CNN

promoted primary 1/18 on death threat/attack 1219 bak

no merri

see tapper , cooper

did well on hurricane harvey AGW

toll attack on dox 'threat" mfg

some cable prez said trump great for biz/ratings

hired s moore?

cnn logo on face in wrestle video?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/watch-anderson-cooper-use-the-long-form-of-bs-while-shutting-down-rod-blagojevich-on-cnn/

CNN anchor corners Trump trade advisor as he rattles off several lies about the economy

President Donald Trump’s Trade Advisor Peter Navarro had to take…

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/local-arizona-paper-editorial-board-slams-mcsally-as-an-opportunist-who-debased-herself-with-crude-attack-on-cnn-reporter/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/heres-how-we-know-martha-mcsallys-anti-cnn-outburst-was-a-calculated-stunt-former-rnc-spokesperson/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/how-cnns-jake-tapper-is-failing-to-tell-the-truth-about-republican-disinformation-campaigns/

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How CNN’s Jake Tapper is failing to tell the truth about Republican disinformation campaigns

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly January 14, 2020

Jake Tapper has shown himself to be one of the more responsible journalists when it comes to prioritizing the truth over balance in his reporting. For example, here is his response to Republicans who have suggested that Democrats were mourning the death of Soleimani.

Recently Tapper made an important point about how disinformation campaigns don’t always originate with foreign adversaries.

“While we are all bracing for what the Iranians might to do to us as this conflict escalates, let’s not lose sight of what Americans are already doing to each other,” says @JakeTapper about misleading and false information being spread on social media. #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/EwWfEKNLQ0

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) January 5, 2020

As I have already noted, it wasn’t just Russia that launched a disinformation campaign against Hillary Clinton in order to influence the 2016 election. Peter Schweizer, with an assist from mainstream media, spread a smear against the former secretary of state that was demonstrably false.

But I have to take issue with how Tapper framed his concern. Notice the examples he gave of people who spread knowingly false information. They included:

Bob Salera, Deputy Communications Director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, who tweeted a doctored video of a Biden speech, referring to the former vice president as a “white nationalist.”

Tony Shaffer, a member of Trump’s 2020 advisory board, who tweeted a doctored video that makes Speaker Nancy Pelosi appear to be intoxicated.

Donald Trump, who tweeted a video of Rep. Ilhan Omar dancing, along with the lie that it was filmed on 9/11.

The White House press secretary, who tweeted a doctored video of a Trump press conference, suggesting that a reporter had rough-housed a staff member.

It strikes me that all four of those examples have one important thing in common: they came from Republicans. Yet, during his commentary, Tapper blames this kind of disinformation on “folks in the political world” and ends by cautioning us not to lose sight of “what Americans are doing to each other.” In an apparent nod to balance, he failed to tell the truth, which is that we shouldn’t lose sight of what Republicans are doing to our political discourse.

I believe that this is an example of how ingrained the whole idea of bothsiderism has become for almost everyone in the mainstream media. It runs so deep that even Jake Tapper feels the need to hedge his bets when it comes to naming the source of domestic disinformation campaigns. Republicans will continue to exploit that opening as long as journalists fail to hold them accountable.

Nancy LeTourneau is a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly. Follow her on Twitter @Smartypants60.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/cnn-moderators-slammed-for-ignoring-price-tag-of-endless-war-but-expressing-alarm-over-cost-of-medicare-for-all/

CNN has yet another GOP problem

Eric Boehlert / Daily KosDecember 9, 2019

CNN has yet another GOP problem

Eric Boehlert / Daily KosDecember 9, 2019

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CNN has yet another GOP problem

Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos December 9, 2019

Last winter, CNN for weeks stood by its extraordinary and inexplicable decision to hire Sarah Isgur Flores, a career Republican Party operative with absolutely no journalism experience, to be the network’s political editor. A hardcore partisan, Isgur spent her career spinning for Republicans such as Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, and Carly Fiorina. Until last year, Isgur worked as a spokesperson for then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice. CNN staffers were reportedly demoralized by the Isgur move—and for good reason, since CNN political editors should be journalists, period.

If CNN wants to hire conservatives like Isgur to go on camera and bolster Trump talking points, that’s the network’s choice. But to hire someone with Isgur’s resume to work behind the scenes and oversee campaign coverage remains a baffling decision to this day. “Her Twitter includes fact-free invectives against liberals and repeatedly rails against the ‘abortion industry,’” The Daily Beast noted at the time.

By March, CNN acknowledged the controversy and announced that Isgur “is no longer taking a job as a political editor in the Washington bureau. Instead Isgur will be a political analyst at the network, sharing her insights through television segments like many other commentators do.”

But now, more questions are being raised about why CNN ever even considered hiring an openly partisan operative for a key campaign coverage position. The questions come as CNN continues to struggle with trying to balance its desire to employ conservative voices for political balance while also maintaining common-sense standards at the network.

We now know that while working for Trump’s DOJ, Isgur played a central role in the GOP’s public smearing of a longtime FBI official, Lisa Page, who had been part of a 2016 team investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails, as well as examining suspicions that Donald Trump’s campaign was working with Russian forces. The GOP, led by Trump, declared war on Page after it was discovered she had been texting about the election with FBI agent Peter Strzok, with whom Page was having an affair.

Seizing upon the idea that the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign as part of the nonsensical “Deep State” effort to deny him the White House, Republicans soon turned Page and Strzok into villains, while gleefully leaning into their affair. Just two months ago, “The president called out her name as he acted out an orgasm in front of thousands of people at a Minneapolis rally,” The Daily Beast noted.

Now, with a DOJ inspector general’s report set to be released which reportedly confirms there was no rogue effort by the FBI to spy on Trump, the whole Page/Strzok smear campaign looks especially cruel and heartless. And it turns out it was Isgur who was essentially feeding what Republicans thought were incriminating texts to reporters back in 2017, as the controversy raged.

The night before then-deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein was set to testify before Congress, “the Justice Department spokesperson, Sarah [Isgur] Flores, calls the beat reporters into the Justice Department,” Page told The Daily Beast. “This is late at night on a weekday. Calls them in to provide a cherry-picked selection of my text messages to review and report on in advance of Rod Rosenstein going to the Hill the next morning.”

Why were the texts released? “You’d have to ask Sarah [Isgur] Flores,” Page said. “I can tell you that the reporters there that night were told that they weren’t allowed to source them to the Justice Department, and that they weren’t allowed to copy or remove them, just take notes. That’s what I know.” She added, “Those texts were selected for their political impact. They lack a lot of context. Many of them aren’t even about him or me.”

This is just egregious behavior, to have a DOJ spokesperson work in tandem with the GOP to try to effectively ruin the life and reputation of an FBI official for purely partisan reasons,and to do it in such a personal and unseemly way. And that’s who CNN earlier this year wanted to hire as a political editor overseeing campaign coverage? It’s kind of breathtaking.

Again, no reasonable person thinks CNN should not hire conservatives in order to present a wide spectrum of political opinions. Clearly CNN markets itself as occupying the political middle in this country and wants to present itself as a forum for both sides, and that makes sense from a programming perspective. What does not make sense is abandoning newsroom guidelines and principles in order to make room for conservatives with dubious pasts or, in the case of Isgur, someone who acted in such an unethical manner while dealing with journalists.

Keep in mind that CNN reached out to a toxic GOP partisan operative at the same time Trump had declared war on the network. Last year, the White House lashed out at CNN by pulling reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass. Trump routinely defames the network on Twitter. Recently, Trump’s personal attorney sent a ridiculous letter to CNN, threatening to sue the network for its “biased” coverage of Trump. Yet CNN continually responds by aggressively trying to curry favor with conservatives and Trump defenders.

In October the network hired Sean Duffy as a commentator. The former Republican congressman quickly created problems for the network by constantly fabricating facts and spreading reckless and dangerous conspiracy theories. During his CNN debut week, Duffy lied about the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords. He lied about Joe Biden trying to fire a Ukraine prosecutor in order to protect his son. And Duffy helped spread the preposterous lie about the Democratic National Committee’s email servers from 2016 somehow ending up in a foreign country.

Duffy then questioned the patriotism of Purple Heart recipient and National Security Council official Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, after it was reported Vindman was telling House investigators damaging information about Trump’s open collusion with Ukraine and his attempt to get a foreign power to dig up dirt on the Republican’s political opponents. CNN anchors went on the air and directly denounced Duffy’s comments as a “smear” and an ugly form of “bigotry.”

CNN should welcome conservatives onto their televised debates and discussions. But they shouldn’t make exceptions for conservatives who are unqualified for the job.

Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.

This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.

1219 an "that is not true’: Manic Republican Mark Meadows shut down by CNN host for repeating lies about Ukraine

Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

A fifteen-minute CNN interview with Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) wound down to an abrupt end on Sunday morning.

CNN's Rick Santorum: “The president cared a lot about the corruption in Ukraine”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/former-republican-lawmaker-rips-thin-skinned-weakling-devin-nunes-for-threatening-critics-with-yet-another-lawsuit/

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former Republican lawmaker rips ‘thin-skinned weakling’ Devin Nunes for threatening critics with yet another lawsuit

Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

Appearing on MSNBC on Sunday morning, former Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) scorched former colleague Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) for threatening another lawsuit.

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Former Republican lawmaker rips ‘thin-skinned weakling’ Devin Nunes for threatening critics with yet another lawsuit

Written by Tom Boggioni / Raw Story November 24, 2019

Appearing on MSNBC on Sunday morning, former Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) scorched former colleague Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) for threatening another lawsuit, this time against CNN and the Daily Beast for reporting that an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani claims the California Republican met with former chief Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokin in Vienna in 2018 looking for dirt on political opponents.

With the Washington Times reporting on Saturday that Nunes has threatened yet anther lawsuit, Jolly said the combative defender of Donald Trump needs to step up and come clean and stop being so “thin-skinned.”

Host Gura noted that Nunes may be facing a Congressional ethics inquiry if the claims made by Lev Parnas attorney Joseph A. Bondy are true, leading Jolly to first turn to Nunes’ initial response.

“Look, I would first say Devin Nunes wants to sue the media over this,” he began. “What a bunch of thin-skinned weaklings Republicans have become wanting to sue the media over a legitimate report.”

“Lev Parnas said he met with the prosecutor, that’s it. Stop trying to sue the media and sue the cow and all that other stuff” he continued noting another infamous lawsuit filed by the lawmaker against a Twitter critic posing as one of his cows. “The House Ethics Committee gives a lot of deference to members. Without a direct tie to some type of campaign contribution that he benefited from or an actual bribe, which clearly there is no reporting of, the question is did he bring ill-repute upon the House by not disclosing to the Intelligence Committee or his colleagues going into the series of hearings that in fact, he had a conflict or additional information.”

Watch below:

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Duffy, a former Republican member of Congress, is the latest shill for President Donald Trump to join CNN and immediately disgrace the network. That’s by design, the result of a deliberate policy mandated by the network’s top executives to hire and feature Trump supporters, knowing all the while that they will inevitably lie to CNN's audience.

On Tuesday morning, Duffy was brought on to discuss Army Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman’s pending congressional testimony before the House committees that are currently pursuing an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s abuse of power regarding Ukraine. Vindman, the top official handling Ukraine on the National Security Council, will testify that he was on the July phone call in which Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to probe former Vice President Joe Biden, and that he viewed the call as improper and reported his concerns to the NSC’s top lawyer.

Vindman earned a Purple Heart while deployed in Iraq in 2003. He came to the United States as a Jewish refugee from Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) when he was 3 years old.

That latter point was the focus of Duffy’s criticism, as the newly minted CNN contributor and The Real World: Boston alumnus insinuated that the decorated active duty Army officer had turned on the president because he is a “former Ukrainian” who “wants to make sure that taxpayer money goes in military aid to the Ukraine.”

Anchor John Berman spent the next several minutes pushing back on and teasing out the implications of the smear, as his colleague repeatedly suggested that Vindman had prioritized his “homeland” of Ukraine over the United States. He later reaired the comments as an example of efforts by the president’s allies to “discredit” Vindman, referring to them as “a pretty shocking statement.”

Duffy’s smear has continued to drive CNN’s coverage of the impending Vindman testimony.

Editor at large Chris Cillizza included Duffy’s comments, along with similar remarks from Fox hosts Brian Kilmeade and Laura Ingraham, in a piece denouncing the Vindman smear as “Awful. Appalling. Asinine.”

Contributor Jeffrey Toobin added during a discussion of the comments on the following hour of CNN’s programming that “with all due respect to our new contributor,” Duffy’s smear amounted to “insanity and, frankly, anti-immigrant bigotry.”

But Berman’s co-anchor Alisyn Camerota offered a different take. “I appreciate Sean Duffy's candor,” she replied to Toobin, “of how he sees all of this because we are hearing it on Fox TV and elsewhere and we’re going to be hearing it all day.”

That’s been CNN’s official line since the 2016 campaign, when the network responded to Trump’s political rise by hiring a stable of pro-Trump contributors to populate its omnipresent panel segments. Top network executive Jeff Zucker followed that path knowing that these hires would inevitably seek to mislead CNN’s audience. “Some of these folks are not very good with the facts,” he explained during an interview last year. “But that’s O.K. in the sense that it’s our job then to call them out.”

The result of this policy has been twofold: nonstop misinformation that consistently sidetracks the network’s discussions, and a seemingly endless string of controversies, as Trumpists engage in bigoted commentary, become radioactive, lose their jobs, and are replaced with new faces.

Duffy is already following that well-trod path, as the Vindman smear marks his second major controversy in two weeks. Duffy drew widespread criticism, including from his new colleagues, after he used his first two appearances as a CNN contributor last week to push the nonsensical claim that Ukraine is in possession of the Democratic National Committee server that Russian operatives hacked during the 2016 election.

CNN can only expect more of the same going forward, as the former congressman has a long record of promoting conspiracy theories. But that’s what he’s there to do.

The conspiracy theories and lies of CNN’s latest hire, Sean Duffy

10/22/19 5:10 PM EDT

CNN hired Sean Duffy, who immediately pushed conspiracy theories that CNN had already debunked

10/21/19 11:33 AM EDT

CNN pays Sean Duffy to make a ridiculous remark -- and then calls his statement “shocking

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/were-done-with-this-conversation-cnn-host-cuts-off-interview-with-trump-defender-spewing-conspiracy-theories

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‘We’re done with this conversation’: CNN host cuts off interview with Trump defender spewing conspiracy theories

C-SPAN screenshot

Written by Matthew Chapman / Raw Story November 2, 2019

On CNN Saturday, former Lt. Gov. André Bauer (R-SC) tried to deflect from President Donald Trump’s Ukraine scandal by changing the subject to Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton — only for host Victor Blackwell to shut him down.

“Let’s start here with what we’re getting from the Washington Post. Senators now willing to acknowledge, yeah, it was a quid pro quo,” said Blackwell. “You think that’s — one, are you willing to acknowledge what acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged, and do you think it’s right for Republicans to do so too?”

“I don’t think it’s a quid pro quo … Trump to me said it in a jovial manner, look, you all ought to investigate this guy, his son’s making $50,000 a month,” said Bauer.

“Jovial manner?” repeated Blackwell. “How did you get jovial out of a written partial transcript?”

“Again, he let the transcript out,” said Bauer. “You can argue them any way you want, but, again, the real quid pro quo should be somebody says you’re not getting money, we’re going to hold it, I told him, and he says it in a video interview and his son is making $50,000 from the company that’s being investigated.”

“Okay. We should also say that what you’re suggesting is that the Bidens did something wrong,” said Blackwell. “There’s no evidence to suggest that they did something wrong or that it’s illegal … André, if this was such a perfect call and you didn’t see anything wrong with it, Lt. Col. Vindman testified this week — and he’s the top Ukraine expert — he testified he was told by the White House lawyer John Eisenberg not to discuss the president’s call. Then Eisenberg and other National Security Council lawyers put it in this higher security server. If it was such a perfect call, why was there so much energy inside the White House exerted to limit access, to keep people from talking about it, potential criminal referrals? if everything was okay, why were there so many career diplomats concerned about what the president said?”

“I don’t know that they are,” said Bauer. “You can find anybody to take anything out of context you want … again, we’re investigating something that’s not nearly as quid pro quo that [Biden] on camera says, I withheld the money, and said—”

“Okay, can we please stop with this?” said fellow guest Tara Setmayer.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” said Bauer.

“Let’s talk specifically about it,” said Blackwell. “Most of the Western world wanted the Ukrainian general prosecutor Viktor Shokin removed because they felt he was not doing enough to investigate corruption, the European allies wanted him out. Christine Lagarde of the IMF was so disappointed with the work he did, that she was going to hold back billions of dollars. so you’re trying to change and shift what actually was happening in 2016.”

“It’s like investigating Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton when you want to talk about Russian collusion,” said Bauer.

“Okay. We’re done with this conversation,” said Blackwell. “I thought this was going to be a talk about strategy from the Republicans who are now acknowledging quid pro quo. We hoped to get to the polling that shows that although we’ve seen three weeks of revelations, that 49 percent, just like they were three weeks ago, support the removal of the president after impeachment. Instead we had to go down this road of debunked conspiracies and fact-check for four and a half minutes.”

Watch below:

gOP lawmaker implodes after CNN host corners him on lies about Joe Biden

Brad Reed / Raw Story

Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) had a full blown meltdown during a CNN interview on Friday in which he was caught red-handed peddling falsehoods about former Vice President Joe Biden.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/cnn-hired-a-habitual-liar-as-the-republicans-strategy-to-work-the-refs-pays-off/

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CNN hired a habitual liar as the Republicans’ strategy to ‘work the refs’ pays off

Written by Eric Boehlert / Daily Kos October 23, 2019

Former Republican Rep. Sean Duffy, recently hired by CNN to be a paid political commentator, can’t stop fabricating facts when he goes on the air. Since making his CNN debut on Sunday, Duffy has lied about the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords. He’s lied about Joe Biden trying to fire a Ukraine prosecutor in order to protect his son. And Duffy’s helped spread the preposterous lie about the Democratic National Committee’s email servers from 2016 somehow ending up in a foreign country.

Sean Duffy, who staked his congressional reputation in recent years on being an undying Trump loyalist, is not a serious person. And Sean Duffy appears to be a habitual liar. (He once claimed George Soros was rigging voting machines, and that Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.) You would think those unfortunate traits would represent two large check marks against someone who wanted to be in the business of commenting on the news.

And yet, here we are.

CNN executives, having surveyed the political landscape in search of new voices to add to its discussions, decided to hire Duffy, which says a lot more about CNN than it does Duffy. What’s newsworthy about Duffy’s hiring is the timing. It just seems odd since much of the press, including CNN, has moved to toughen up Trump coverage in recent weeks and temporarily abandon the hallmark timidity that has defined so much of the reporting and commentary over the last two-plus years.

“The mainstream media seems to have quietly removed its Trump-normalizing gloves in the past few weeks,” wrote Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan.

CNN anchors and commentators have often been part of that change. They have been out front since the Ukraine collusion scandal broke last month, emphasizing that Trump’s pronouncements and denials are almost always wrapped in lies and deceptions. That’s a good thing.

So why now, of all times, would CNN decide to shift into reverse and hire another Trump loyalist who cannot be trusted to be honest or state anything factual each time he appears on air? Why would CNN want to go back to playing the silly and time-consuming game of blocking off lots of airtime so conservative contributors can make stuff up, which CNN anchors then have to point out is, y’know, made up? What does CNN hope to accomplish with this?

It’s all just a colossal waste of time, and CNN already tried to pull off that losing strategy for two years. Looking to capture the cable news “middle” between Fox News and MSNBC, CNN often obsesses over its Both Sides presentation. And on paper, there’s nothing wrong with that. (Think: Crossfire format.) The problem is trying to find honest conservatives these days and, specifically, the nearly impossible task of finding honest conservatives who are also Trump loyalists, since that’s the Both Sides debate CNN often wants to present.

