation and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, of which Robert O'Neil is the director. Both groups seem to have purposes similar to that of The Media Institute.

Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Enterprise. (See above.)

Freedom of Expression Foundation (See above.)

The Media Research Center was established by Leo Brent Bozell III with Scaife, Carthage, Olin and other right-wing foundation money. B-M says that this is a:

... conservative watchdog group which attempts to promote political balance by exposing liberal biases that exist in the media. While MRC does accept corporate donations and thus, could be eligible for a grant from the company, their credibility is suspect due to their obvious bias.

Accuracy in Media (AIM) This is another Scaife funded anti-journalism organisation run by Reed J. Irvine. B-M points out that it:

... is a conservative media watchdog organization which seeks to make the public aware of the liberal bias which exists in all types of media. AIM hosts a speaker's bureau program in which various members can be scheduled for appearances to address the issues of media unfairness. In addition, AIM offers internship opportunities and schedules panel discussions.

AIM hosted a panel discussion on October 18, 1997 which was carried by C-SPAN. Discussions covered topics such as the death of Vince Foster, the crash of TWA Flight 800 and campaign finance reform.

While AIM's speaker's bureau program and panel discussions offer avenues for corporate donations to fund media fairness initiatives, the group's obvious bias may affect their credibility as a research organization.[citation needed]

Media Training Organizations

The tobacco industry was deeply involved journalism training:

National Journalism Center (NJC) - Philip Morris regularly funded this Center.[citation needed] It held 12-week, "scholarship-type" training courses for selected students (often promoted by politicians -- usually Republican) -- and it ran what amounted to a job-placement agency with the media establishments for its graduates. It started journalists like Michael Fumento on their careers as corporate media lobbyists. PM consultantRichard T. Hines suggested that PM should fund a journalism internship program here to produce a stable of journalists sympathetic to tobacco issues.[5]

International Journalism Center - Philip Morris was planning to establish, along with the London-based Adam Smith Institute and the Krieble Institutes (plural), an international version of the National Journalism Center. [6] Richard Hines (who supported all right-wing causes: Oliver North; the Confederacy; segregation, and white supremacy, [1] while working as a consultant to Philip Morris) was behind the idea, and he had many possible contacts with think-tanks in Europe who could be used to hide the tobacco connection.[7]

Foundation for American Communications (FAC) was a journalism training group which kept itself pure by not accepting corporate funding, except from the major media organisations. B-M dismisses it because:

...FACS seems more concerned with improving the technical content of media reports than with improving ethical issues of fairness or accuracy. As such, a general operational grant is unlikely to foster such ideals, except in an abstract way.

Western Journalism Center - This organization was owned and operated by Joseph Farrah (Executive Director) and financed by John Smith. [8]It was supposedly:

...dedicated to the ideals of "free enterprise, limited government and American values [as a] nonprofit, conservative organization which aims to be "a vehicle for changing the culture of America's newsrooms and for returning the press to its traditional role as watchdog of government."

Farrah and his associate Christopher Ruddy were the fanatics behind the claims that the Clintons had murdered Vince Foster.[9] As the B-M document says:

Recently the WJC has been involved in investigative projects surrounding the deal of Vince Foster and the Lippo Group financial controversy.

WJC does accept corporate donations, and the company (ie Philip Morris) could benefit by being involved with a forum, seminar or internship sponsorship. The company has already donated over $100,000 in unrestricted grants over the past three years. However, the fact that the WJC does exhibit a conservative bias could affect the credibility of its research[citation needed]

This [2] only tells a fraction of the story. As part of the Arkansas Project Philip Morris passed extra money via its think-tank paymaster Roy Marden, to the Pacific Legal Center, then to the Western Journalism Center, and on to the journalist Ruddy.

Freedom Forum - a nonpartisan, international foundation dedicated to free press, which:

...does not accept unsolicited grant applications, and does not solicit or accept financial donations. It is funded entirely through an endowment established by Frank E. Gannett in 1935 and has assets totaling nearly $900 million. {[fact}}:

Washington Institute for Policy Studies, which B-M describes as:

... a conservative, nonprofit organization which seeks to further the principles of "individual liberty, limited government, and free enterprise" by combating the liberal media bias.

Recently, the WIPS broke into two separate groups. WIPS continues to study policy oriented issues such as electric utility deregulation, the "Three Strikes, You're Out" law, workers' compensation and public subsidies to private corporations.