CNN has hired many such Trump loyalists who have chewed up the cable news scenery, spreading lie after preposterous lie. That includes people like Jason Miller, Jack Kingston, Ed Martin, Jeffrey Lord, and Corey Lewandowski, among others. None of them, to be generous, covered the network in glory. Following the 2018 school massacre at Parkland High School in Florida, Kingston claimed on the air that students who rallied against gun violence were being taken advantage of by “left-wing gun control activists” led by billionaire George Soros.

It all badly muddies the waters, because by allowing—and paying—people like Duffy to disseminate nonsense like he’s already spewed about DNC servers, CNN is legitimizing that lie, even when it’s fact-checked. “First of all, what you are stating is completely inaccurate and factually wrong,” CNN contributor Jen Psaki told Duffy when he started in with the server conspiracy. “It’s a conspiracy theory on the right-wing blogs.” And frankly, that’s where that garbage should stay.

By hiring someone like Duffy at this juncture, it appears CNN has learned very little since 2017, and specifically very little about how to cover a liar like Trump. It’s not up to CNN and other media players to hire bad actors simply because the conservative movement is filled with bad actors. All news outlets ought to have easily identifiable standards, and if would-be paid contributors can’t meet those standards, they should not be hired.

Keep in mind that CNN remains under constant bullying attacks from Trump and the entire conservative movement. Last year, the White House lashed out at CNN by pulling reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass. Trump routinely defames the network on Twitter. And just last week, Trump’s personal attorney sent a ridiculous threat to CNN, threatening to sue the network for its “biased” coverage of Trump. (“Never in the history of this country has a President been the subject of such a sustained barrage of unfair, unfounded, unethical and unlawful attacks by so-called ‘mainstream’ news, as the current situation,” etc.) Lawyers everywhere mocked the move as deeply unserious, but the cumulative effect adds up.

And that makes Duffy’s hiring even more distressing. It certainly seems to send a signal that “working the refs” is an effective strategy, and that if Republicans complain loudly and long enough, the cable news channel will bend, in small ways, to the GOP’s will.

Recall that back in January, CNN seemed to make a similar and equally misguided concession to Trump when it hired a hyper-partisan Republican flack with no experience in journalism to oversee the network’s campaign news coverage. After a public outcry, CNN changed the Republican’s job duties.

Note to CNN: It’s not too late to do the same with Duffy.

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press secretary whines after CNN’s Anderson Cooper ridiculed her outrageous lies Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos

Fox News’ Chris Wallace shreds acting defense secretary for ‘abandoning the Kurds’ to be slaughtered by Turkey

David Edwards / Raw Story

Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday grilled acting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper after President Donald Trump ordered U.S. troops to abandon Kurds in Syria.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/jim-jordan-and-gop-battered-by-cnn-panel-for-blatant-lying-about-damning-state-department-texts/

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CNN panel explodes in anger as Rick Santorum defends assault weapons after latest shooting

Tom Boggioni / Raw Story

A CNN panel discussion on yet another mass shooting exploded into anger and yelling after former Sen. Rick Santorum refused to even consider stopping the sale of assault rifles after a massacre in Texas.

amazing news about corruption of lapierre had no effect; must be that guns are fundamental to base? tho big %even of NRA rank and file ok w/ bkgd checks?

CNN’s Anderson Cooper rips Trump for cowering in fear of the NRA — after he slammed Republicans for doing exactly that

Cody Fenwick

President Donald Trump is backing down from his support of bulked-up firearm background check legislation, clearly fearful of backlash from the National Rifle Association. And according to The Atlantic, Trump…

2nd dem debate proprietary, more entertainment? bernie predicted correctly run anti- pro corp medicare for all ad

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/07/26/cnn-s-ethics-mess-employee-again-used-network-job-promote-his-lobbying-client-s-cause/224331

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CNN political commentator and megalobbyist David Urban again used his network job to push for the passage of a trade agreement favored by President Donald Trump. Urban’s lobbying firm is being paid by a Trump-aligned group to lobby for the passage of the agreement, a blatant financial conflict of interest that CNN (again) didn’t disclose to viewers.

Trump has been trying to pass the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) as a replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) since he signed the deal during November’s G-20 summit. In February, Axios reported that Republicans formed the 501(c)(4) group Trade Works for America with the specific purpose of pressuring members of Congress, especially Democrats, to support the USMCA.

On April 1, Trade Works for America retained Urban and his firm American Continental Group to lobby for the USMCA. The group has paid Urban's firm $90,000 so far, according to a lobbying report filed by the firm last week.

As Media Matters reported earlier this month, Urban used his CNN job to -- unprompted -- push for the agreement’s passage just three days after he was retained to lobby for it. On the April 4 edition of The Lead with Jake Tapper, Urban said that the USMCA has been “getting some momentum, some traction with Democrats in the House” and Trump’s threat to close the U.S.-Mexico border would “kind of blow that up” and be “a tragedy.” Media Matters asked CNN why the network didn’t disclose Urban’s financial conflict of interest during that segment but received no response.

Urban again appeared on CNN and urged the passage of the USMCA, this time on the July 24 edition of Anderson Cooper 360. Urban brought up the USMCA essentially unprompted and said that “people want to see legislators legislate” and that “the path of success for Democrats” is to pass things like the USMCA.

DAVID URBAN: So I would say what David [Axelrod] was talking about in the 2018 midterms, people want to see legislators legislate. They want to see things happen. I think the path to success -- you just saw debt ceiling raised, people -- every side kind of got half a loaf. Republicans took it on the chin, I think, in terms of, you know, incredible runaway spending, you know, which is very interesting.

ANDERSON COOPER (HOST): It is extraordinary for the Republicans.

URBAN: Very extraordinary, right? And so USMCA is coming up on the table here. There's going to be a move to -- whether they're going to pass -- the House is going to do something there. I think the path of success for Democrats is legislatively forward, pass some things, look like the body -- we can work. We're functional, not just somebody who keeps throwing bricks through the window.

DAVID AXELROD (CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR): They would say that they've passed -- they say that they passed a ton of things and they've died in the Senate.

URBAN: But, you can -- but, David, my point is pass things that get signed into law --

COOPER: All right.

URBAN: -- that's legislative.

Neither CNN, Cooper, nor Urban disclosed that he’s a lobbyist for the passage of the USMCA.

Basic ethics failures have become standard operating procedure for CNN in its handling of Urban. CNN has not disclosed Urban’s lobbying conflicts of interest on other topics such as military issues, environmental protections, and tax policy.

Urban is scheduled to appear on the July 28 edition of CNN's State of the Union. The network did not respond to a request for comment.

Posted In

Ethics

Network/Outlet

CNN

Person

David Urban

Show/Publication

Anderson Cooper 360

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Inspired by a Fox & Friends segment attacking Baltimore congressional Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and likening conditions in the city to the southern border, President Trump lashed out on Saturday, calling Baltimore a "rodent infested mess." On Sunday, Fox rushed to defend Trump. This racist mess followed Fox News inspiring (and then defending) Trump's racist statements towards Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, Tlaib, and Omar.

Shortly after Trump's twitter rant, CNN host Victor Blackwell gave an emotional response on air, pointing out that Trump only used this type of "infestation" language when attacking minorities. The Baltimore Sunpublished a powerful editorial titled "Better to have a few rats than to be one."

There is one thing that the media must cover in relation to Trump's twitter rant. Jared Kushner operates as a slumlord in Baltimore. As ProPublica has reported: "Tenants in more than a dozen Baltimore-area rental complexes complain about a property owner who they say leaves their homes in disrepair, humiliates late-paying renters and often sues them when they try to move out. Few of them know that their landlord is the president’s son-in-law"

https://www.alternet.org/2019/04/new-report-details-failure-of-cable-and-network-outlets-to-accurately-describe-climate-emergency-call-it-a-crisis/

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Name and shame.

That’s the dual directive from a new report that calls on news organizations to use appropriate language when discussing the climate crisis—even as the report calls them out for inaction.

The report—titled “‘Call It a Crisis’: The Role of U.S. Network News in Communicating the Urency of Climate Change” (pdf)—analyzed the coverage of ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News to determine just how much urgency the influential outlets bring to their reporting.

https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/public-citizen-call-it-a-crisis-report-april-29-2019.pdf

According to David Arkush, managing director of Public Citizen’s Climate Program, the specific words that journalists and news anchors use—or choose not to use—matters.

“The words we use to characterize an issue make a difference in how it is perceived and prioritized politically,” said Arkush.

When outlets with massive nightly audiences like the ones the report studied “consistently fail to use language that conveys that climate change is a crisis or emergency,” Arkush added, “they unwittingly put a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of complacency and inaction.”

Fox News was the worst offender,with the use of “climate crisis” coming in for only five mentions during the coverage period—all of which, as Public Citizen noted, were efforts to “minimize the issue with false logic, mockery or misinformation.” But other news networks weren’t much better than the conservative channel.

The only network to use the term in double digits was CNN,and only 16 of the 26 mentions were by a host. Van Jones, whose eponymous show ran every other Sunday during the survey period, accounted for six of those mentions.

Public Citizen

@Public_Citizen

NEW REPORT: In 2018, only 50 of 1,429 national TV news segments used the word “crisis” or “emergency" when discussing climate change. That's a measly 3.5 percent.

Here's how the networks stack up:

MSNBC: 7%

NBC: 6%

CNN: 3%

CBS: 3%

ABC: 2%

Fox: 2%

http://pubc.it/2XTXQEE

12:23 PM - Apr 29, 2019

50 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Networks should name the problem clearly to avoid confusion, said Allison Fisher, outreach director for Public Citizen’s Energy Program.

“Climate coverage on broadcast and cable television news is still at best spotty and at worst riddled with misinformation,” Fisher said. “Calling it a crisis indicates that the stakes are high and that the issue is urgent. Most of all it signals to viewers that the time to act on climate is now.”

How to report on the climate crisis has long been an issue for news organizations. In July 2018, MSNBC host Chris Hayes said on Twitter that while he was personally invested in the story, the topic was “a palpable ratings killer.”

“So the incentives are not great,” said Hayes.

Chris Hayes

@chrislhayes

Replying to @elongreen

almost without exception. every single time we've covered it's been a palpable ratings killer. so the incentives are not great.

526

7:08 AM - Jul 24, 2018

Twitter

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/extremely-demoralizing-cnn-reportedly-baffles-staffers-after-hiring-an-ex-trump-administration-flack-to-run-politics-coverage/

According to The Daily Beast, CNN staffers are angry and disheartened by the news that Republican strategist Sarah Isgur was hired as political editor for the network’s coverage ahead of the 2020 presidential election:

The hiring was met with a negative internal reaction, especially because many CNN staffers have been largely left in the dark on the controversial decision. While other marquee hires are often announced internally, as of Tuesday afternoon the company has not circulated any guidance to staff about Isgur’s new role, leading employees to wonder how much of a role she will have in day-to-day political reporting.

“It’s extremely demoralizing for everyone here,” one network editorial staffer told The Daily Beast.

“People are generally confused,” another editorial employee said, adding that the decision to hire a partisan operative for an editorial position comes off as “very bizarre.”

Isgur has previously advised several right-wing campaigns and organizations, including a Ted Cruz Senate run and Carly Fiorina’s 2016 presidential campaign. She most recently served as a spokeswoman for the Justice Department under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a job for which the Washington Post reported she pledged her loyalty to the Trump agenda to get.

One key thing missing from her résumé, however, is any experience in journalism.

She has also been a consistently reliable right-wing partisan. Vox reported that on Twitter, she has called President Barack Obama “the new Nixon,” compared abortion to gun violence, spread conspiracy theories about Planned Parenthood, lied that “92 percent of jobs lost in Obama’s first term belonged to women,” scoffed at the idea that climate change is a national security threat, and attacked the media for pointing out that President Donald Trump pushed Birther conspiracy theories. She has also repeatedly attacked CNN itself, calling it the “Clinton News Network” and attacking them for correctly reporting that an event hosted by a right-wing hate group is “anti-gay” and “anti-abortion.”

CNN is, of course, no stranger to hiring controversial far-right personalities. The network hired Jeffrey Lord, a Trump surrogate who they had to dismiss after he tweeted a Nazi slogan, and Kayleigh McEnany, who has claimed transgender civil rights empower sexual predators.

But the difference is, these people were hired as commentators, to give their own opinions — for better or worse — in overtly political debate segments. It is extremely rare, The Daily Beast noted, for a news network to hire a political operative with no background in journalism as an editor. (CNN disputes the idea that she will steer editorial decisions, telling Vox’s Aaron Rupar that Isgur “is not leading, overseeing, or running political coverage” and will simply be “helping to coordinate coverage across TV and Digital.”)

The dissatisfaction by CNN staffers is a sign that the hire threatens to embarrass the network and undermine its credibility.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/gop-lawmaker-faceplants-on-live-tv-after-being-asked-if-climate-change-could-be-considered-a-national-emergency/

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) on Friday appeared to short circuit after CNN’s John Berman asked him if a Democrat president could in the future use the precedent being set by President Donald Trump to unilaterally declare climate change a “national emergency.”

During a discussion about Trump potentially bypassing Congress to order the construction of his border wall by declaring a “national emergency,” Berman asked Brooks what he would think of a future Democratic president using the same tactics to address climate change.

“I’m sorry, you’d have to… that was kind of convoluted, the way I heard it, could you please restate it?” Brooks said in response.

“What I’m saying is, if the president can make the claim that national security money, emergency money is needed for a wall, could a president at one point say it’s needed to fight climate change?” he asked.

At this point, Brooks’ eyes darted about and there was an uncomfortable pause before he responded.

“I would have to look at the specific statutes to see what you can and cannot do,” he said. “This is so far out there…”

“Why?” Berman interjected. “If it’s a matter of national security and the president deems it so, why is it outside the purview of the law?”

“I don’t see how that example that you gave affects the national security of the United States,” he replied.

“The Pentagon and the intelligence services often talk about the affects of climate change,” Berman shot back.

Watch the video below.

santorum paid pundit:

...Amid all that, news programs like Chuck Todd's Meet The Press—offerings that putatively exist to inform the public about the world around them—are still playing host to people who are paid to spread false information about the world. Todd is not alone: CNN hosted Rick Santorum on Sunday. Like NBC News, which employs Pletka as a contributor, they pay Rick directly to spread nonsense.

...this Week talked about the climate report for two minutes with Sen. Amy Klobuchar and noted that the administration tried to bury it.

The report did not, from what I can tell, come up on the rest of the hour-long show...[vid]

whitehouse sen

Here'spaid CNN commentator Rick Santorumpraising the Trump administration for trying to bury the climate report, arguing that climate change is made up by scientists trying to make some money pic.twitter.com/lBpLMexgt9...

This festering boil on the body politic highlights another in-vogue conservative argument: that the scientists who've devoted their lives to studying the climate are really just in it for those juicy government grants to continue studying it. It's all about the money! As usual in this era, this is a case of accusing the opposition of something you're already up to.

see acosta ban, fake video

CNN's New York City offices and studios were evacuated Thursday night due to a bomb threat, forcing the network to switch to pre-filmed programming.

"We were evacuated in the middle of my live show," reported CNN host Don Lemon. "Bomb threat. We’re running taped programming. NYPD is investigating. Stay tuned."

Host Brian Stelter said: "The NYPD is investigating a bomb threat near CNN NYC's office at Columbus Circle. Due to the threat, the office has been evacuated."

Many observers pointed out that, not before the threat has been made public, President Donald Trump had posted a barrage of frantic tweets including one context-less attack on the press: "FAKE NEWS - THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!"

Initial reports conflicted about the precise time of the bomb threat itself, raising questions about whether Trump's tweet might have instigated the attack. The NYPD posted on Twitter that the threat came in at 10:35 p.m., but then later amended that to 10:07. Trump's tweet was posted at 10:08. Earlier in the night, Trump had lambasted the "fake news media" on Twitter as well, falsely claiming that reporters don't mention the Republican midterm gains in the Senate.

Less than two months ago, the country experienced a wave of mail bombings, though none of the devices were activated. All the bombs targeted people Trump sees as enemies, and CNN itself received a bomb. The suspect, now in custody, was a man who was clearly enthralled by the president and his attacks on the media and others.

Though the police report suggests its unlikely Trump's tweet at 10:08 p.m. was the cause of the threat, the close timing of the two events highlighted the danger the president is courting with his unrelenting and malicious hostility toward the press. After the mail bombings, the president can't pretend to be unaware of the risks he's taking by inciting such hatred — he just doesn't care.

"A reminder that these threats are a(nother) attack on our free press, a fundamental pillar of our democracy, and prevent the American public from being informed," said CNN analyst Asha Rangappa. "Enough is enough."

This story has been updated with new information about the precise time of the threat.

https://www.alternet.org/cnn-exposes-trumps-nationalism-its-pathetic-disfiguration-american-legacy

Kevin Liptak and Kaitlyn Collins have put together A chilling snapshot of where the current administration has taken the United States of America on the world stage.

As a reminder of how far our country has fallen from moral legitimacy, this article describes to us a president who is distant, disinterested, and dangerous, unsettlingly too willing to put his egomania above every single citizen of our nation. Morever, it reminds us of a president who is a clear and present danger to our nation, not to mention our entire world.

And when the world looks at America, they are less impressed than ever. 20% of Americans may think that we are being made great again, but 98% of the rest of the world disagrees, as described by Liptak and Collins:

The imagery may have been rooted in logistics, but as France and its European partners fret about the alliance forged with the United States in bloody conflict a century ago, it mattered. Trump has shown little appetite for strengthening the relationships that have underpinned transatlantic relations since the end of World War I, instead lambasting traditional US partners on trade and the cost of security.He's shown more affinity for strongmen leaders who have eroded democracy in their countries, like Putin, with whom he spoke at a lunch on Sunday, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who sat alongside him at dinner on Saturday.That's left leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Macron, who put forth well-publicized displays of unity this weekend, to urgently warn of backsliding into history's darkest moments

There was a time when America provided moral, ethical, political, and economic leadership in this world. But it is clear that this time is slipping between our fingers.

We must find our voice, and we must become evangelists for the truth that is stronger than the fears of those who elect people like Donald Trump. The world is on a razors edge. It is up to the citizenry of the United States take action. If we can’t stop the fascist forces currently seeking to control our nation, the losses in life, freedom, and democratic ideals will be beyond all of our reckoning.

This CNN article is more than just an eloquently written snapshot into current events. It is a call to restore out very collective humanity.

Let us all respond, in whatever way we are able. But in the meantime here is what President Macron from France had to say:

Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying 'our interests first; who cares about the others?', we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great, and what makes it essential — its moral values… The old demons (have resurfaced). Giving into the fascination for withdrawal, isolationism, violence and domination would be a grave error.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Lemon

Don Lemon (born March 1, 1966) is an American journalist and author. He is a news anchor for CNN based in New York City, and hosts CNN Tonight.

Early life

Lemon was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was educated at Baker High School, a public high school in the town of Baker in East Baton Rouge Parish. He majored in broadcast journalism at Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, New York, and attended Louisiana State University.^[2][3] While in college, Lemon worked as a news assistant at WNYWin New York City.

Career

Early in his career, Lemon reported as a weekend anchor for WBRC in Birmingham, Alabama, and WCAU in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as well as an anchor and investigative reporter for KTVI St. Louis.^[2]

Lemon reported for NBC News' New York City operations, including working as a correspondent for Today and NBC Nightly News and an anchor on Weekend Today and MSNBC. In 2003, he began at NBC owned-and-operated station WMAQ-TV (5 in Chicago), and was a reporter as well as local news co-anchor.^[2]

Lemon joined CNN in September 2006.^[2] He has been outspoken in his work at CNN, criticizing the state of cable news and questioning the network publicly.^[4] He has also voiced strong opinions on ways that the African-American community can improve themselves, which has caused some controversy.^[5] Since 2014, he has hosted CNN's New Year's Eve special from New Orleans.

In a much-reported broadcast in January 2018, Lemon introduced his broadcast with, “This is CNN Tonight, I’m Don Lemon. The President of the United States is racist.”^[6]

Personal life

During an on-air interview with members of Bishop Eddie Long's congregation in September 2010, Lemon said that he was a victim of sexual abuse as a child, and that it was not until he was thirty years old that he told his mother about it.^[7]

In his memoir, Transparent, Lemon came out as gay^[8] and discusses colorism in the black community, and the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.^[9] He has Creole ancestry (his great-grandfather was of Frenchdescent) in addition to Nigerian, Cameroonian, and Congolese ancestry.^[10][11]

In 2015, over 30,000 people signed a petition demanding that Lemon be fired from CNN following a controversial remark he made regarding police behavior.^[12]

On January 31, 2018, Lemon's sister, L'Tanya "Leisa" Lemon Grimes, died at the age of 58; police concluded that her death was an accidental drowning in a pond while fishing.^[13] After being absent for approximately a week, he opened the show on February 6 by thanking everyone who wished him "prayers and words of encouragement". He said that conservatives, like Sean Hannity, were among the first to call, which illustrated how they actually respect each other and have good relations, even though they disagree on the issues.^[14]

Lemon owns an apartment in Harlem and a second home in Sag Harbor NY, an area of Long Island.^[15]

Honors and awards

Lemon won an Emmy Award for a special report on the real estate market in Chicago.^[16] He received an Edward R. Murrow Award for his coverage of the capture of the D.C. area sniper,^[17] and a number of other awards for reports on Hurricane Katrina, and the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Lemon was voted as one of the 150 most influential African-Americans by Ebony magazine in 2009.^[18]

In 2014, however, Lemon's work was named in a list of worst journalism of the year by the Columbia Journalism Review, for his questions about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, spanking children, and US Army POW Bowe Bergdahl. He suggested to an alleged Bill Cosby rape victim that she could have resisted oral sex by biting him, despite claiming in his book to be a victim of sexual abuse himself.^[19][20]

Controversies

In 2018 Lemon described Kanye West's appearance at the White House with President Donald Trump as "embarrassing" and a "Minstrel Show" whilst allowing his panel members to describe West as a "Token Negro".^[21] In October 2018, Lemon stated on-air: "So, we have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right. And we have to start doing something about them. There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban on — they had the Muslim ban. There is no white guy ban. So, what do we do about that?"^[22]

Published works

Lemon, Don (2011). Transparent. Farrah Gray Publishing, Inc. ISBN 978-0982702789.

Trump Lovers Are Already Claiming Explosive Devices Sent to Obama, Clinton and CNN Are 'False Flags'

CNN Threatened With Lawsuit After Reporting GOP Candidate's Gross Comments About Women

ses mma on tucker c pal with proud boys, NYC beatings

see proud boys update

While the Proud Boys are beating people on the streets of New York, right-wing media figures have instead fearmongered about peaceful protesters on the left. Right-wing media figures likened anti-Kavanaugh protesters to deranged monsters, compared them to children, claimed that they are on drugs, called for punitive measures against them, and more. The attacks are out of control.

This is all part of a larger tactic on the right. As Matt Gertz explained, the right-wing midterm engagement strategy is telling viewers that Democrats are coming to kill them: “With the midterm elections only four weeks away, a slew of Fox News commentators are warning their conservative viewers that they are physically imperiled by a ‘violent’ leftist ‘mob’ and must vote to keep Republicans in power in order to protect themselves. Their argument is an effort to turn out the GOP base by weaponizing conservative criticism of the protestors who opposed Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.”

Also: It's not just Fox News. CNN's right-wing pundits are running with this same talking point.

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/10/11/cnns-conservative-pundits-are-helping-gop-fearmonger-over-scary-liberal-protesters/221653

In the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, right-wing media and Republican officials have found a new favorite scare tactic: hyping nonsensical claims of radical Democrats and an “angry mob” of “scary,” violent, liberal protesters trying to disrupt American values and take over the country. This transparent effort at turning out Republicans to the polls has been parotted by a number of right-wing pundits paid by CNN for their political analysis.

Right-wing media, especially the Trump-aligned Fox News Channel, responded to the confirmation battle of now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh by accusing Democrats, protesters (many of whom were sexual assault survivors) and the left broadly of violent radicalism. Republican politicians, including the president, have been quick to echo these claims. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) argued that Democrats “encouraged mob rule” during the Kavanaugh hearings, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) commended Republicans for standing “up to the mob.” During an October 9 rally in Iowa, President Donald Trump -- who regularly called for actual violence during the 2016 campaign and who said last year that there were “very fine people” at a white supremacist rally that resulted in one person dying -- condemned Democrats as an “angry left-wing mob” that is “too dangerous to govern.” The president insisted that the party cannot be trusted with power because “you don't hand matches to an arsonist.”

Conservative denouncements of left-wing violence are obviously absurd, and markedly hypocritical, but that hasn’t stopped right-wing CNN pundits from fearmongering about the supposed “mob behavior” of the left. On CNN’sAnderson Cooper 360, commentator Steve Cortes called it “scary” that the left has been using “mob tactics” and “violence” to a “dramatic degree.” During the October 9 edition of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, political commentator Alice Stewart claimed that Republicans were correct in calling protesters a “mob” because they were “banging on the doors of the Supreme Court and chasing senators out of public restaurants and yelling at senators in an elevator.”

During the same segment, CNN’s Matt Lewis equated protesters to the alt-right and specifically white supremacist Richard Spencer before host Don Lemon interrupted him. He then accused the protesters of “mob behavior,” and got into a heated exchange with Lemon about whether activists disrupting people who are complicit in the administration’s inhumane policies constitutes mob action. And on The Lead with Jake Tapper, network contributor Scott Jennings argued that the Kavanaugh hearings showed conservatives “what life would be like if you let the angry mob take over,” and claimed that if he were running a campaign he would use “video of this angry mob.”

There is, of course, tremendous irony here; CNN hired Corey Lewandowski as a political commentator after Lewandowski was forced out of the Trump campaign for assaulting a reporter. CNN was also duped by conservatives earlier this year into fretting over “civility” as it conflated examples of liberals being rude with conservatives being racist.

CNN’s model of false balance and “both sides” punditry and its obsession with employing and hosting a roster of right-wing ideologues is nothing new, but it does continue to lead to the espousal of extremist opinions on the network.

ref

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/06/26/CNN-bemoans-a-lack-of-civility-after-spending-years-hiring-pro-Trump-commentators/220549

no lnx

CNN bemoans a lack of civility after spending years hiring pro-Trump commentators

Blog ››› June 26, 2018 5:59 PM EDT ››› JOHN WHITEHOUSE

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

CNN has been on a civility kick. A transcript search shows that variations of the words were said over a hundred times on June 25 alone. One good example is the network’s June 25 highlight reel of allegedly incivil things that have recently been said by various people. As my colleague noted, the video conflated examples of liberals being mean with conservatives being racist:

Steve Morris

@stevemorris__

Hang this in the Louvre. CNN's "both sides" montage perfectly encapsulating the fallacy of mainstream media equivalence: all the conservatives examples are bald racism and all the liberal examples are...being rude

...

CNN then brought on longtime centrist commentator David Gergen and pro-Trump whisperer Salena Zito to discuss the supposed decline in civility. Apparently no progressive voices were available.

Later in the day, when discussing Trump’s separation and detention of immigrant families with immigration lawyer David Leopold, CNN anchor Kate Bolduan interrupted Leopold and chided him for calling White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller a white nationalist, asking, “Where is the fact on that??”

John Whitehouse

@existentialfish

CNN anchor: "I just did an entire segment about civility here, I don't know if you want to call Stephen Miller a white nationalist"

9:07 AM - Jun 25, 2018

Calling Miller a white nationalist is not some gratuitous insult. It is a simple, straight-forward analysis of his ideology. Splinter News’ Clio Chang aptly noted the evidence:

There is plenty of evidence that Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s hard-line racist immigration policies, is a white nationalist. He crafted Trump’s Muslim ban. His thumbprint is smeared all over the administration’s family separation policy, the point of which is to tear immigrant families apart and deter others from entering the country. Miller reportedly laughed during a meeting when Trump made up names for immigrants and described imaginary crimes they might have committed. He has pushed for some of the harshest overhauls of our immigration system, including cutting legal immigration by half over the next decade. A White House aide recently told Vanity Fair Miller “actually enjoys” seeing pictures of children detained at the border: “He’s Waffen-SS,” the person said.

As journalist Chris Hooks also noted, Miller and white nationalist Richard Spencer worked together at Duke University to bring in white nationalist Peter Brimelow to speak about immigration. Spencer even told Mother Jones that he was glad no one was reporting on this connection:

“It’s funny no one’s picked up on the Stephen Miller connection,” Spencer says. “I knew him very well when I was at Duke. But I am kind of glad no one’s talked about this because I don’t want to harm Trump.”

This determined ignorance of the Trump team’s white nationalism is particularly galling since CNN has been profiting off of Trump’s team for years now. The network has hired a parade of pro-Trump analysts who, like the children at Willy Wonka’s factory, have been inevitably dropped as they become too toxic.

The hirings started during the 2016 campaign when Trump told CNN executives to hire Jeffrey Lord.Soon after, CNN programming was inundated with Lord, Corey Lewandowski, Kayleigh McEnany, and Scottie Nell Hughes. These hirings frequently raised ethical questions. Current Vox correspondent Carlos Maza examined the problem for Media Matters before the election:

As Maza noted, the presence of pro-Trump voices turned discussions into screaming matches more suited to reality television than to a news network. And like reality television, the names rotated in and out with the content staying the same.

Lewandowski resigned from CNN following the election (CNN refused to fire him even after reporting revealed the Trump campaign was still paying him). McEnany moved on to become the spokesperson of the Republican National Committee. Hughes left CNN before the inauguration. And most notably, CNN eventually fired Lord after he issued a Nazi salute on Twitter.

In their stead, CNN rolled in new pro-Trump voices. One of the first was former Trump senior communications adviser Jason Miller. By mid 2017, the channel’s paid Trump shills were flooding the network:

Media Matters’ senior fellow Matt Gertz noted in October 2017 how the network continued to flood its airwaves with bullshit:

[Ben] Ferguson, for example, has repeatedly been called out by his CNN colleagues this month for offering nonsensical diversions in discussions of Trump’s attacks on NFL players who protest racial inequality during the National Anthem. And [Stephen] Moore -- who typically appears on the network to lie about Trump-backed health care proposals -- on Monday derailed a CNN panel discussion about then-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly paying a hefty sexual harassment settlement by saying that the real solution is for powerful men to never be alone in a room alone with a woman. [Jack] Kingston, for his part, last night attempted to make excuses for Trump’s unprecedented falsehoods, saying that “the American perception is that politicians lie” and Trump is no worse than other presidents; the rest of the panel denounced him, with anchor Don Lemon scolding him for “condoning bad behavior.”

When major stories break, such as Trump’s string of indefensible responses to the lethal white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, Trump’s CNN supporters blanket the network’s coverage. That result was a trainwreck, with the president’s shills sidelining discussions with praise for Trump’s response and dismissals of the importance of the rally.

In September 2017, CNN hired Ed Martin, president of the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, ostensibly as Lord’s replacement. CNN was either ignorant or tolerant of the fact that Martin had previously called CNN “fake news” and had made flatly racist statements. In 2016, Martin told a crowd at a right-wing rally: "You're not racist if you don't like Mexicans. They're from a nation. If you don't think Muslims are vetted enough, because they blow things up, that's not racist."

Martin predictably used his appearances to turn CNN into a trainwreck, while using his radio show to rail against the network:

Martin called on the air for a total end to immigration, saying, “Stop all immigration right now.” (11/2/17)

Martin argued that Leigh Corfman, the woman who reported that former Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore molested her as a child, should not be believed, saying, “What is this woman? She’s got multiple bankruptcies." (11/11/17)

Martin endorsed Moore and tried to get him elected even as CNN was doing great reporting on him. (11/7/17)

Martin said that Trump’s racist remarks about LaVar Ball, father of one of the basketball players arrested in China, could not be a “racial thing” because Trump also attacked Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). (11/20/17)

Martin defended Trump’s racist “Pocahontas” comment to World War II Navajo code talkers as “100 percent” appropriate. (11/27/17)

Martin contended that Trump’s racist anti-Muslim tweets were actually helpful because they were “starting a conversation.” (11/30/17)

After Roy Moore said that America was at its best during slavery, Martin argued that Jewish slaves had families: “When the Jews were in bondage for years, they still loved each other.” (12/11/17)

Martin called fellow CNN employees and co-panelists “black racists.” (12/14/17)

Martin praised Trump for ordering CNN’s chief White House correspondent out of the Oval Office, saying it was “amazing to see” and “really funny.” (1/18/18)

Martin gave an award to disgraced conservative operative James O’Keefe,who had on numerous occasions run deceitful stings against CNN. O’Keefe once attempted to lure then-CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a boat full of sex paraphernalia. (1/12/18)

Martin stopped appearing on CNN after December 14 when Media Matters posted audio of Martin complaining about appearing on a panel with CNN commentators “who were just rabid feminists, actually racial, racists -- two of the women were racists, they were just were racists, black racists.” CNN eventually confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter on January 18 that Martin no longer worked for the network.

Martin’s role was soon taken by pro-Trump commentator Steve Cortes, who has said that he went to CNN “partly at the suggestion of the White House itself and the president himself.” Like Martin, Cortes also had previously called CNN “fake news.” During his time as a contributor at Fox News, Cortes had compared undocumented immigrants to violent thieves. And on CNN, Cortes has not only made similar statements, he’s also made laughably false and ridiculous claims. Michelle Wolf called out CNN’s charade with Cortes:

MICHELLE WOLF (HOST): Aw man, as a fan I just love this kind of TV magic. Watching the host act like the guest forced his way into the studio is so compelling, you almost forget that he was invited on and paid! Good job, Don, you knew full well Steve was going to lie and you gave a fun clip to share, and that's exactly why you invite him back all the time.

Here’s a brief history of things that paid CNN commentators have said on-air since the inauguration:

Stephen Moore made a completely false claim about coal jobs that an actual economist immediately corrected. (3/29/17)

Jason Miller made sexist remarks about Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), calling her “hysterical.” (6/13/17)

After Trump encouraged police brutality, Jeffrey Lord dismissed it as a "New Yorker sense of humor." (7/31/17)

Lord called Trump “the Martin Luther King of health care.” CNN then talked about it for an entire day. (4/13/17)

Lord compared the Congressional Black Caucus to the KKK. (2/16/17)

Ben Ferguson criticized civil rights icon John Lewis for not educating Trump about civil rights. (12/8/17)

Rick Santorum said that Parkland school shooting survivors aren't taking personal responsibility and should learn CPR instead of engaging in activism. (3/25/18)

Kayleigh McEnany attacked Barack Obama for golfing in 2002 when George W. Bush was president. (3/28/17)

Ken Cuccinelli told panelist Symone Sanders to shut up while discussing white supremacists in Charlottesville. (8/14/17)

Paris Dennard posited that Trump was better than Obama at calling out white supremacists. (8/14/17)

Kayleigh McEnany defended Trump’s sexist remarks to an Irish reporter: "The press should be applauding the fact that he's bringing reporters into the Oval Office, calling them out and including them." (6/28/17)

Rick Santorum attacked reporters for asking Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for details about North Korea and nuclear weapons. (6/14/18)

Miller dismissed reports that Trump had an affair with adult actor Stormy Daniels and paid her hush money because, according to him, the alleged payoff was nothing to a billionaire. (3/7/18)

Santorum accused Obama of exacerbating racism in America. (6/3/18)

After a suicide bombing killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert, Lord said that it would be fair for Trump to criticize Grande for not providing enough security. (6/5/17)

Lord used a Nazi analogy to attack London Mayor Sadiq Khan. (6/5/17)

Stephen Moore repeatedly lied about the Affordable Care Act, often without CNN fact-checking him. (7/17/17)

After Roy Moore was accused of child molestation, Stephen Moore argued that his opponent was “no saint either” because he supported abortion. (11/20/17)

Jack Kingston pushed a conspiracy theory that shadowy forces were behind the rally against gun violence organized by Parkland survivors. (2/20/18)

While discussing sexual harassment, Stephen Moore said that he would never take a one-on-one meeting with a woman. (10/23/17)

Jack Kingston said that Bill O'Reilly's racist remarks about Waters' hair were just like liberals calling Trump “orange.” (3/29/17)

Bryan Lanza argued that discussing sexual assault allegations against Trump "seems like a waste of time." (12/20/17)

And it’s not only the paid commentators who are a part of CNN's “false equivalency” problem. Just last week, after Lewandowski mocked a 10-year-old with Down syndrome who was separated from her mother at the U.S. border, CNN invited him on to talk more about his remark.

At the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Michelle Wolf called out this sycophantic relationship between the media and those in power. Wolf later told Vulture (emphasis original): “It was gross! Like, I saw [CNN President] Jeff Zucker hugging Kellyanne Conway, and it was just like, Oh! You’re all in this together! People are really getting hurt, and you guys are just celebrating your money. It’s all a game, nothing more than ‘How will we best profit off of this?’ It was icky.” Nevertheless, a CNN panel criticized Wolf’s jokes, with a CNN host saying that some of her jokes were “way too personal.”

America is not enduring a crisis of civility. America is enduring a crisis of facts, brought on largely by the rise of the filter bubble, with specious liars given credibility by feckless media and tech companies. It’d be nice if they were all at least a bit more self-aware about it.

Katie Sullivan contributed research to this post.

also ref

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/10/25/study-cnns-paid-trump-shills-made-more-500-appearances-over-last-three-months/218325

"Thhis is an apple,” begins the voice-over for an ad CNN is running as part of its new “Facts First” promotional campaign. “Some people might try to tell you that it’s a banana,” the narration continues. “They might scream banana, banana, banana over and over and over again. They might put banana in ALL CAPS. You might even start to believe that this is a banana. But it’s not. This is an apple.”

The network’s new branding stresses that “there is no alternative to a fact” and that “opinions matter” but “don’t change the facts.”

CNN’s campaign seems driven by the post-truth political environment. President Donald Trump and his administration lie constantly and try to undermine the credibility of other sources of information, including CNN and other media outlets. By confusing the public about what is happening, they hope to maintain power. With top White House aides openly declaring their adherence to “alternative facts,” it makes sense for credible journalists to try to rally around the need for reporting to reflect reality.

But if CNN is truly worried about the sort of people who tell you that an apple is really a banana, the network should deal with the stable of pundits it has hired to provide viewers with knee-jerk defenses of the president. Those Trump apologists -- some of whom were previously on Trump’s payroll -- actively harm CNN’s journalism, frequently bringing panel discussions to a screeching halt with claims so dishonest they approach parody, at times drawing on-air rebukes from the network’s anchors. The pundits force the network to constantly debate whether the apple is really a banana.

In August, media reporter Michael Calderone identified 13 pundits on the CNN payroll “who, to varying degrees, can be identified as pro-Trump”: former Republican Georgia Rep. Jack Kingston, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, talk radio host Ben Ferguson, former Bush White House official Scott Jennings, former South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, former Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller, former Trump adviser Stephen Moore, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Republican strategist Alice Stewart, former Trump campaign official David Urban, talk radio host John Phillips, former Bush White House staffer Paris Dennard and former U.S. Attorney Matthew Whitaker. Since then, the network has hired Ed Martin, former chair of the Missouri Republican Party, to round out the roster.