The other half of the WIPS is the CounterPoint Center for ReMediation which publishes CounterPoint. The CounterPoint Center is a new nonprofit corporation which focuses on the role and performance of the mass media in American democracy. John Hamer is its President. In a letter to Burson-Marsteller on November 4 1997, John Hamer stated, "if Burson-Marsteller would be interested in having us speak to your colleagues or perhaps prepare a report on media performance, we'd be happy to discuss it with you. In addition, one of the services we now offer is detailed media content analysis, which specific clients might find very helpful in deciding how to respond to unfair or inaccurate coverage."[citation needed]

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WND books: Founded in 2002 by WND’s Joseph and Elizabeth Farah, WND Books made an immediate impact with its first No. 1 New York Times bestseller, Michael Savage’s The Savage Nation. Several more bestsellers from the upstart rocked the publishing world. Within two years of its launch, every major U.S. publisher had created imprints to compete head-to-head with WND Books in its niche for edgy, controversial current events titles. After partnerships with Thomas Nelson and Cumberland Press, WND Books established a strategic alliance with Los Angeles-based World Ahead Publishing. In early 2008 WND acquired World Ahead, bringing WND Books in-house, as a wholly-owned subsidiary.

WND Books specializes in adult nonfiction titles with an emphasis on current events, politics, and history. Like WND, WND Books is “fiercely independent,” telling the stories that other publishers won’t.

With multiple New York Times bestsellers to its credit, including The Late Great U.S.A: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada by Dr. Jerome Corsi and Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists, and Other Anti-American Extremists, WND Books prides itself on providing to the reading public important, timely, and entertaining books that impact the public debate.

world ahead:

Teaching kids right from left

June 1, 2007 | Stephanie Simon, Times Staff Writer

PUBLISHING executive Eric Jackson's first foray into children's books was a cartoon tale of two brothers and a lemonade stand. Hoping to earn money for a swing set, young Tommy and Lou squeeze lemons until their little hands ache. But they are thwarted by broccoli-pushing, camera-hogging, Jesus-hating liberals who pile on taxes and regulations and drive the boys out of business. The book, "Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!," came out two years ago.

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wiki bs:  Eric M. Jackson is the co-founder of CapLinked, focused on linking companies and investors.[1] He was founder and former CEO of WND Books (formerly World Ahead Publishing) and a former vice president of marketing at PayPal. He is one of the PayPal Mafia, a growing number of PayPal alumni who have started new ventures after eBay bought the online payments firm.[2]

In 1998, Jackson received a B.A. in Economics with honors from Stanford University.[3] He served on the board of directors of The Stanford Review.[4] Jackson maintains the book publishing industry blog called Conservative Publisher.[5]

As a publisher, Jackson has been known to embrace controversial books and tactics. A bestselling children's book published by World Ahead, Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under my Bed penned by Katharine Debrecht, portrayed Hillary Rodham Clinton as a cartoon villain, prompting a verbal clash with Clinton's spokesman. He once accused Google of political bias for censoring online ads for a book critical of Bill Clinton, a charge Google denied,[6] and he later paid to send Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick to the Bill Clinton Presidential Library along with the book's author.[7] In October 2006, Jackson and Joseph Farah, the founder of WorldNetDaily, announced that World Ahead Publishing would be partnering on the influential WND Books imprint.[8]

Jackson's own book The PayPal Wars (ISBN 0-9746701-0-3) chronicles PayPal's origins and discusses the legal, regulatory, and competitive threatsentrepreneurs must overcome in today's business environment.[9] It won the 2005 Writers Notes Book Award for best business book.[10] It has been profiled by Reason Magazine,[11] the Washington Times,[12] the Mises Institute,[13] Tech Central Station,[14] and Tom Peters.[15]

Jackson frequently appears as a conservative commentator on radio and television programs. In his public comments he is frequently critical of eBay, the company that purchased PayPal. He has been quoted in Forbes,[16] BusinessWeek,[17] TheStreet.com,[18] US News & World Report,[19] and Publishers Weekly, [20] among other publications.

References[edit]

^ Eric Jackson

^ "The PayPal Exodus". Forbes. July 12, 2006.

^ Jackson, Eric M. (June 6, 2003). "Stanford: Where Does the Money Go?". Stanford Review.

^ [1][dead link]

^ ConservativePublisher.com

^ Google Defends Not Running Anti-Clinton Banners - Direct Marketing News

^ "Clinton's Accusers Tour His Library". Fox News. October 26, 2005.

^ New publishing partner for WND Books

^ Paypalwars.com

^ "2005 Writers Notes Book Awards Announced". PRWeb. 30 March 2005. Retrieved 2 April 2012.

^ Who Killed PayPal? - Reason Magazine

^ 20th-century evils, Silicon Valley wars - Washington Times

^ "The Genius and Struggle of PayPal". Mises Daily. 4 January 2005. Retrieved 2 April 2012.

^ TCS Daily : Technology - Commerce - Society

^ PayPal | tompeters!

^ "PayPal's Growing Pains". Forbes. April 14, 2005.

^ PayPal Spreads Its Wings

^ eBay Grooms Another Phenom | The Signal and The Noise News | Print Financial & Investing Articles | TheStreet

^ Washington Whispers - US News and World Report

^ "'Liberals' Selling Right and Left". Publishers Weekly. 21 October 2005. Retrieved 2 April 2012.[dead link]

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MoonieNetDaily?

WND cuts business deals with the folks who run the Washington Times, conveniently forgetting where the Times' money comes from.