As Calderone notes, the pundits are not monolithic, with some even offering criticism for the president from time to time. But on balance, the group reliably tilts discussions, often negatively impacting the ability of viewers to come away from the network’s coverage with a strong grasp of the facts.

Over the past three months, those 14 pundits have made 510 appearances on CNN -- an average of more than five appearances a day -- according to a Media Matters review. Jennings and Ferguson have led the way, with 73 and 69 appearances, respectively. Moore, Kingston, and Stewart round out the top five, each with at least 50 appearances.

Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

CNN has been paying Trump shills to provide on-air commentary since the 2016 presidential campaign, apparently having learned nothing from the disastrous results.

At the time, the network hired pro-Trump pundits like Jeffrey Lord, Corey Lewandowski, and Kayleigh McEnany, claiming that it was important to employ full-time Trump apologists to provide “balance” in its election coverage. Those pundits turned the network’s political coverage into a shit show, with segments devolving to bedlam as the network’s hosts and other contributors tried to push back against a steady stream of lies, talking points, and misdirection. The result may have attracted eyeballs, but it certainly was not a credible news product that distinguished fact from fiction.

And those relationships ended in humiliation for CNN: Lord was fired in August after he directed a Nazi victory salute at my boss; the Republican National Committee hired away McEnany to, among other things, produce propaganda videos; and Lewandowski remained on the Trump payroll while simultaneously working for CNN until he finally quit to monetize his relationship with the president full time.

The network has soldiered on since the election, hiring a phalanx of pro-Trump fabulists to populate its panels of reporters, analysts, and pundits. Not every pro-Trump pundit is as bad as Lord or McEnany -- from time to time, some will even offer criticism of the president. But the willingness of many of them to shill for the president regardless of the truth -- to send discussions into a tailspin by saying an apple is a banana -- flies in the face of the network’s stated “facts first” commitment.

Ferguson, for example, has repeatedly been called out by his CNN colleagues this month for offering nonsensical diversions in discussions of Trump’s attacks on NFL players who protest racial inequality during the National Anthem. And Moore -- who typically appears on the network to lie about Trump-backed health care proposals -- on Monday derailed a CNN panel discussion about then-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly paying a hefty sexual harassment settlement by saying that the real solution is for powerful men to never be alone in a room alone with a woman. Kingston, for his part, last night attempted to make excuses for Trump’s unprecedented falsehoods, saying that “the American perception is that politicians lie” and Trump is no worse than other presidents; the rest of the panel denounced him, with anchor Don Lemon scolding him for “condoning bad behavior.”

CNN isn’t the first major news outlet to run an advertising campaign geared around its opposition to Trumpian “alternative facts.” The New York Times sold subscriptions earlier this year with similar patter, proclaiming that “the truth is more important now than ever.” But the paper drew controversy almost immediately when it violated that commitment by hiring a climate change denier for a coveted columnist slot.

As I noted at the time, “When you market your paper as an antidote to a worldview that is unmoored from reality, your subscribers will actually expect you to follow through. When you fail to fulfill your promise, those readers will take their money elsewhere.” Now it’s CNN taking on the mantle of bold truth teller. Perhaps the network should start by first examining its own household.

Jeff Zucker’s singular role in promoting Donald Trump’s rise

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz shake hands at the start of the Republican candidates’ debate sponsored by CNN in March. (Joe Skipper/Reuters)

By Margaret Sullivan

October 2, 2016

Looking for someone specific to hold responsible for the improbable rise of Donald Trump?

Although there are many options, you could do worse than to take a hard look at Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide.

It was Zucker, after all, who as the new head of NBC Entertainment gave Trump his start in reality TV with “The Apprentice” and then milked the real estate developer’s uncanny knack for success for all it was worth in ratings and profits.

“The show was built as a virtually nonstop advertisement for the Trump empire and lifestyle,” according to the book “Trump Revealed,” by Washington Post journalists Marc Fisher and Michael Kranish.

And it succeeded wildly — boosting the network’s ratings, as well as Zucker’s meteoric career. In turn, under Zucker, the show gave rise to “Celebrity Apprentice,” another Trump extravaganza. And, in turn, Zucker became the head of NBC overall.

While hosting "Celebrity Apprentice" on NBC, Donald Trump promised to give to charities over 20 times. It turns out that the money given away wasn't actually from him. (Daron Taylor,David Fahrenthold/The Washington Post)

The executive rode the Trump steed hard. When the reality-TV star was preparing to marry Melania Knauss in 2005, Zucker wanted to broadcast the wedding live. (Trump, uncharacteristically, declined.)

But make no mistake: There would be no Trump-the-politician without Trump-the-TV-star. One begot the other.

Ten years later, it was Zucker, now the head of CNN, who gave Trump astonishing amounts of free exposure in the Republican presidential primary on the cable network, continually blasting out his speeches and rallies — often unfiltered and without critical fact-checking.

“It’s a not-unfair knock on CNN to say that they went all in on Trump and helped him enormously,” Ken Lerer, co-founder of the Huffington Post and BuzzFeed, said in a recent onstage interview at City University of New York’s journalism school. “I think it was a strategy, a programming strategy.”

Of course, CNN was hardly alone. Fox News, too, has been a megaphone for Trump for many months. And nearly every news outlet has played a part — from newspaper front pages to NPR to the network nightly news.

Ratings. Clicks. Audience. Say what you will about Trump as a human being or a potential leader of the free world, he has an ineffable ability to get attention. He has called himself a “ratings machine,” and in the world of TV, ratings equal profit.

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” Leslie Moonves, chairman of CBS, said of the Trump phenomenon in March, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Jeff Zucker, then president and CEO of NBC Universal, arrives at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles in 2010. (Kevin C. Cox/Reuters)

“The money’s rolling in, and this is fun. It’s a terrible thing to say. But bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”

Moonves’s ebullience makes it clear that ratings madness infects all of commercial TV, although, of course, particularly the cable-news channels.

None rolled out the welcome mat more eagerly than CNN,which has billed itself as the “most trusted name in news.” And unlike Fox, which is blatantly conservative, CNN pitches itself as nonpartisan. It’s supposed to be the down-the-middle alternative to Fox and, on the left, MSNBC.

And it’s been CNN, too, that has employed former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as an analyst, where he is bound by a nondisclosure agreement to say nothing negative about Trump, and where he has — until last week — continued to be paid severance by the campaign even while promoting the candidate on the air.

To be sure, CNN also boasts many fine journalists, and in recent weeks, the network has become much tougher on Trump. Apparently, the candidate noticed. Not only has he retreated to Fox News, but his September tweets also show a certain lack of gratitude for past help, calling CNN “unwatchable” and Zucker himself a failure.

Undeniably, the political coverage is working for all thecable news networks. Ratings out last week show sky-high viewership for all three — and that’s manna from heaven in an industry whose numbers were tanking in 2014 and where average viewers are over 60 — while millennials cut the cord and stay glued to their phones.

I asked Zucker, both directly and through his representative, to comment for this column but was told he wasn’t available to talk about it. In the past, he’s brushed off the idea that CNN has been anything but responsible in its coverage decisions.

Can you blame a TV executive such as Zucker for doing his job — striving for the highest possible ratings and profits?

Maybe not at NBC, where as the head of the entertainment division, Zucker bore no responsibility to the public interest when he made Trump a reality-show star.

But when it comes to CNN’s news coverage — its journalism — that’s a different matter. Decisions about covering a presidential campaign should consider what’s best for citizens as well as what’s best for Time Warner’s shareholders.

Some would say that CNN merely held up the mirror to Trump, and voters freely chose him over his Republican competitors. And now, voters may freely choose him over Hillary Clinton, who has made the coverage problem worse by being the anti-Trump — failing to connect emotionally with voters and even at the basic political task of making news. Partly by being so guarded, she’s ceded the near-monopoly on news to her more charismatic rival.

But it is, after all, the responsibility of the press to hold candidates accountable, not to provide publicity.

Twice, Zucker made Trump a winner. And twice, Trump made Zucker a winner.

But what about the rest of us?

For more by Margaret Sullivan visit wapo.st/sullivan

'I'm Going to Stop You': CNN Host Shuts Down Evangelical Tony Perkins for Dishonest Claim of 'Violence' from the Left

By Chris Sosa, AlterNet

The far-right Christian leader was not getting away with his absurd claim

MMA

According to a report in The Washington Post, pro-Trump CNN commentator Paris Dennard was removed from his previous position at Arizona State University for making "sexually explicit comments and gestures towards women." CNN suspended Dennard following the report. A review of Dennard's CNN commentary revealsDennard vehemently defending Trump against reports that the president had committed sexual assault.

Meanwhile, CNN's new pro-Trump commentator Rob Astorino confirmed on air that he had signed a non-disclosure agreement with Trump that barred him from making disparaging remarks about the president.

CNN has spent years bringing on paid pro-Trump commentators, and it keeps backfiring.

CNN Host Shuts Down Ex-Trump Campaign Aide's Pathetic Attempt to Defend the President's Disastrous Day

By Matthew Chapman, AlterNet

Jason Miller tried to sugarcoat a day in which two of Trump's major associates are facing prison time. Poppy Harlow wasn't having it. READ MORE»

got 2 trump wht nat'l fired with talk radio statements

CNN reported on Sunday, a policy aide and speechwriter named Darren Beattie "has left the White House" after it was revealed he had spoken at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club Conference. Mencken represents an unfortunate chapter in American journalism: He was a prominent satirist, columnist and critic of the early 20th century, whose book "The American Language" marked the first serious attempt to study English as spoken in the United States. Mencken's posthumously published diaries, however, made clear that he was an ardent racist and anti-Semite, which has made him something of a hero to the far right.

The Mencken Club's annual conference, launched in 2008, has attracted a range of "well-known white nationalists," the CNN report continues, including the briefly famous Richard Spencer. "The schedule for the 2016 conference listed panels and speeches by white nationalist Peter Brimelow and two writers, John Derbyshire and Robert Weissberg, who were both fired in 2012 from the conservative magazine National Review for espousing racist views."

omfg

also did not ask Fredericks -- who describes himself as “the Trump campaign’s Virginia chairman” and serves on Trump’s 2020 presidential advisory board -- about hiswith Scheuer, in which the latter characterized several prominent public officials as “maggots” and undocumented immigrants as “vermin.”

Such dehumanizing language is, according to David Neiwert, author of “Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump” and the Pacific Northwest correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center, a forerunner to justifications for murder, as seen in the rhetoric of 19th-century minister and self-proclaimed Indian-hater Col. John Chivington, which preceded a massacre; Bill O’Reilly’s demonization of Dr. George Tiller on Fox News, before the abortion provider’s assassination; and the “hate radio” talk that inspired genocide in Rwanda.

“Violent eliminationist rhetoric like this has a long and deep history in America,” Neiwert told Salon, “from Col. Chivington declaring ‘Nits make lice’ at Sand Creek to Bill O’Reilly labeling Dr. George Tiller ‘the Baby Killer.’ It creates permission for less stable, more violent actors to murder their targets in cold blood. We saw rhetoric like this inspire the massacre of thousands of people in Rwanda, and its purpose here is to do the same for our country and its citizens. It’s not just vile, it’s profoundly dangerous and profoundly un-American.”

Many CNN journalists, including Costello, Tapper and Acosta, have reported on President Trump’s claims that the media are “the enemy of the people.” They and others have sought to hold White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (who has appeared on Fredericks’ show, and who has recently elevated and validated him at a White House press briefing) accountable for her silence, which some observers might view as complicity.

Recently, CNN’s Don Lemon held Fredericks accountable on-air for defending Trump’s characterization of nations in the developing world as “shithole countries” by cutting his mic. That CNN has continued to give Fredericks a platform is surprising. CNN could have and should have known about Fredericks’ and Scheuer’s promotion of eliminationist rhetoric –– and disclosed to viewers this fact and its significance –– lest anyone come to misinterpret CNN’s silence as complicity.

When Salon asked CNN spokesman Richard Hudock why the network continues to provide Fredericks a platform, despite his promotion of the views of an ex-CIA agent who has said it is almost time for armed Trump voters to murder journalists and other prominent Americans, including CNN's own Tapper and Acosta, he had no comment.

“Kill them. Kill them all!”

Scheuer is a frequent guest and occasional host of John Fredericks Radio, which routinely directs its listeners to his blog, where he wrote on July 14 that it was “quite near time” for “well-armed citizens who voted for Trump” to “kill those seeking to impose tyranny,” of whom there was a “long and very precise list” of journalists, activists, pundits, abortion providers, Republican and Democratic elected officials, federal judges, law professors, FBI agents, intelligence officials and Justice Department officials, along with “all who support them.”

“If Trump does not act soon to erase the above noted tyranny and tyrants,” he concluded, “the armed citizenry must step in and eliminate them.”

As recently as July 17, Scheuer, writing on his blog,cast as “traitors” a number of public officials – as well as journalists Tapper, Acosta, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and reporters for the Washington Post and New York Times. He said that these members of the media, along with members of Congress, federal bureaucrats, and “prominent Jewish-Americans” who participate in, oversee or report on the “Russia-hacking” investigation are “more than worthy of merciless annihilation.”

The same day, Scheuer appeared on John Fredericks Radio, on which he commended the example of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he said killed indiscriminately in Syria – as if suggesting that were a good thing. Fredericks said this reminded him of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, who once said, “Kill them. Kill them all!”

“Kill them all,” Scheuer repeated. “And whoever supports them. Kill them, too.”

Fredericks echoed, “Kill them, too.”

John Fredericks’ signal-boosting of Scheuer’s eliminationist rhetoric escalated on the same day that Salon published its report, “Trump-endorsed radio show has promoted ex-CIA agent’s call for right-wing rebellion.”

Scheuer Fredericks’ listeners that, while GoDaddy had taken down his website (archived here) after his inflammatory July 17 blog post, he planned to launch a new blog at the domain non-intervention2.com, which he said is “now registered” with JustHost, one of dozens of hosting companies owned by Endurance International Group (@EnduranceIntl) of Burlington, Massachusetts. The site at that domain, registered anonymously with JustHost on July 21, went live on Aug. 7.

Fredericks repeated the domain name for the benefit of listeners. He said that Scheuer’s website had offered “insight and analysis that no one else has, and I value that.”

“We look forward to your getting your website back up, so your blogs can get going,” said Fredericks. “You should be able to post whatever you please.” However, the Freedom Forum Institute – the education and outreach partner of the Freedom Forum and the Newseum – has pointed out that the First Amendment does not protect some types of speech, such as plagiarism, false advertising, defamation, child pornography, blackmail, solicitation to commit crimes, incitement to imminent lawless action or true threats.

Scheuer told Fredericks that he was attempting to transfer all his previous blog posts to the new domain. These collectively represent years of his vision of “a collective, armed, and wide-ranging American rebellion” to eradicate “tyranny,” along with lists of people whom he casts as “tyrants,” “traitors,” “miscreants,” “maggots” and “expendables,” and whom he says Trump voters should prepare to shoot or hang, and soon. For example, in a July 2 blog post, Scheuer advised giving Trump time to act, and holding off the “reckoning” until at least Aug. 1. He wrote, “If this period passes, Americans are in the happy position of already being well-armed and in possession of an initial, partial list of miscreants who are in desperate need of attrition.”

Scheuer’s inaugural blog post

This is why CNN’s platforming of Fredericks matters. Fredericks amplifies Scheuer’s voice and promotes his website; this call to armed rebellion is what readers will find when they go there. Scheuer filed his inaugural blog post on his new site on Aug. 7. He protested that GoDaddy had taken down his previous site due to his argument “that if Trump cannot/will not enforce the law and arrest, try, incarcerate, and, if the law allows, execute those who believe and act as if they are above it, American citizens will have to do their duty by using their weapons to snuff out the authors of tyranny” along with “those who support them.”

“I stand not as an inciter,” Scheuer claimed, despite his advocacy of armed rebellion, “but rather as the incited and as a responder to the clear threats of civil war” which, he said, come from Democrats, the media, academics, the financial and tech industries, antifa and Black Lives Matter activists, teachers’ unions, “the minority groups,” feminists, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community and advocates of the value of diversity. “Those are the sources that are solely responsible for the civil war that is nearing,” he wrote. “That they are ignorant, or feign ignorance, of that fact will add to their surprise if the time for Rob Reiner’s war comes and so many of them find themselves reaping the armed whirlwind they and ol’ Rob have sown.”

He also embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin as a champion for white people, adding that “it seemed ridiculous to worry about Russian meddling in U.S. elections.” Scheuer mused, “I have nattered on here longer than I intended.” He then excoriated the “tech giants” for removing content from “Alec Jones” [sic]. “In banning Jones,” he warned, “those on the left again have proven that they are the ones who are seeking to provoke a civil war. ... My own hunch is that if their provocations work, they will enjoy the reality of war with considerably less gusto than they did while so loudly calling for and provoking it.”

“The truth shall make you free”

Scheuer made clear to John Fredericks Radio listeners, in his July 31 interview, that he had no intention of tempering his violent visions or inflammatory rhetoric. Indeed, in defense of his recent blog posts, he said that the Declaration of Independence provides the American people “a duty to kill those who are trying to impose tyranny.” He said that “if you have a tyranny being imposed on you, it is your right, it’s your duty, to resist it.” When he added, “And that means using the Second Amendment,” Fredericks appeared to ratify this idea of gun violence, saying, “The truth, Dr. Scheuer, will set you free. No doubt.”

While any Christian listeners might have recognized “The truth shall make you free” as a quote from the Gospel of John, others who might have caught the broadcast, such as Scheuer’s wife, CIA senior official Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, would know it as the agency’s motto.

“The vermin we see running around”

Scheuer went on to characterize Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, prosecutor Andrew Weissmann of Mueller’s team, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as “maggots” who, he says, “have to be eradicated.”

“Weissmann, Mueller, Warner, these are not men, John,” he said. “These are maggots. And our system is loaded with these maggots. Whether it’s Clapper, or any of the rest of them that we’ve talked about this morning. And the system has to be cleaned. They have to be eradicated out of the system.”

Fredericks introduced the topic of what to do about illegal immigration on the Mexican border, and how to respond to people who call for the abolition of ICE.

“I think the vermin we see running around – ” Scheuer began, “without ICE, it would be up to the American people to stop immigration. And there’s only one way to do that, John. And that’s with weaponry. These people are playing with civil war, with fire, with horrible results.” He went on to suggest that without ICE, the situation would require “an armed citizenry” to take vigilante action.

In a series of essays, Neiwert has described eliminationist rhetoric as a shunning of “dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas” by advocating the “outright elimination of the opposing side,” often exemplified by descriptions of the “enemy” as “vermin.”

Such rhetoric “always depicts its opposition as simply beyond the pale,” Neiwert has written, “and in the end the embodiment of evil itself – unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus in need of elimination.”

“It often depicts its designated ‘enemy’ as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and loves to incessantly suggest that its targets are themselves disease carriers,” Neiwert continued. “A close corollary – but not as nakedly eliminationist – are claims that the opponents are traitors or criminals, or gross liabilities for our national security, and thus inherently fit for elimination or at least incarceration.”

Such depictions are “often voiced as crude ‘jokes’,” Neiwert noted, “the humor of which, when analyzed, is inevitably predicated on a venomous hatred. But what we also know about this rhetoric is that, as surely as night follows day, this kind of talk eventually begets action, with inevitably tragic results.”

CNN commentator Ana Navarro has responded forcefully to this kind of dehumanizing talk. On CNN’s “New Day,” Navarro has accused President Trump of “dehumanizing people” by referring to “animals” during a discussion on immigration. “It’s what the Nazis did,” she said. “It’s what slave owners did. It’s not what Americans do.” She advised Trump to “measure his words.”

This week, Apple, Google and Facebook announced that they had removed content from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars show, which Facebook said violated its policy against “dehumanizing language.” Whether one agrees with their actions or not, they were within their First Amendment rights to do so. As Freedom Forum Institute president Gene Policinski has stated, “the amendment is designed to restrain the government, not private companies.” It remains to be seen whether these corporations will respond in a similar fashion to John Fredericks Radio, which has its own Facebook page, and is available on YouTube and as an iTunes podcast.

Fredericks, however, neither questioned nor challenged Scheuer’s visions of civil war and vigilantes shooting immigrants like “vermin,” and eradicating public servants he dehumanizes as “maggots.” Instead, Fredericks thanked him for his “intriguing insight” and wished him well on the relaunch of his website.

Two days later, Carol Costello hosted Fredericks on HLN to discuss characterizations of journalists as enemies of the people. No doubt everyone at CNN understands the seriousness of such violent rhetoric and the urgency of holding Trump’s administration and his campaign accountable for their silence, which might fairly be seen as complicity.

When CNN journalists have received threats, the network has taken them seriously. CNN media critic Brian Stelter recently aired a C-SPAN clip of a caller threatening to shoot him and Lemon. Stelter said such calls and emails are “coming in more often.” But the fact remains that CNN has continued to provide a platform for Fredericks while turning a blind eye towards his involvement with Scheuer, who has called for the “merciless annihilation” of numerous people, including reporters for CNN and its competitors. CNN’s confusion about how best to respond to the notion that they are the enemy of the people recalls the ironic phrase often associated with Walt Kelly’s cartoon possum Pogo: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

UPDATE (7/26):Following the publication of this post, Cuccinelli deleted the image from his Facebook page.

CNN legal and political commentator Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican who formerly served as Virginia's attorney general, shared a fake quote from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) that an “illegal immigrant” should be nominated to the Supreme Court.

In late June, a Twitter “parody” account pretending to be CNN tweeted an image of Waters appearing on CNN with a fake chyron that said “Waters: SCOTUS Pick Should Be Illegal Immigrant,” along with the text, “Rep @MaxinePWaters: ‘The next Supreme Court Justice should be an illegal immigrant.’” The fake quote and chyron subsequently spread as real across social media and radio, with multiple memes created around the tweet.

On July 25, Cuccinelli shared one of those memes on Facebook. The image also said, “Read that again- slowly- and let the full depth of abject stupidity and desperation behind the statement, uttered on nationwide television, sink in fully….”

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/top-state-department-spokesperson-tried-troll-cnn-and-it-failed-spectacularly

where is cnn? but no press allowed

e White House liked Nauert's tweet so much they retweeted it.

Nauert, by the way, was roundly mocked just last week for using D-Day as an example of America's long and strong relationship with Germany. D-Day celebrates America's win against Germany.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/republican-cnn-contributor-confirms-infuriating-trump-defenders-network-are

https://www.alternet.org/cnns-don-lemon-shuts-down-ex-trump-aide-live-air

Thursday panel discussion about the Fox News spin protecting President Donald Trump, CNN host Don Lemon called out Sean Hannity for coordinating with Trump in a "feedback loop."

Lemon began playing a clip of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who compared FBI agents and special counsel Robert Mueller to the Nazi Gestapo and Joseph Stalin.

Media commentator Brian Stelter said that it is very clear that Hannity is coordinating with the White House since they're all using the same phrasing. He noted Hannity and Trump speak frequently and Hannity has been known to dine at the White House and join the president at Mar-a-Lago.

"The president props up an alternative reality where he's winning, his enemies are losing, where Mueller's corrupt, and where this investigation needs to be disbanded," Stelter said. "That's the alternative universe, that parts of Fox, the National Enquirer, which has been in the news, Sinclair commentators, right-wing media outlets prop up this alternative universe. And, look, that's fine in some ways. I love reading fiction novels. What they are promoting is a version of fiction and it does a disservice to their viewers to claim that it is facts."

Lemon asked Trump's former communications director Jason Miller whether it was "appropriate" to allow a cable news show to bash the special counsel. Miller pivoted to say that Hannity and Trump can do whatever they want because it is their Constitutional right to do so. Lemon corrected him asking if it was "appropriate." Miller ultimately refused to answer the question.

"You didn't answer my question," Lemon said. For that he decided to move on to former campaign staffer to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Amanda Carpenter. "Amanda, Mueller is a war hero, how can Newt Gingrich compare him to Stalin?"

"At once I thought Newt Gingrich to be a student of history, but these seem like pretty reckless comparison comparisons," Carpenter said. "I mean, here's my question, OK: the Trump people, they don't like [Jeff] Sessions, they don't like Mueller, they don't like [Rod] Rosenstein, so who do they like? They apparently like lawyers like Joe diGenova. What also makes reckless statements and I believe compared the Mueller probe to a form of regicide which is, by definition, the killing of a king. So, you can see where their head is at. And so they're on this campaign to discredit pretty much anyone who doesn't consider Donald Trump a king because I don't know where else this goes."

The second half of the discussion got even more heated as Lemon went up against Miller, who parroted the Trump talking points about "witch hunts" and the investigation taking too long.

"You're proving my point," Lemon said. "That's what they're being fed from Fox and from the White House."

In a shouting match, Lemon noted that the Benghazi investigation went on for two and a half years with seven different hearings by Republicans, where the Mueller investigation has been going on for less than a year.

"I did not hear one conservative saying, 'It is time to bring this to an end, it's going on too long,'" Lemon said.

Miller explained that the reason it was happening now is that Trump is winning so much. The discussion devolved into chaos from there until Lemon simply had to shut it down.

"Jason, I can't -- please, be respectful," Lemon said. "When you come on and give this information and other Trump supporters and give disinformation I spend most of my time trying to debunk falsities and lies instead of educating the American people. it's frustrating every single night. You talk about no collusion. You don't even know the original focus of the Russia investigation. You're feeding talking points that aren't true to the American people. If you're going to be on this platform respect the American people. It is a privilege to come here. Don't come on CNN and lie or deflect about what's going on. Come here and be honest with the American people. It is a privilege to come on here. It is not a right."

Watch the full discussion below:

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

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

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

Matthew Sheffield

a stunning display, President Donald Trump pointed a finger at CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta before demanding he leave. "Out," was the abrupt command from the president.

Acosta had pressed Trump on his racist remarks about immigrants, in which he referred to African nations as "sh*thole countries" and suggested the U.S. shouldn't accept more Haitian immigrants.

"I want 'em to come in from everywhere," Trump said dismissively when Acosta asked if the president preferred immigrants from places like Norway.

When Acosta tried to follow up by asking specifically if he meant majority-white countries or places where the majority are people of color, Trump refused to answer and threw him out.

Acosta said that, a short time later, deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley screamed at him when he tried to ask Trump questions in the Roosevelt Room.

"It reminded me of something you might see in less democratic countries,” Acosta said.

Watch the segment below.

CNN has an Ed Martin problem. Martin, a pro-Trump CNN contributor, has quite the record over the last few months: He called CNN fake news before the channel hired him; he co-authored a book that suggested that only European immigrants can have American values, and that immigration from "Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East" tears the country apart; he endorsed Roy Moore and went on CNN's air and attacked a woman who reported that Moore molested her as a child; he defends Trump's racist attacks; he defended Trump tweeting anti-Muslim snuff videos from a far right ultranationalist group; he defended Roy Moore's comment about slavery by pointing out that Jewish families had slaves; and now on his radio show he's attacked fellow CNN employees as "black racists" and "rabid feminists." While it's great to see CNN panelists dunk on him, this is just another iteration of CNN's pro-Trump surrogate problem: The surrogates will say anything and defend anything, regardless of whether it's true or not.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/anderson-cooper-roasts-trump-repeatedly-mentioning-nonexistent-country-un

hmmn backfire ?

alt rt meme war:

no link

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/08/30/hannity-gets-his-stories-internet-fever-swamps-ana-navarro-story/217810

Hannity gets his stories from the internet fever swamps: The Ana Navarro story

Research ››› August 30, 2017 6:14 PM EDT ››› CRISTINA LóPEZ G.

During his Fox News show on August 29, host Sean Hannity elevated a smear campaign targeting Republican CNN contributor Ana Navarro. Hannity’s smears came from a report citing publicly available information showing Navarro has donated to Democratic candidates, which pro-Trump troll Jack Posobiec distributed on Twitter under the hashtag #AnaGate to rally his followers to harass the contributor. This is not the first time Hannity has elevated a narrative that comes from pro-Trump trolls and fringe far-right message boards.

Right-wing trolls are harassing Republican CNN contributor Ana Navarro for donating to Democrats

Right-wing trolls are waging a harassment campaign against CNN contributor Ana Navarro. Using the #AnaGate hashtag, right-wing trolls and other Twitter users are harassing Republican CNN contributor Ana Navarro, criticizing her for having donated to Democrats, including Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). [Twitter, #AnaGate, accessed 8/30/17]

Pro-Trump troll Jack Posobiec introduced the #AnaGate narrative. On August 24, pro-Trump troll Jack Posobiec -- who formerly identified as a member of the “alt-right” -- reported in a Medium post that Navarro had donated to Democrats and organized fundraisers, citing publicly available campaign documents. Posobiec also took to Periscope to brainstorm potential hashtags for what he deemed a “scandal,” coming up with #AnaGate. Posobiec recently bragged that a retweet of his defense of President Donald Trump's outrageous Charlottesville comments by Trump amounted to an "endorsement," telling the The Boston Globe that "Trump’s 'retweet of me was almost like an endorsement … in a very broad sense,' Posobiec said during an interview with the Globe at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, where he requested to meet. 'It was almost like he was validating what we, the alt-media, are doing.'" [Media Matters, 5/11/17; Medium, 8/24/17; Periscope, 8/24/17; The Boston Globe, 8/28/17]

Jack Posobiec ? @JackPosobiec

BUSTED: Ana Navarro Bankrolled Indicted Democrat Bob Menendez! Will CNN denounce? https://medium.com/@JackPosobiec/busted-ana-navarro-bankrolled-indicted-democrat-bob-menendez-c5dc48ce40db …

6:25 PM - Aug 24, 2017

Photo published for BUSTED: Ana Navarro Bankrolled Indicted Democrat Bob Menendez

BUSTED: Ana Navarro Bankrolled Indicted Democrat Bob Menendez

“CNN should be sued for false advertising” — Roger Stone, on Ana Navarro

medium.com

990 990 Replies 8,178 8,178 Retweets 9,844 9,844 likes

Posobiec cited Roger Stone, who has a record of making misogynistic and racist remarks about Navarro. In his Medium post, Posobiec turned to Infowars regular Roger Stone for comment on Navarro.Stone has a history of making racist and misogynistic remarks about the CNN contributor, calling her “Entitled Diva Bitch” on Twitter and referring to her Latino background by saying “black beans and rice didn’t miss her.” [Medium, 8/24/17; Media Matters, 2/22/16]

Conservative media amplified Posobiec’s narrative. Both Laura Ingraham’s online outlet LifeZette and Breitbart.com amplified the story Posobiec had reported, criticizing Navarro’s anti-Trump stance. [LifeZette, 8/28/17; Breitbart, 8/29/17]

Navarro has been a consistently critical voice against Trump among conservatives.Navarro has consistently been critical of President Donald Trump while continuing to support the Republican party.[Media Matters, 1/29/17, 5/15/17, 6/29/17, 7/2/17]

Sean Hannity elevated Posobiec’s narrative on his Fox show

Fox host Sean Hannity gave Posobiec’s smear narrative against Navarro a platform during his show.During the August 29 monologue of his show Hannity, Fox host Sean Hannity parroted “a report” that “so-called Republican Eva (sic) Navarro donated a lot of money to prominent Democrats”. From the August 29 edition of Fox News’ Hannity:

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): And CNN's so-called Republican commentator Eva (sic) Navarro responded to a tweet from President Trump about leaving for Texas and writing, quote, “As if the people of Texas aren’t already enduring enough suffering… .” Now, what’s interesting about that, we learned today from a report that CNN’s so-called Republican Navarro, well, she’s donated a lot of money to prominent Democrats. What Republican would donate to the likes of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other left-wingers that are out there and people on the left? It sounds like a fake Republican at the fake news network. More proof that the left is completely unhinged. And it is why we have now actually diagnosed them, considering they want to diagnose everybody else, and we call it the Trump derangement syndrome. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/29/17]

Posobiec gleefully tweeted about his narrative receiving prime-time validation.

Jack Posobiec ? @JackPosobiec

Hannity is on too #AnaGate

4:33 AM - Aug 30, 2017 · Washington, DC

12 12 Replies 73 73 Retweets 257 257 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy

[Twitter, 8/30/17]

Jack Posobiec ? @JackPosobiec

We primetime now https://twitter.com/woodruffbets/status/902714104703578112 …

3:06 AM - Aug 30, 2017

13 13 Replies 102 102 Retweets 305 305 likes

Hannity has increasingly become a mouthpiece for the pro-Trump fever swamps on the internet

https://www.mediamatters.org/people/laura-loomer

From meme wars to death threats: How far-right internet culture turns into political action

Blog ››› July 7, 2017 4:01 PM EDT ››› JARED HOLT

/ Media Matters

Members of online forum boards dedicated to President Donald Trump and far-right ideologies have called for the “next meme war,” this time against CNN. The call to arms is retaliation for allegations that the cable network blackmailed a Reddit user into publicly apologizing for creating a pro-Trump GIF that depicted Trump tackling a man who had a CNN logo superimposed on his face, and removing his hateful posts on these message boards.

This declaration of a meme war is the latest example of these online community members banding together in highly organized troupes to create and distribute memes attacking their given targets across multiple social media platforms, often times shaping public perception and influencing American political narratives and actions.

Users of Reddit and 4chan, two message board communities that have long expressed their hatred for one another, were united in their outrage over a CNN report, published on July 4, that detailed the origin of a GIF depicting Trump tackling a man who had a CNN logo superimposed on his face. The meme was edited into a video with music and eventually tweeted by Trump with a hashtag calling CNN a “fraud.” CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski, who wrote the story, discovered that the meme’s creator was a middle-aged man with a history of posting “racist and anti-Semitic imagery” through his Reddit account. The man called CNN to confirm his identity after he had issued a detailed apology on Reddit and deleted his previous posts.

Reddit and 4chan members didn’t find the man’s history of hateful posts problematic. Rather, they latched onto one section of the article in which CNN explained that it had decided not to publish the man’s name, “because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again.” The article also stated, “CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.” Members of meme-heavy subreddits perceived that sentence as blackmail and accused CNN of attempting to dox and blackmail one of its critics.

On July 5, CNN responded to the blackmail allegations with a written statement that said, “Any assertion that the network blackmailed or coerced [the user] is false.”

But CNN’s statement came too late; multiple posts on 4chan and Reddit had already called for a full-scale “meme war” against the network. During the 2016 presidential election, factions of Trump voters used memes to attack and discredit others’ preferred candidate. Among these factions, highly organized pro-Trump meme war “units” found tremendous success and were able to create and spread numerous trends on social media.

A post on 4chan explained what the latest meme war, titled “Operation: Autism Storm,” would entail. The operation’s primary focus, according to the post, would be to produce “as many anti-CNN memes as possible and spreading it” to high traffic websites beyond the fringe. The call to arms also urged participants to “discredit every journalist at CNN,” and to target CNN’s advertisers to stop them from advertising on the network.

In the days after the article was published and 4chan and Reddit users called for meme warfare, “#CNNBlackmail” was a top trending topic on Twitter. The contingent of pro-Trump internet wizards also overran numerous boards on Reddit and 4chan with images attacking CNN’s credibility. Infowars editor-at-large Paul Joseph Watson suggested that CNN may have reunited “the alt-right & the new right in a common cause” after a prior rift among the “alt-right” factions.

Source:Reddit.com/r/The_Donald

This potent group of like-minded internet campaigners repeatedly proved their ability to organize and operate extremely effective smear campaigns during the 2016 election. According to an entry on Encyclopedia Dramatica, one of the most notable moments in “The Great Meme War” was the group’s viral portrayal of former presidential candidate Jeb Bush as a weak and sad “stinking turtle-lover with a guacamole fetish.” This characterization of “low energy” Bush cast him as a man unable to withstand what meme creators referred to as “high-energy” Trump. The Encyclopedia Dramatica entry also credited the same organized effort to push “a stream of new and fearsome dank memes,” featuring “Pepe the Frog” after the Anti-Defamation League classified the character as a hate symbol.

Fringe far-right media figures have also noticed the potency of these groups, and have used their platforms to encourage their followers to participate in the effort to spread the anti-CNN memes to larger audiences. Infowars’ Alex Jones has even launched an anti-CNN meme contest, promising a $20,000 reward for the “best meme” he receives. Alternative right-wing media figures such as online personality KimDotcom, Infowars contributor and internet troll Mike Cernovich, and even the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. have used their platforms to spread anti-CNN rhetoric and images alongside those leading the online meme brigades.

Meme wars can often have real-life consequences, a phenomena known within these communities as “meme magic.” During the 2016 election, these meme-makers effectively shaped Bush’s public image, and now they are provoking people to harass CNN journalists.Rebel Media’s Laura Loomer, who gained notoriety for interrupting Shakespeare play Julius Ceasar in New York City, ambushed CNN host Chris Cuomoabout the controversial article while he was walking down the street. Other CNN staffers told The Daily Beast they feared for their safety after receiving a flood of threatening phone calls and messages and the reporter who discovered the Reddit user’s anti-Semitic posts wrote in Politico that he received a barrage of death threats. Cernovich even hyped a supposed protest “planned to be held” outside of Kaczynski’s home in New York.

Users’ motivations for participating in the new meme war against CNN may vary from pure entertainment to deep ideological bias, but their participation will ultimately reignite a pack of internet trolls capable of smearing and bullying any target in its crosshairs. This group had been mostly dormant after it declared Trump’s election a victory, but the latest meme war against CNN proves that its ability to spread vitriol online is alive and well.

https://www.citizen.org/system/files/case_documents/public_citizen_storm_of_silence_harvey_climate_coverage_2.pdf

Only 43 percent of Americans report hearing about climate change in the media at least once a month.1 Only 19 percent report hearing people they know talk about global warming once a month or more,2 and 28 percent say they never hear people they know talk about it.3 In the words of Yale and George Mason University researchers, there is a “spiral of silence” on climate change in which “even people who care about the issue shy away from discussing it because they so infrequently hear other people talking about it — reinforcing the spiral.”4

....

This report examines media coverage of climate change in the context of a major event—Hurricane Harvey—starting on the day it first made landfall, Friday, August 25, 2017, and ending the following Friday, September 1, 2017. It considers eighteen sources: ten major newspapers, three weekly news magazines, and national programming from ABC, CBS, NBC,CNN, and Fox News Network. The relevance of climate change to events like Hurricane Harvey is clear in multiple respects: (1) warmer ocean temperatures lead to stronger winds; (2) warmer air leads to more rain (and therefore flooding); and (3) higher sea levels worsen storm surges.7 This analysis first counts the number of articles that simply raise climate change in the context of Harvey. It then considers whether each piece generally accepts or denies the role climate change (or, if news reporting, gives a platform to deniers) and whether it covers any of seven aspects of the climate issue in the context of disasters like Harvey

...

A few conclusions stand out: 

ABC and NBC did not mention climate change in the context of Harvey at all.8 Only one other news source, The New York Post, failed to clear that minimal hurdle. Climate coverage was highly concentrated among a handful of outlets. The top four outlets by volume of pieces that mention climate (The Washington Post, CNN, The Houston Chronicle, and The New York Times) produced 72 percent of pieces that mention it (98 pieces). The remaining 28 percent of coverage, 38 pieces, was scattered across 10 sources. That figure includes three pieces that deny any connection between climate change and Harvey, as well as two more that give voice to deniers or skeptics. (Again, three sources failed to mention climate change at all.) 