By Terry Krepel

Posted 3/7/2003

It might be alarming to some, but it's really not that surprising: WorldNetDaily and News World Communications are forging closer ties.

News World Communications is the owner of the conservative Washington Times, the conservative Insight newsmagazine and the wire service United Press International (whose highest-profile client is NewsMax; former Washington Times and UPI editor Arnaud de Borchgrave sits on NewsMax's board of directors). News World is controlled by the Unification Church, headed by Sun Myung Moon, who used to be widely criticized as a cult leader before he started spreading his millions around conservative causes.

Late last year, WND announced a content-sharing agreement with Insight magazine, which has brought to WND stories like a slanted one on Jan. 26 that describes the so-called "dirty dozen terror caucus" in Congress, in which writer J. Michael Waller equates supporting the causes to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier with providing "active support to terrorist organizations."

With such a content-sharing link comes commerce, and that means you go through the WorldNetDaily store to subscribe to Insight. WND editor Joseph Farah himself penned an e-mail sent to WND's mailing list shilling the magazine. In it, he calls Insight editor Paul Rodriguez "one of my best friends in the business" and claims "Paul is like me -- an independent thinker who digs deep and hard for the facts and draws conclusions based on what he finds rather than on some ideological assumption." Despite the Moonie money behind the magazine, Farah also wants us to believe Insight "operates on a shoestring."

Insight, meanwhile, returned the logrolling favor with an "in-depth interview" (as it was described in another e-mail WND sent out) of Farah. Far from being "in-depth," the interview is quite softball and has no real purpose beyond promoting Farah's new book. How softball? Farah says things like, "Writing a book of this kind is what God put me here to do. This is what my whole life up to this point has prepared me to do." The interview also parrots the "independent news site" claim without question and fails to mention the business arrangement between WND and Insight (though it did note that Farah received something called the Washington Times Foundation National Service Award in 1996).

The WND store also sells subscriptions to the weekly edition of the Washington Times -- which coincidentally features a column by Farah, who contributes another blurb: "If you want the perfect weekly print complement to WorldNetDaily, I strongly recommend the Washington Times Weekly, edited by my friend Robert Morton."

The company that Farah and WND are doing business has spent years building its conservative credentials -- to the occasional detriment of journalism. Washington Times staffers have complained about their stories being rewritten to a conservative slant -- called "prudenizing" in honor of Wesley Pruden, the paper's editor. An April 2002 Insight story goes to great lengths to try to paint the urban-legend busters at Snopes.com as biased against conservatives; the site had dismissed as false an earlier Insight claim that Hillary Clinton "played a significant role in defending Black Panthers accused of torturing and murdering Alex Rackley," but nothing writer John Berlau offers as evidence to contradict Snopes here specifically supports the magazine's claim to the contrary.

Moon himself claims no journalistic intent. At a celebration of the Times' 20th anniversary last year, Moon said he established the newspaper "in response to heaven's direction" and that "The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God." Moon and his associated other businesses have reportedly poured around $1.7 billion into the Times to keep it afloat since its founding; neither it nor Insight have never made a profit.

Such massive subsidizing of a conservative mouthpiece has allowed conservatives -- not to mention the millions doled out to Jerry Falwelland other prominent conservatives to aid or bail out their various causes -- to overlook where that money is coming from. Moon considers himself a divine being of a similar stature to God and Jesus. He also considers the life of Jesus a "failure" because he did not establish a church like Moon's before he died. (Contrast to the conservative outrage over Ramsey Clark's statement calling Jesus a terrorist.) Moon reportedly get his start in the divine-being business by performingsexual "purification" rites, i.e., having sex with lots of women. The accounts of mind-control techniques used by the Unification Church to recruit new members are numerous. The behavior of at least one of Moon's children is worthy of the Clara Harris solution Farah speaks so highly of. (Consortium News and MoonieWorld have even more on the Moon way of doing things.)

And we haven't even gotten to the payments made by Moon's business empire to North Korea and Moon's connections with the Bush family.

Why bring all this up? Because conservatives like Farah used to be bothered by this kind of behavior. And because WorldNetDaily, along with other conservatives, has made a point of detailing the socialist roots of International ANSWER, chief organizer of anti-war protests in the United States. As David Limbaugh wrote in a Feb. 18 WND column, "The insightful proverb, 'we shall be known by the company we keep' applies as fittingly to useful idiots as anyone else." The same should also apply to WorldNetDaily's business arrangements.

http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2003/moonienet.html

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eg wing-nuttery 5/15

Conservative columnist Morgan Brittany thinks the recent unrest in Baltimore may be a "set-up" and that President Obama might "have to institute martial law to preserve order, form a national police force and postpone the 2016 elections" if the police officers charged in Freddie Gray's death are acquitted.

In her new column for conspiracy website WND, Brittany announces that "something is not right" and speculates, "I don't think the chaos in Baltimore 'just happened'; I think it was planned and is the next step in the breakdown of our society....

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/05/06/conservative-columnist-is-baltimore-unrest-a-se/203557

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