Andrew Auernheimer, who hacker-turned-Daily Stormer writer who infamously threatened CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, wrote that supposed “proof” of Heyer’s heart attack meant Fields should be exonerated. http://www.rawstory.com/2017/07/neo-nazi-vows-to-hunt-down-children-of-cnn-staffers-over-reporting-on-pro-trump-reddit-troll/

CNN has become the recipient of white supremacist troll ire — all for investigating the origins of the GIF President Donald Trump tweeted attacking them last weekend.

After CNN tracked down the identity of the Reddit user who created the GIF of Trump bodyslamming Vince McMahon with their logo superimposed on his face, members of various right-wing Internet communities came together in what the Southern Poverty Law Center called a “rare moment of unity for the far-right.”

Initially, it was believed that the GIF’s creator, Reddit user “HanAssholeSolo,” was a queer 15-year-old Trump supporter based on a tweet by alt-right darling Jack Posobiec, but was later revealed to be an adult man whose sexuality remains undisclosed.

Nonetheless, troll hacker Andrew Auernheimer (who goes by the pseudonym “weev”) rallied the Daily Stormer’s “troll army” in attacks against CNN based on the false assertion that HanAssholeSolo was underage.

Although CNN has not published HanAssholeSolo’s identity after he published an apology and issued a promise to stop his trolling, Auernheimer led multiple far-right factions, including r/TheDonald, 4chan, the Daily Stormer and the “alt-lite,” in their own doxxing campaign....

Pro-Trump troll Jack Posobiec introduced the #AnaGate narrative. On August 24, pro-Trump troll Jack Posobiec -- who formerly identified as a member of the “alt-right” -- reported in a Medium post that Navarro had donated to Democrats and organized fundraisers, citing publicly available campaign documents. Posobiec also took to Periscope to brainstorm potential hashtags for what he deemed a “scandal,” coming up with #AnaGate. Posobiec recently bragged that a retweet of his defense of President Donald Trump's outrageous Charlottesville comments by Trump amounted to an "endorsement," telling the The Boston Globe that "Trump’s 'retweet of me was almost like an endorsement … in a very broad sense,' Posobiec said during an interview with the Globe at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, where he requested to meet. 'It was almost like he was validating what we, the alt-media, are doing.'" *Media Matters*, [5/11/17; Medium, 8/24/17; Periscope, 8/24/17; The Boston Globe, 8/28/17]

BUSTED: Ana Navarro Bankrolled Indicted Democrat Bob Menendez! Will CNN denounce? https://t.co/fx5RTNxnUc

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) August 25, 2017

We primetime now https://t.co/OY9E30qCRp

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) August 30, 2017

Twitter, [8/24/17]

Posobiec cited Roger Stone, who has a record of making misogynistic and racist remarks about Navarro. In his Medium post, Posobiec turned to Infowars regular Roger Stone for comment on Navarro. Stone has a history of making racist and misogynistic remarks about the CNN contributor, calling her “Entitled Diva Bitch” on Twitter and referring to her Latino background by saying “black beans and rice didn’t miss her.” Medium, [8/24/17; Media Matters, 2/22/16]

Navarro has been a consistently critical voice against Trump among conservatives. Navarro has consistently been critical of President Donald Trump while continuing to support the Republican party. *Media Matters*, [1/29/17, 5/15/17, 6/29/17, 7/2/17]

Sean Hannity elevated Posobiec’s narrative on his Fox show

Fox host Sean Hannity gave Posobiec’s smear narrative against Navarro a platform during his show.During the August 29 monologue of his show Hannity, Fox host Sean Hannity parroted “a report” that “so-called Republican Eva (sic) Navarro donated a lot of money to prominent Democrats”. From the August 29 edition of Fox News’ Hannity:

[vid]

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): And CNN's so-called Republican commentator Eva (sic) Navarro responded to a tweet from President Trump about leaving for Texas and writing, quote, “As if the people of Texas aren’t already enduring enough suffering… .” Now, what’s interesting about that, we learned today from a report that CNN’s so-called Republican Navarro, well, she’s donated a lot of money to prominent Democrats. What Republican would donate to the likes of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other left-wingers that are out there and people on the left? It sounds like a fake Republican at the fake news network. More proof that the left is completely unhinged. And it is why we have now actually diagnosed them, considering they want to diagnose everybody else, and we call it the Trump derangement syndrome. Fox News, *Hannity*, [8/29/17]

Posobiec gleefully tweeted about his narrative receiving prime-time validation.

Twitter, [8/30/17]Hannity is on too #AnaGate

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) August 30, 2017

Hannity has increasingly become a mouthpiece for the pro-Trump fever swamps on the internet

Hannity consistently used his platform to elevate the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. In late May, Hannity devoted considerable airtime to the conspiracy theory that Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich, who was murdered in the summer of 2016, had provided WikiLeaks with the DNC emails that many experts have concluded were hacked by Russian authorities. Despite his own network retracting the story and the Rich family pleading for the gross exploitation of their son’s murder to stop, Hannity relentlessly pushed the story -- which was born in pro-Trump message boards and did not stand up to scrutiny -- in an effort to quash reports of Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election. *Media Matters*, [5/30/17]

Hannity has pushed false claims from pro-Trump outlets. Hannity pushed on Twitter a false Gateway Pundit story that claimed Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) had requested campaign donations from Russia. After the misleading story was debunked by McCain’s Senate office, Hannity deleted his tweet and got defensive over criticisms that he was spreading false information. *Media Matters*, [2/23/17]

Hannity has parroted claims originating from the message boards that the counterprotestors opposing neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, VA, were paid actors. Hannity used his radio show to promote the conspiracy theory that “antifa agitators” who opposed the neo-Nazi and white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville, VA, were actually actors hired by a publicity firm. *Media Matters*, [8/17/17]

Cristina López G. is a senior researcher at Media Matters with a focus in Hispanic media and Latino representation

Jeffrey Lord out at CNN after Nazi victory salute

Jeffrey Lord is officially out at CNN. After tweeting a Nazi victory salute at Media Matters president Angelo Carusone, CNN announced that they were parting ways with Lord. Lord had repeatedly made wild, irresponsible, and obviously untrue claims on the network, serving as a point person for disinformation rather than someone who contributed to discussions. Lord's lowlights on the network speak for themselves. Making this moment even more ironic was that Lord got himself fired while trying to defend Sean Hannity's indefensible propaganda efforts

http://www.alternet.org/media/cnn-host-calls-out-new-white-house-communications-director

CNN host Jake Tapper on Sunday called out newly-appointed White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci for continuing to deny Russia’s interference in the U.S. election.

On Sunday’s State of the Union program, Tapper asked Scaramucci if President Donald Trump was prepared to sign a sanctions bill against Russia.

“There’s a lot of misinformation,” Scaramucci said, dismissing the conclusion of U.S. intelligence agencies. “Somebody said to me the other day — I don’t want to say who — if the Russian actually hacked the this situation and spilled out those emails, you would have never seen it. You would have never had any evidence of them. Meaning that they’re super confident in their deception skills and hacking.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Tapper interrupted. “I don’t know who this anonymous person is.”

“How about it’s the president, Jake,” Scaramucci revealed. “He called me from Air Force One and basically said to me, ‘This is — maybe they did it, maybe they didn’t do it.'”

“This is exactly the issue!” Tapper noted. “We have experts, the U.S. intelligence agencies [are] unanimous, both Obama appointees and Trump appointees — the director of national intelligence, the head of the National Security Agency, the head of the FBI. I mean, all of these intelligence experts, saying, Russia hacked the election, they tried to interfere in the election.”

“President Trump is contradicting it and you’re siding with President Trump!” the CNN host exclaimed.

“I didn’t say I was siding with President Trump,” Scaramucci insisted. “I’m his communications director and I’m his advocate on a show like this.”

Tapper once again pointed out that Republicans in the Senate and Trump’s own intelligence experts agreed that Russia had meddled in the election.

“You’re saying, you’re going to side with the president,” Tapper continued. “Don’t you owe a duty to the truth?”

“What about this conversation are you missing, Jake?” Scaramucci quipped. “There are checks and balances in the system for a reason. The president will make that decisions [on the sanction bill] when he makes that decision. You’re telling me something is true that could, in fact, be true. I don’t have the information in front of me.”

Watch the video below from CNN.

http://www.alternet.org/media/same-media-who-assisted-rise-trump-now-rebrand-themselves-anti-trump-resistance

Trump’s recent wave of attacks against CNN and MSNBC’s Morning Joe are understandably leading to outrage and counterattacks from many in the media, who see it, rightfully, as a dangerous escalation in rhetoric against the press. But despite these condemnations, let us not forget how much of a role these very players had in the rise of President Trump.

Let us begin with CNN president Jeff Zucker. A recent profile of Zucker in the New York Times frames the CNN head as a leader in the Trump resistance. The piece begins by painting Zucker as a sleepless muckraker:

Jeffrey A. Zucker hasn’t been getting a lot of sleep lately. But he says that’s nothing new.

“I don’t sleep that much anyway,” Mr. Zucker, the president of CNN, said on Wednesday in his fifth-floor office, just off the network’s glassy Midtown Manhattan newsroom.

A television executive with a reputation for pugilism — a plaque above his desk reads “Punch Today in the Face” — Mr. Zucker, 52, has weathered decades of battles in his industry. But he and CNN are in the middle of their most intense bout yet: an unlikely public fight with the leader of the free world.

Omitted from this profile is a major section of media history that shows Zucker not as a victim, but as someone who just suffered a massive self-inflicted wound.

It’s no secret that Trump received outsized media coverage early on in the 2016 race, nabbing in 2015 alone nearly $2 billion in free media—much of it from Zucker’s CNN—on his way to securing the Republican nomination. While much of this coverage was negative in tone, there really is no negative coverage. As long as Trump's name remained in the headlines, that’s all that mattered.

CNN rushed to cover, for months, each and every one of Trump’s manufactured controversies, to the tune of record-smashing ratings. CNN even hired Trump aide Corey Lewandowski while he was not only still under contractual agreement not to say anything bad about Trump, but was still collecting checksfrom the campaign.

Aside from raking in record profits riding the Trump spectacle as president of CNN, Zucker’s role in the rise of Trump is far more direct. Before taking over CNN in 2012, while serving as head of NBC Entertainment in 2004, Zucker hired Trump to be the face of the reality show "The Apprentice." The show not only boosted the Trump brand, it almost certainly saved Trump from the brink of financial and marketing extinction.

As Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan noted in her must-read summation of Zucker’s role in the rise of Trump, Zucker didn’t just help Trump to the White House; he’s probably singlehandedly the person most responsible for doing so:

Looking for someone specific to hold responsible for the improbable rise of Donald Trump? Although there are many options, you could do worse than to take a hard look at Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide.

It was Zucker, after all, who as the new head of NBC Entertainment gave Trump his start in reality TV with “The Apprentice” and then milked the real estate developer’s uncanny knack for success for all it was worth in ratings and profits.

Zucker did so knowing full well Trump’s well-documented record of racism and sexism. Zucker hired Trump long after he stirred up racist sentiment in New York by calling for the Central Park Five to be executed in a 1989 full-page ad (they were later found innocent of all charges). Zucker let Trump stay on as host of "The Apprentice" long after he repeatedly trafficked in the race-baiting of Obama birtherism; long after “illegal aliens” on Fox News; long after he smeared women with sexist insults for decades; and long after he accused the first African-American president of cheating his way into an Ivy League college.

Zucker knew he had a racist, sexist demagogue on his hands for years but did nothing; indeed, he actively participated in the horror show, because he was making himself and his corporate buddies millions.

The glowing New York Times profile failed to mention any of this. The article briefly touches on Zucker’s role in hiring Trump at "The Apprentice," but doesn’t mention his role in covering up and enabling Trump’s bigoted past. It’s not hyperbole to suggest that without Zucker, it’s very likely Trump would be an also-ran on "Dancing with the Stars," not sitting behind a desk at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Other Trump flacks-turned-#Resistance wannabes include Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the co-hosts of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC. Trump recently lashed out at Brzezinski in a sexist, shocking-even-by-Trump-standards tweet accusing Scarborough and Brzezinski of courting him for an interview at Mar-a-Lago.

"She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!" Trump tweeted. Immediately, Joe Scarborough fired back, writing an op-ed in the Washington Post titled “Trump is Not Well” and sanctimoniously tweeting how Trump was ruining the otherwise noble traditions of the United States.

The underlying accusation that Scarborough and Brzezinski had courted Trump, if not true in this specific instance, is broadly correct. As with Zucker, Trump was turning on people who had long held him up in order to boost their ratings.

As Occidental College professor Peter Dreier noted in HuffPo:

In late 2015 and 2016, when Trump’s campaign was gaining momentum, [Scarborough and Brzezinski] defended him against his critics and offered him advice. For example, at an event at the 92nd Street Y in New York in November 2015, Scarborough proudly recounted how he frequently called Trump to offer political guidance. Returning the bromance favor, in January 2016 Trump talked about Scarborough with Boston talk radio host Howie Carr. “He’s a great guy, and he has a great show ... and we have a lot of fun,” Trump said. After Trump won the New Hampshire primary in February 2016, Trump appeared on “Morning Joe” and told the co-hosts: “You guys have been supporters, and I really appreciate it.”...

Scarborough, and to a lesser extent, Brzezinski, frequently gave Trump sympathetic and often lavishing coverage when they thought him an ally and/or a harmless novelty. Trump’s well-documented racism and sexism were something to be brushed aside and laughed away until that same mean-spirited bile was aimed in their direction. And now they and Zucker want our sympathy? They should get it to the extent no one should be subject to sexist smears, but anything beyond that—any attempt to rebrand them as bold truth-tellers fighting the Trump regime, ought to be dismissed. Those who helped build Donald Trump up cannot be tasked with bringing him down, because, should Trump wake up one day and decide Mika, Jeff and Joe are his friends, there’s nothing in their past to indicate they wouldn’t stop on a dime and happily accept the offer.

CNN hired Stephen Moore, the worst economist in the world, to give economics analysis. The network immediately learned what happens when you give a right-wing stooge airtime when Moore, a former Trump adviser, debuted by immediately undermining the network's own reporting about Trump. Meanwhile, Fox News hosts accidentally gave Trump gushing praisefor President Obama's last job report.

CNN has reportedly poached discredited right-wing economic pundit Stephen Moore from Fox News. Moore spent years at Fox routinely spreading misinformation about the economy during the Obama administration and spent much of 2016 promoting Donald Trump's failed trickle-down policies while serving as his senior economic adviser. The decision to hire the notoriously incompetent Moore shows that the network remains invested in its failed strategy of giving airtime to partisan hacks instead of qualified experts.

According to a January 30 report from Business Insider, Moore described leaving Fox News as “a hard decision” but said that “CNN made a really good offer.” The report noted that Moore joins “other right-leaning journalists and contributors” recently hired by the network, which has been adding new conservative voices since Election Day. The decision to add Moore to its roster reveals CNN to be on a troubling trajectory because, even among professional political hacks and conservative pundits, Moore has distinguished himself for his particularly shoddy work.

Media Mattershas extensively detailed Moore’s terrible track record as an economic analyst for over a decade. Moore has falsely claimed for years that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) forces workers into part-time jobs, he attempted to blame the housing crisis on Bill and Hillary Clinton, he promoted the lie that members of Congress and their staff are “exempt” from the ACA, he supported draconian budget cuts that hurt the economy, and he endorsed Republican attempts to block vital infrastructure spending.

During his tenure as the “chief economist” at the Heritage Foundation, Moore once exaggerated the actual cost estimate of providing unaccompanied minors with access to American public schools by an absurd 63 percent, claiming it would cost $1 billion a year. During a July 2014 dispute with Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, Moore was caught cherry-picking statistics for an op-ed published by The Kansas City Starto intentionally mislead readers about the relationship between tax cuts and job creation. (The newspaper eventually vowed to stop publishing Moore’s work, which had to be corrected by other outlets as well.)

The examples of Moore being clueless about even the basics of economic policy are legion. For instance, there was the February 19, 2014, interview with CNN in which host Carol Costello stopped Moore’s anti-minimum wage spin dead in its tracks:

vid

Moore is so widely discredited that New York magazine columnist Jonathan Chait once mocked him for being unable to “find a single true fact” to back up his support for repealing the ACA. Economist Jared Bernstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities chided Moore in a March 2015 column for his “fact-free” endorsement of anti-union “right-to-work” laws, and Krugman once speculated that Moore’s “incompetence is actually desirable” in conservative circles, because “a smart hack might turn honest.”

It is one thing for CNN to add a conservative perspective to its news coverage, but it is another thing entirely to grant more airtime to an incompetent serial misinformer like Steve Moore. CNN viewers are already forced toendure Trump sycophant Jeffrey Lord’s ignorant and bigoted commentary. Adding Moore to the network’s roster proves once again that CNN boss Jeff Zucker learned nothing from his organization’s humiliating relationshipwith irreconcilable Trump apologist Corey Lewandowski. Viewers deserve to hear analysis from qualified experts, not hacks who will eschew the facts to toe a predictable party line on every issue.

NBC News is catering to Trumpin part of its ongoing war with the press, the Trump administration has blacklisted and freezed out CNN. Even today, Vice President Mike Pence appeared on four morning shows, but not on CNN's. Rather than asking why this is happening, a better question is why NBC News and MSNBC are catering to Trump. I took a deep dive into how NBC is elevating voices that are accommodating Trump -- and pushing out voices that are not.

http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/11/17/cnn-s-jake-tapper-exposes-trump-adviser-myron-ebell-industry-funded-climate-change-denier/214515

JAKE TAPPER (HOST): As the world tries to figure out just what comes next, one of the clearest policy differences between the current president and his successor, President-elect Trump, has to do with combating climate change. President-elect Trump has made no bones about his belief, contrary to the vast majority of scientists, that man-made climate change is not a legitimate phenomenon. And now he is tapping one of the nation’s leading climate change deniers to head the transition for the Environmental Protection Agency, someone who may not want the agency to exist at all.

[...]

TAPPER: Suffice it to say, Donald Trump is not a big believer in man-made climate change, contrary to the views and data of the vast majority of scientists.

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

DONALD TRUMP: Our plan will end the EPA, which is a -- hey, look, it's all wonderful, but it's a disaster.

[END VIDEO CLIP]

TAPPER: That's why the former EPA administrators under Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush hammered Trump during the election for pledging to yank the U.S. from the Paris accords, an international agreement to fight climate change, a move they said, quote, would set the world back decades. Leading the Trump transition team on environmental matters is an avid climate change denier. A man who was once funded by the tobacco industry to fight those seeking to further regulate cigarettes. Myron Ebell is the director of the Center For Energy And Environment, part of a libertarian think tank that, quote, questions global warming alarmism, partly funded by some of the same industries such as coal that are being hurt by the regulations of the fossil fuel industry. Ebell has long fought against environmental regulations, arguing they're an extension of government power. As he told PBS in 2012, he rejects the reams of data and evidence suggesting that man-made climate change is real.

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

MYRON EBELL: We believed that the so-called global warming consensus was not based on science but was a political consensus.

[END VIDEO CLIP]

TAPPER: That's rejecting evidence accepted by most scientists, as well as a growing number of Republicans, including former South Carolina Congressman Bob Inglis.

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

BOB INGLIS: It's really quite comical, really, to have one of the Merchants of Doubt as the head of EPA. That really would be a continuing joke on America.

[END VIDEO CLIP]

TAPPER: As founder of environmental group republicEn, Inglis says there must be a way everyone can move forward together. A balanced way.

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

INGLIS: This is for real. And it’s happening to us now. We want to take care of the problem. It may be, just maybe, that somebody like Donald Trump could show that there is a free enterprise answer to climate change. But he won't show it if he's got Myron Ebell as the director -- as the administrator of EPA, however.

[END VIDEO CLIP]

TAPPER: Trump's appointee will also have the power to affect how we work with the international community to combat a changing environment that has proven deadly time and again. Ebell tops Trump's list less than a year after protesters publicly named him a climate criminal during an annual U.N. conference in Paris.

Previously:

Media Guide: The Fossil Fuel Industry Players Setting Trump’s Energy Agenda

Competitive Enterprise Institute's Myron Ebell: "I'd Like To See A Lot More Funding" From Big Coal

CNN Anchor Fact-Checks Trump’s Climate Science Denial: "That's Just Not True"

jake tapper seems like good guy, BBR, palin, trump

7/16

Every four years since 1972, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University has hosted an after-action gathering on the presidential election called the Campaign Managers Conference, in which the people who ran the presidential campaigns of both the winners and the losers dish about their successes, rue their failures and try to provide attendees with what the school calls “the first draft of history.”

The big news going into this year’s confab was that Trump campaign chairman Steve Bannon was going to steer clear of his alma mater and forgo the event. The news coming out of the conference? Lots of fighting!

As you might expect with such an acrimonious campaign (if you recall, part of Donald Trump’s platform during the election season was a promise to use the powers at his disposal to prosecute his opponent, Hillary Clinton), the representatives of the two campaigns sparred angrily during their session together. As the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Karen Tumulty report, things devolved into a “shouting match,” with the Clinton campaign’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, denouncing the way the Trump campaign provided “a platform for white supremacists,” over the vigorous objections of her Trump campaign counterpart, Kellyanne Conway.

But enough about that! If you ask me, the real action happened at a Wednesday night dinner at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, where there was yet another shouting match. Only this time, all of the shouting served two very noble and patriotic purposes:savaging CNN President Jeff Zucker and making former Trump campaign operative-turned-CNN contributor Corey Lewandowski upset.

As Politico’s Hadas Gold reports, the dinner discussion, which was supposed to be a genteel and academic discussion among Zucker, Washington Post Editor Marty Baron, Associated Press Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll and Facebook Vice President Elliot Schrage ― presided over by journalist and The Victory Lab author Sasha Issenberg ― quickly took a turn as the various campaign managers for the losing Republican primary candidates came at Zucker like a gang of chum-hungry sharks.

Nice! Let us be glad about all of these things that happened.

Per Gold, these campaign managers “shouted Zucker down with increasing anger as he defended how much airtime the network gave Trump” during the primary season, contending that it was both out of whack and out of balance. Zucker’s self-defense essentially amounted to asserting that when CNN reached out to the various candidates, Trump was the one who answered the call the most often.

Several of the campaign managers assembled told Zucker that they’d not received these alleged calls.Others joked about how CNN was willing to give their candidates only a brief amount of time or air segments at off-hours. As anyone who actually witnessed the primary campaign can tell you, none of the other candidates’ events got the lavish, fulsome coverage that Trump’s got.

And that includes coverage of Trump events during times when Trump wasn’t even in range of the camera lens. As one audience member shouted, “You showed empty podiums!” (Which was technically accurate, as there were podiums at these events.)

Zucker was unable to sufficiently explain to the assembled campaign managers how it came to pass that CNN offered so many hours of coverage to Trump’s many empty stages and unoccupied lecterns. Perhaps in an effort to reach out to every campaign’s inanimate stage props, only Trump’s returned the call, offering to help CNN air hundreds of minutes of blank space for no good reason.

As Gold details, it all got to the point where Lewandowski had to leave the room to cuddle his binky or something:

The Trump strategists peppered throughout the room didn’t stand up to defend Zucker or challenge the other strategists, with the exception of former Trump campaign manager and CNN contributor Corey Lewandowski, who stalked out of the room early and returned only after a spell outside.

Once Lewandowski returned from psyching himself up in the washroom mirror with repeated pick-me-ups (“You can do it, Corey! You’re a real man, Corey!”), the erstwhile CNN contributor was in more of a fighting mood, getting confrontational once the conversation turned to Zucker’s decision to hire Lewandowski in the first place:

Lewandowski seized the microphone from the questioner, who broached the topic, in a bid to defend himself, allowing the student to finish asking it, but insisting he was adding value to the CNN airwaves.

Zucker said Lewandowski was a “good investment and decision,” as Lewandowski clapped and the rest of the room remained silent.

Please clap!But no.

mma

Scottie Nell Hughes is a cable news pundit and CNN contributor who has often spoken in defense of Donald Trump. Glamour notes she “has been on the front line for Trump campaign since she introduced him at a September mega rally in Dallas.”

What You Need To Know

Hughes was previously the news director for the “Tea Party News Network.” She uses odd logic to launch:{defenses:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: of Trump’s actions.

When some called for riots at the Republican convention in defense of Trump, Hughes told CNN “it’s not riots as in a negative thing.” Hughes said that Trump’s statement that women should be punished for abortions had been “misconstrued,” and that the media paying attention to Trump’s sexist tweets is unfair.

Hughes lamented that Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) uses Spanish in his speeches, saying, “I’m hoping I’m not going to have to kind of start brushing up back on my Dora the Explorer to understand some of the speeches given” during the Democratic convention.

She also claimed that Hillary Clinton’s presidential nomination is “tearing down men.”

===

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/02/peak-propaganda-fox-news-creates-an-alternate-reality-and-cnn-perpetuates-it/

In the United States, the right-wing news-entertainment complex has constructed an alternate reality for conservatives that functions like a political version of the Upside-Down from the hit Netflix show “Stranger Things.”

Fox News sits at its center. New Suffolk University polling data shows how Fox News viewers (and those respondents who identify as “conservative” and “very conservative”) are much more critical of President Barack Obama, are afraid of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and have a much more negative attitude about the future of the United States than the general public. Fox News viewers are also much more likely to believe that the presidential election will somehow be manipulated or subjected to fraud and that the American news media is conspiring against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

In a recent story, the 24/7 cable news outlet CNN also analyzed and commented upon the new Suffolk University poll. It offered the following important qualifier:

Fox allies might say the poll findings show that other channels have a liberal bent. Fox critics might say that the results illustrate the echo chamber of conservative media.

With one small comment, CNN has unintentionally (and ironically) provided an example of how the “liberal news media” has aided and abetted the rise of Trump.

...

CNN alluded to differences in opinion about Fox News, partisanship, as well as how other news channels may have a “liberal bias.” CNN then chose, however, to ignore research, which has repeatedly shown that Fox News is not “fair or balanced” but rather extremely biased and partisan. Other work has demonstrated that Fox News is a source of disinformation whereby viewers are repeatedly fed lies on a broad range of topics including science, the economy, health care policy, terrorism, immigration and religion.

Perhaps most damning of all, is the finding that people who watch Fox News actually know less about factual news matters than those who do not watch any news program at all.

In all, Fox News is extremely dangerous to the public discourse and consensus politics in America because it creates a feedback loop among conservatives, one that is almost impossible to break. Chris Mooney explained this in his book, “The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality”:

Fox News is both deceiver and enabler simultaneously. First, its existence creates the opportunity for conservatives to exercise their biases, by selecting into the Fox information stream, and also by imbibing Fox-style arguments and claims that can then fuel biased reasoning about politics, science, and whatever else comes up.

But at the same time, it’s also likely that conservatives, tending to be more closed-minded and more authoritarian, have a stronger emotional need for an outlet like Fox, where they can find affirmation and escape from the belief challenges constantly presented by the “liberal media.” Their psychological need for something affirmative is probably stronger than what’s encountered on the opposite side of the aisle — as is their revulsion towards allegedly liberal (but really centrist) media outlets....

https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/17/trump-s-kitchen-cabinet-continued-what-media-needs-know-about-nominee-s-top-advisers-and-supporters/212477

Lord, a contributor to the conservative American Spectator, has been a big booster of Trump’s candidacy. CNN hired Lord to present a pro-Trump point of view. According to Lord, Trump helped land him the gig. The Patriot-News reported last year, “Lord said Trump complained to CNN execs that the network only featured commentators who didn't get him, so CNN asked The Donald who in the world of conservative media he would suggest, and he said Jeffrey Lord.”

What You Need To Know

Lord :{infamously:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: tried to prove that a black man who was beaten to death was not technically lynched, a position that was even condemned by his colleagues at the Spectator. During his CNN appearances, Lord has defended Trump’s attack on Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists, :{excused:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: Trump’s failure to disavow the KKK, and :{described:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: the Klan as a “leftist terrorist organization.”

Lord blamed the pro-choice movement for gun violence and attacked the family of deceased Army Captain Humayun Khan for speaking at the Democratic National Convention. He also echoed the Trump campaign bypromoting the conspiracy theory that the election “could be stolen.”=

Scottie Nell Hughes is a cable news pundit and CNN contributor who has often spoken in defense of Donald Trump. Glamour notes she “has been on the front line for Trump campaign since she introduced him at a September mega rally in Dallas.”

What You Need To Know

Hughes was previously the news director for the “Tea Party News Network.” She uses odd logic to launch :{defenses:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}: of Trump’s actions.

She also claimed that Hillary Clinton’s presidential nomination is “tearing down men.”==

This is getting outrageous: first we learned that CNN aired five times more fossil fuel ads than they did climate reporting during the month it was reported that 2015 was the hottest year on record. Now we've learned that former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is still being paid by the candidate while also being paid by CNN to report on-air about major issues like climate change, clean energy and the environment in the campaign.*

It's clear CNN has a major ethics problem, and one way they can get ahead of this is by refusing fossil fuel money and covering the climate crisis. I know we've asked before, but in light of this new information, will you sign on to our petition telling CNN to drop polluter money and #ReportOnClimate?

Drew and the clean up the airwaves crew at Environmental Action

* Matt Gertz, CNN’s Corey Lewandowski Is Still Being Paid By Donald Trump, Media Matters for America, July 13, 2016

PS - Anthony's original email is below in case you want more background on CNN's previous climate reporting failures.

Year after year, the realities of climate disruption are further revealed as our planet continues to break temperature records and climate impacts from wild fires to super storms become more frequent. Earlier this year, it was reported that 2015 was the hottest year on record and included the hottest and wettest month of December since record keeping began.1 The 2015 announcement confirmed the increasing trend of warmer temperatures, since it displaced 2014 as the hottest year on record, and just a few weeks later it was reported that 2016 had the warmest February in recorded history.2

But just while scientists were telling us that the world was burning up, CNN chose to give more air time to Big Oil than climate change. A study by Media Matters for America revealed that during the week we learned of 2015's record breaking temperature, CNN aired five times more oil industry adverting than climate coverage.3 This variety of corporate journalism fuels an iniquitous transmission of urgency and contributes to climate denial. Maybe that's why while over 70 percent of Americans believe climate change is real, only 27 percent of respondents in a recent poll understand that human activity is the main cause, and the need for vast changes in our energy and economic systems.4

That's why we're teaming up with an amazing coalition of organizations including our friends at Oil Change International, Climate Truth, Climate Hawks Vote, Honor the Earth, Daily Kos, Color of Change and others to deliver a simple message to CNN: #ReportOnClimate. Click here to help us send that message to the Cable "News" Network so that we can start getting climate change the coverage it requires.

Author Rob Nixon has referred to climate change as a form of "slow violence" stating, "The insidious workings of slow violence derive from the unequal attention given to spectacular and unspectacular time. In an age that venerates instant spectacle, slow violence is deficient in the recognizable special effects that fill movie theaters and boost ratings on TV." That's a good way to describe CNN's behavior and the fact that they are choosing Big Oil's crude cash over responsible journalism proves it.

We can't #ActOnClimate if our news sources don't #ReportOnClimate. And we certainly can't expect people to know that climate change impacts Latino, African American and Native American communities "First and Worst." Because if climate change is slow violence, it can also be characterized as slow racism or bigotry and the longer news outlets like CNN refuse to report this reality, the longer it will persist.

mann book:

cnn weatherman chad meyers --> inhofe

dobbs 180 BACK! (fired2x? went to FOX 09?)

climategate?

CNN >CBS (latter later tried to compensate )

Guterl newsweek discover mag

Some correction by jrnl but little and late; ABC got better.

UK Parl cleared Jones CRU

as did Penn MM; NSG OIG

parl? found minor problems U East Anglia

CBS, CNN even Fox and pitt news-trib but WSJ stuck with Whitewash

6/16 lie of week AN

http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/5-worst-right-wing-moments-week-katrina-pierson-divorces-reality-good

good deal of the notable right-wing spewage this week emerged from the nexus of nutjobs that loosely make up the Trump camp. Of course, the fish stinks from the head, and Trump is nothing if not a stinky head, suggesting at one point that we do “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” to combat terror.

Here’s a review of what you might have missed.

1. Katrina Pierson set a new record for speed lying.

Before he suggested the U.S. amp up the war crimes, Trump backpedaled last weekend on his proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the country. Well, maybe not all Muslims, he said. His ban would only concern Muslims emigrating to the U.S. from "terror countries"—whatever the f**k that means.

While Trump, who enjoys a wobbly relationship with the truth, merely dissembled, his fearless, fact-free national spokesperson, Katrina Pierson, is completely divorced from reality. She may have set a new record for speed lying on CNN Monday, telling three whoppers in the space of 12 minutes (and many smaller fibs in between).

First, she asserted that Trump had never called for a ban on all Muslims.“I know the news media was reporting that the initial ban was against all Muslims, and that simply was not the case,” she said, attacking her familiar boogeyman, the media. The patent falseness of this statement did not appear to perturb her one bit. The trouble is, there’s an actual record, a multimedia record, including one in writing from the Trump campaign last December, in which he proudly called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” But then again, why would evidence to the contrary bother Pierson?

Continuing her streak of complete imperviousness to the truth, Pierson claimed there is no vetting process for Syrian refugees. Not so, host Briana Keilar explained carefully, at which point Pierson falsely asserted that the FBI and CIA have said there is no vetting process, which is no less untrue despite seeming to be more specific.

Oh, to be able to live life unburdened by all those pesky actual facts and reality-based knowledge.

2. Corey Lewandowski uses a nonsense argument and seems to think it makes perfect sense.

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is off to a great start at his new gig at CNN. As a result of accepting the CNN gig after Trump canned him, Lewandowski lost a book deal and caused a minor insurrection at the cable news channel among journalists who objected to the idea of a Trump mouthpiece with a reputation for roughing up reporters working in their midst.

This week, Lewandowski babbled complete nonsense in an attempt to explain Trump’s blatantly illegal attempts to solicit campaign donations from British parliament ministers. These solicitations came to light when a British politician blew the whistle.

What’s going on with that, co-host Alisyn Camerota asked Lewandowski.

"Well my guess is the individual opted into an email system because, that I know of, the Trump campaign has never purchased a list to solicit any information and so, if it's an opt-in and you send a request out to the list of people who opted in to be part of this, that's perfectly legal..." Lewandowski said.

After another night of primary victories, in March Donald Trump took to the stage in the ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago resort. Instead of holding a victory rally, he took questions from the media.

All but one of the queries was about the horse race: Could he win the general? Could he bring the party together? Trump tried to cut off the only policy-related question from CNN's Jeremy Diamond, saying, "Nobody is listening to you, Jeremy."

This one campaign moment was a snapshot of media failure in a primary season that is unlike anything we've ever seen. Entertaining? You bet. But vetting candidates for one of the most powerful positions in the world is serious business, and for that we need serious journalism.

mojo

Early on, the cable networks discovered that airing Trump's ranting and raving was a boon for ratings. Each time he said something outrageous, he received more coverage, and he and the networks won a bigger audience—ad infinitum. Meanwhile, many in the media ignored Bernie Sanders early in the campaign; they didn't think there was a big audience for his "political revolution."

CBS president and CEO Les Moonves explained it like this: "[It] may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS...It's a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald, go ahead, keep going."

...How could such a horror happen in America? That’s the question he seems to be asking. But to ask it that way, Cooper has to be deceitful and spin the Gallup poll to fit his meaning (Cooper’s spin reflects the conventional coverage of the poll at the time). The real news from the June 2015 poll was that 47% of Americans were OK with electing a “socialist” (not further defined by pollsters). That 47% is more than past polls, and those opposed to a “socialist” make up only 50%, a difference close to the margin of error. In other words, more than a year from the presidential election, Gallup finds America more or less neutral on the question of whether or not a candidate is “any kind of socialist.” For a Bernie kind of socialist, the simple answer to getting elected is to make the kind of progress in the next year he’s made in the past six months.

Cooper’s approach uses “socialism” as something that is by definition pejorative and comes out of a deep, common bias in the US. The American ruling class has cultivated fear of socialism for close to two centuries, not because it’s a threat to people’s freedom but because it’s a threat to the wealth and power of people like the 158 families funding most of the 2016 race for the presidency.

Anderson Cooper was not only born into wealth and power, he has lived the life of that class, as even his official CNN bio affirms. After attending New York’s Dalton School, Cooper graduated from Yale College in 1989 with a BA in political science and two summer internships at the CIA. He also studied Vietnamese at the University of Hanoi. Cooper kept his CIA experience in the closet until September 2006, when an unnamed website reported that Cooper had worked for the CIA.

Cooper responded on his CNN blog. He said the website didn’t have its facts straight, but cited no errors. His own facts are well fudged – “for a couple of months over two summers I worked at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia…. It was pretty bureaucratic and mundane.” Cooper doesn’t say what he did or even what years he was there (1987 and 1988, in the aftermath of William J. Casey’s directorship).

When Sanders offered no direct answer to the question of how a “socialist” could win a general election, Cooper followed up: “The question is really about electability here, and that’s what I’m trying to get at. The Republican attack ad against you in a general election — it writes itself. You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And just this weekend, you said you’re not a capitalist. Doesn’t that ad write itself?”

Cooper’s first dishonesty is asking the “electability” question only of Sanders. Yes, everyone assumes Hillary Clinton is electable, but O’Malley, Chaffee or Webb? They’re not even as close to getting nominated as Sanders. Why would anyone assume they’re electable in anything but a flip-of-the-coin sense? Cooper’s addressing the electability question only to Sanders may actually be a measure of how strong Cooper believes Sanders is.

...

http://www.alternet.org/media/anderson-cooper-worth-tens-millions-doesnt-relent-attacking-bernies-socialism

10/15.

http://www.vox.com/2015/10/14/9530973/debate-cnn-climate-change

The Democratic Party has come a long way on climate change, but CNN hasn’t

Updated by David Roberts on October 14, 2015, 1:30 p.m. ET @drvox david@vox.com

"How would you handle climate change, in one hand gesture?"

In 2012, CNN's Candy Crowley moderated the second presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Afterward, she explained why climate change never came up.

"I had that question for all of you climate change people. We just, you know, again, we knew that the economy was still the main thing so you knew you kind of wanted to go with the economy."

This moment became something of a legend among, uh, "climate change people," as it showed so clearly the way CNN understands the issue: as a boutique concern of one faction of the left, namely environmentalists. It's not a "main thing" like the economy, and certainly not part of the discussion of the economy.

Public awareness of climate change has come a long way since then, and so has the Democratic Party. CNN, it seems, has not.

CNN shows it still doesn't understand climate change or take it seriously

In Tuesday's Democratic primary debate, the candidates mentioned climate change several times unprompted. Martin O'Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton all touched on it during their opening statements. O'Malley and Sanders hit it again in the context of national security, and Clinton when defending herself from the charge of flip-flopping on the Keystone XL pipeline.

But there was no question on climate change until the final segment of the (gruelingly long) debate. O'Malley tried again to bring up a "green revolution" in energy, and Cooper cut in with this segue for the ages:

We'll talk more about environmental change and climate issues coming up. Some of the candidates have tried marijuana, as have probably everybody in this room. Does it influence their views on legalization? Find out that and others ahead.

"Environmental change and climate issues" ... something, something ... weed! Sounds like he can hardly wait.

After the break (during which, I thought it was fairly clearly implied, Webb threatened to walk off if he didn't get more time), Cooper went to a vapid meta question about who is and isn't an "insider."

Then Sanders tried yet again to bring it back to climate change, and Cooper relented.

Who finally got to ask the question? Just as CNN had a Latino anchor ask about immigration, a woman anchor ask about paid leave, and an African-American kid ask whether black lives matter, it gave the climate question over to Anna, a young white woman who looked every bit the liberal arts student. That, you see, is a "climate person."

And then there was this maddening segue from Don Lemon: "Please tell Anna how you would protect the environment better than the other candidates on the stage."

There is the key piece of CNN's understanding of climate change: It is an "environmental issue," of concern to environmentalists. As a special interest issue, not a "main thing," it is reserved for the end of Democratic primary debates, so that candidates can pander to their base, but is not worthy of presidential debates.

And so the question finally came up. O'Malley gave a great answer. Then Cooper, who had basically been excluding Webb from the debate all night, finally found a question he values low enough to give Webb a little time to filibuster on it.

Webboffered a pointless ramble about all-of-the-above energy and a gratuitous swipe at Obama's historic climate pact with the Chinese — a take on climate change that is woefully out of step with the current Democratic mainstream. It's more like "conservative Democrat from purple state, circa 2006," which these days has become the moderate Republican take on the issue. Either way, it was an obvious waste of time.

Then came rushed answers from Sanders and Clinton and the issue was gone.

The village understanding of climate change remains dismal

In all these small ways, CNN revealed an understanding of climate change that is about 10 years old. But it remains frozen in time, not only at CNN but in much of the Village, the clubby circle of Beltway players, journos, and pundits who watch one another on Sunday cable talk shows.

To them, it remains an "environmental" issue, despite the fact that it involves terrible threats to human economies, health, and geopolitical relationships. It remains a "base" issue on the left, despite the burgeoning involvement of cities, new industries, investors, entrepreneurs, and civic groups. It remains a "young person" issue, despite warnings that markets are already at risk, today, from massive unpriced threats.

And above all it remains a peripheral issue, not something the average person really wants to hear about.

At least Crowley had the economy as an excuse (despite her ignorance of how intimately climate change is related to the economy). What did Cooper think people really want to hear about? Who's "electable." Who flip-flops. Clinton's friggin' emails.

These are the kinds of things that give people like Cooper the optics of being "tough" — calling out seeming contradictions or asking loaded character questions. What's really tough for someone in Cooper's position is stepping outside the self-absorbed world of DC political journalism to assess the issues on their real-world importance. In his fealty to the comfortable worldview of the cosseted US political class, Cooper was anything but tough. He was a perfect puppy dog.

On Monday, several mainstream media outlets repeated the latest press releaseby the FBI that country was under a new “heightened terror alert” from “ISIL-inspired attacks” “leading up to the July 4th weekend.” One of the more sensational outlets, CNN, led with the breathless warning on several of its cable programs, complete with a special report by The Lead’s Jim Sciutto in primetime:

The threat was given extra credence when former CIA director—and consultant at DC PR firm Beacon Global Strategies—Michael Morell went on CBS This Morning (6/29/15) and scared the ever-living bejesus out of everyone by saying he “wouldn’t be surprised if we were sitting [in the studio] next week discussing an attack on the US.” The first piece of evidence Morell used to justify his apocalyptic posture, the “50 ISIS arrests,” was accompanied by a scary map on the CBS jumbotron showing “ISIS arrests” all throughout the US... see anti-muslim

Last week, the internet went nuts about this tweet [4]. It is not hard to see why:

Weather is not climate, you willfully ignorant fucksticks. MT @foxnation [5]: Climate Doesn’t Cooperate With Al Gore http://t.co/QKe0PkyYQK [6]

— Bill Weir (@BillWeirCNN) July 31, 2014 [7]

Weir, a CNN anchor, was responding to this *Washington Times* article [8], which Fox Nation (a Fox News website [9]) highlighted under the headline, "Climate Doesn't Cooperate With Al Gore's Group's Visit to Denver EPA Hearings." It was a short piece noting that when Gore's Climate Reality Project attended an EPA climate change hearing at 9 a.m., "the temperature was a chilly 58 degrees. Plus, it was raining." Har-har.

Weir was correct to point out in this context that weather isn't climate. The way he did so, however, was ill advised (even if internet-applauded), and he later sent out this apologizing tweet:

The glop of Midwestern guilt stuck in my chest prob won't go away until I apologize to @foxnation [5] for name-calling. Dumb move. My bad.

— Bill Weir (@BillWeirCNN) July 31, 2014 [10]

But why was Weir so upset? A look back at his past coverage, mainly at ABC (he only moved to CNN in late 2013 [11]), suggests that he's a journalist who covers climate change well, and really cares about science and technology. His official title upon moving to CNN was, after all, "Chief Innovation Correspondent." That might explain why he lost his cool over yet another Fox News-connected attack on the science of climate change. (CNN did not respond to a request for comment from Weir late last week.)

Weir appears to be a pretty big science aficionado. When he was cohost of ABC's Good Morning America weekend edition back in 2008, he fronted this stunning love song segment on science [12] (titled "Science Rocks!"), which included Weir saying that "science is the new sexy" and describing how New York's World Science Festival is striving to turn "geek chic." Watch it:

ABC News [13] | More ABC News Videos [14]

You don't put together a segment like that unless you think science really matters. And if you think that, then in turn, you probably get annoyed when people attack and undermine it.

Which brings us to Weir's coverage of climate change while at ABC (where, after his role at Good Morning America, he was an anchor of Nightline). Consider a late 2012 segment [15] featuring James Balog, the photographer and daredevil behind the powerful climate documentary Chasing Ice. Weir started off the segment as follows:

Well, only in America is it controversial for me to begin tonight's program by declaring that global warming is really happening. For doubters, 332 straight months of above average temperatures is not proof enough.

Or, still more apropos of the current "fucksticks" controversy, consider Weir's April

Science or Spin?: Assessing the Accuracy of Cable News Coverage of Climate Science

Accuracy varies significantly across major cable news outlets. All of them can take steps to improve their coverage of climate science.

DOWNLOAD: Science or Spin? Assessing the Accuracy of Cable News Coverage of Climate Science (2014)

CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC are the most widely watched cable news networks in the U.S. Their coverage of climate change is an influential source of information for the public and policy makers alike.

To gauge how accurately these networks inform their audiences about climate change, UCS analyzed the networks' climate science coverage in 2013 and found that each network treated climate science very differently.

Fox News was the least accurate; 72 percent of its 2013 climate science-related segments contained misleading statements. CNN was in the middle, with about a third of segments featuring misleading statements. MSNBC was the most accurate, with only eight percent of segments containing misleading statements.

The public deserves climate coverage that gets the science right. Media outlets can do more to foster a fact-based conversation about climate change and policies designed to address it, rather than contributing to a broken and inaccurate debate about the established facts of climate science.

CNN: Two-Thirds Accurate, One-Third Misleading

CNN covered climate science 43 times in 2013. Of these segments, 70 percent were entirely accurate, while 30 percent included misleading portrayals of the science.
Most of CNN's misleading coverage stemmed from debates between guests who accepted established climate science and other guests who disputed it. This format suggests that established climate science is still widely debated among scientists, which it is not, and also allows opponents of climate policy to convey inaccurate statements about climate science.
The biggest step that CNN could take to increase accuracy is to stop hosting debates about established climate science and instead focus debates on whether and how to respond to climate change through climate policy.

Fox News: Misleading Most of the Time

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/fight-misinformation/cable-news-coverage-climate-change-science.html?print=t

Thanks to the Obama administration’s high-profile rollout of the National Climate Assessment, climate change was, for a day yesterday, the nation’s leading story. Different media outlets approached it in different ways, but when it came to CNN’s Crossfire… well, not surprisingly, the show opted for a debate about the science.

The result was a lot of sound and fury, but at least the debater on the side of reality – Bill Nye the Science Guy – gave as good as he got. Nye was up against not only conservative host S.E. Cupp, who said the White House was engaging in global warming “scare tactics” and accused “science guys” of attempting to “bully other people,” but also Nick Loris of the Heritage Foundation. Loris acknowledged that humans are responsible for “some part” of the changing climate and claimed that “I’m not a denier, I’m not a skeptic,” but he also asserted that “we’ve had Arctic ice, globally, increasing” (not!) and that “we’ve had this 16-to-17-year hiatus in warming.” (Actually, the notion that global warming is “slowing down” is very misleading.)

“Let’s just start with, we don’t agree on the facts,” Nye said to Loris and Cupp. “This third report [the National Climate Assessment] came out, saying it’s very serious. You say, ‘No.’ Right? There’s the essence of the problem.”...http://grist.org/climate-energy/bill-nye-keeps-fighting-the-good-fight-debates-climate-change-on-cnn/

2012

S.E. Cupp Attacks Climate Science and Climate Scientists on MSNBC

Yesterday, I appeared on MSNBC’s Now with Alex Wagner to talk about *The Republican Brain*. It was largely an interview about what’s going on with conservatives and science right now—why they distrust it so much–but :{S.E.:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px"):}: Cupp, the conservative on the panel, called my argument “infuriating.”

Then, she proceeded to attack climate science and the researchers who produce it—doing a very good job of proving my point about conservatives and science! Brad Johnson has provided a transcript at Think Progress (video below it):

CUPP: There have been, to quote Rick Santorum, phony studies on climate change. East Anglia University I should mention!

WAGNER: And that study –

CUPP: Every time science has been corrupted by politics, everyone in the scientific community should be worried!

...?

I deliberately didn’t answer Cupp’s point about “East Anglia University” on the air. But let me answer it now.

First, the “ClimateGate” issue at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Center was about stolen emails, not “phony studies.”

Second, conservatives did claim that the emails proved some sort of fraud or wrongdoing on the part of scientists. But the emails didn’t actually show that. Multiple investigations (see a discussion here and here) in the wake of “ClimateGate” vindicated the scientists whose emails had been exposed, showing that these charges weren’t valid.

Third and most important, the central conclusion of climate science—humans are causing global warming—was never at stake in “ClimateGate.” The case for human-caused global warming depends on multiple independent lines of evidence, and the conclusion has been ratified by a much broader body of scientists than those principally involved in the “ClimateGate.”

All of this has been said before, of course. And it isn’t, frankly, very interesting.

What isinteresting is that S.E. Cupp made these assertions, which have been so convincingly refuted. Clearly, they still float around the conservative ether, where “ClimateGate” is still considered to be the ultimate rebuttal to all things global warming-related.

Rush Limbaugh has cited “ClimateGate” in essentially the same way. And it is no doubt what Rick Santorum too had in mind in talking about “phony studies.” So what’s up with this? Why cite bogus charges that were long since refuted, and that even if accurate, wouldn’t actually matter? Why seize on “ClimateGate,” even though in an intellectual sense, doing so gets you nowhere?

Here’s what I wrote back in June:

Remember what things were like before [“ClimateGate”] happened. We were coming off 2007, when Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Peace Prize. We’d just elected President Obama, who was backing cap-and-trade legislation and a Copenhagen deal. The science—and the policy—of global warming had all the momentum behind them. If you didn’t believe that the problem was real and needed to be addressed, you were in a pretty difficult position.

ClimateGate was a true blessing in this regard for climate skeptics and deniers. It furnished a brand new excuse to dismiss it all. It was all a scam! …

So “ClimateGate” was seized upon—and then, to borrow a term from psychology, after “seizing” “freezing” may have occurred for some. Minds were made up, and no new evidence was admissible—because “ClimateGate” proved it was all a hoax. Thus, whenever global warming comes up, we now hear “ClimateGate” cited endlessly, as a way of shutting down further consideration—as a vindication, even. And it’s completely baffling, if you know (as we all do) that the science of climate is as strong as it ever was, the issue didn’t go away, and “ClimateGate” doesn’t really have any substantive significance.

In other words, the people citing “ClimateGate” in this way simply may not have performed a complete, thorough, or accuracy-motivated information search. Rather, they seized on just enough information to reaffirm their beliefs. That they’re nonetheless willing to make such grave and serious charges against scientific researchers—on such a weak basis–is why it is more than fair to point out that in the end, they are really just attacking and undermining science and scientists.

So thank you again, S.E. Cupp, for proving my point.

Sarah Elizabeth "S. E." Cupp (born February 23, 1979) is an American political commentator and writer. She is a panelist on the CNN political debate show *Crossfire*, co-author of Why You're Wrong About the Right, with Brett Joshpe, and the sole author of Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity. She is also on the panel for Real News From The Blaze featured on TheBlaze, and was formerly a co-host of the afternoon MSNBC talk show The Cycle.

[hide]

Early life

Cupp was born and raised in Carlsbad, California.^[1][2] From age 6 till her late teens, she was a pro ballet dancer.^[3] During her time at the Boston Ballet, she battled eating disorders. Later in college, she again had a bout of eating disorders.^[4] In 2000, Cupp graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts in Art History. While attending Cornell, she worked for The Cornell Daily Sun. In 2010, she earned a Master of Arts from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University with a concentration in Religious Studies.^[5]

Career

After graduating from Cornell, she worked for an online magazine and a public relations company. In 2002, Cupp was hired by The New York Times to write and edit for the Index Department.^[6] She is also a contributor to Politico.com's The Arena as well as a frequent guest of CNN, Fox's Hannity, Fox & Friends, America Live with Megyn Kelly, Strategy Room and Red Eye w/Greg Gutfeld, and MSNBC's Now with Alex Wagner, Morning Joe and Martin Bashir.

Her writings have appeared at The Washington Post, New York Daily News, Foxnews.com, The American Spectator, Townhall, Newsmax, Human Events, Slate, Maxim,The Daily Caller, SI.com, and CNN.com.^[citation ^needed]

In 2009, Cupp was hired as a columnist at the Daily News.

In 2011, she was hired as a writer and commentator for Mercury Radio Arts,^[7] the organization owned and operated by Glenn Beck. Shortly after being hired by Beck, Cupp was given her own show, "S.E. Cupp" on the Insider Extreme broadcast found on Glennbeck.com.^[8] That show has since moved to GBTV (now TheBlaze TV).

On June 25, 2012, she began co-hosting The Cycle on MSNBC with political strategist Krystal Ball, pop-culture commentator Touré, and senior Salon political writer Steve Kornacki.^[9] On July 5, 2012, Cupp said onThe Cycle that she "would never vote for an atheist president." When asked to explain, Cupp said she felt that a president must not represent only 10 to 15 percent of the American populace and that faith served as a "check" on presidential power.^[10]

Cupp, who identifies as a Log Cabin Republican, said the Republican Party should support gay marriage.^[11] She describes herself as a "mainstream conservative" and criticized Ron Paul's foreign policy views along with his views on the Federal Reserve.^[12]

In March 2013, Cupp pulled out of a CPAC appearance because of its stance on homosexuality and gay marriage, saying that she "became increasingly uncomfortable [aligning] with an event, a great event in many ways, that had nonetheless attempted to marginalize a really important group of conservatives working on our behalf."^[13] Cupp denied that her employment at MSNBC influenced her position.^[14][15] She has since joined Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry.^[16]

CNN announced on June 26, 2013, that Cupp will join a new version of Crossfire re-launching in the Fall of 2013, with panelists Newt Gingrich, Stephanie Cutter, and Van Jones.^[17] Consequently, Cupp left MSNBC and The Cycle, following her final appearance on June 27, 2013.^[18]

Personal life

Cupp describes herself as an atheist but consistently states that she's open to theism,^[19][20][21] and "really aspires to be a person of faith some day."^[22][23]

In September 2012, Cupp became engaged to John Goodwin, former chief of staff to Rep. Raúl Labrador. Cupp and Goodwin met at the 2008 Republican Convention and began dating in 2011.^[24] They were married in November 2013.^[25]

Bibliography

Cupp, S. E.; Brett Joshpe (2008). Why You're Wrong about the Right: Behind the Myths. New York: Threshold Editions. ISBN 1-4165-6282-6.
Cupp, S. E. (2010). Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity. New York: Threshold Editions. ISBN 1-4391-7316-8.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/12/11/the-worst-climate-change-misinformer-in-america/197230

CNN gave a platform to "toxic and divisive" Marc Morano to dismiss global warming on its new program, The 11th Hour. But the network did not disclose that Morano, who has no scientific expertise, is paid by fossil fuel companies to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change, as he did on CNN.

On December 10, The 11^th^Hourhost Don Lemon **tweeted**a preview of the show: "Is #climatechange real? We discuss tonight on @The11thHour on #CNN." Such a "debate" over verifiable facts is often counter-productive, but if CNN is going to air it, the network needs to at least disclose if any of its guests have a financial incentive to deny the facts on climate change.

The CNN segment featured Marc Morano, who currently runs a climate skeptic website paid for by a fossil fuel-funded lobbying group, alongside the Sierra Club's Michael Brune and Earth Echo International's Philippe Cousteau. However, Morano commandeered the majority of the segment -- at one point Lemon joked to Cousteau, "Philippe, you've got to be aggressive if you want to get in on these guys because they're really fired up about this." Morano, who previously made a livingby feeding misleading talking points on global warming to Rush Limbaugh and Senator James Inhofe, used his CNN airtime to claim that the "most pro-child thing you can do" in poverty-stricken areas is to build coal plants -- despite the fact that many countries are strugglingwith fatal levels of air pollution from those plants. After Morano rattled off his usual talking points, dismissing any trend of increasing extreme weather events, Lemon said, "We get your point. You don't think [climate change] is real." Morano responded, "Scientific journals don't think it's real."

CNN Hosted Morano To "Debate" Bill Nye On Climate Science. In December CNN's Piers Morgan hosted a "debate" on climate change between Marc Morano and Bill Nye"The Science Guy" without disclosing that Morano has no scientific background and is paid by an industry-funded organization. During the segment, Morano misleadingly claimed that "we've gone 16 years without global warming according to UN data," adding:

MORANO: On my Web site there's literally -- it demolishes the idea of a hockey stick,new peer-reviewed study, so the idea that Bill Nye is just going around saying CO2 is up, therefore global warming is dangerous, we should be concerned, it's not. It's not dangerous.

In a blog highlighting the segment, CNN identified Morano as an "expert"on the issue and said he "presented an alternate theory regarding the impact, and concern, associated with carbon dioxide." The blog did not clarify that the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is a problem and is driven by human activity. [Media Matters, 12/5/12]

CNN Gives Climate Change Denial A Platform

BlogDecember 5, 2012 10:08 AM SHAUNA THEEL

UPDATE: In a blog highlighting the segment, CNN claims it invited "a pair of experts" to discuss climate change, without noting that Morano has no scientific expertise. The blog says Morano "presented an alternate theory regarding the impact, and concern, associated with carbon dioxide,"ignoring that the vast majority of scientists agree that carbon dioxide emissions are driving global warming and that the public should be worried about the impacts of it.

CNN anchor Piers Morgan hosted a "debate" on climate science between Bill Nye "The Science Guy" and professional climate misinformer**Marc Morano**. As Morano spewed myths about climate change, CNN failed to disclose that he has no scientific training and is paid by an industry-funded organization.

Offering two "viewpoints" about temperature data and suggesting that scientific facts are up for "debate" is misleading in and of itself. During the segment, Morano claimed that we "have gone 16 years without global warming according to UN data." Nye pushed back, saying "This will be the hottest two decades in history, in recorded history. So when you throw around a statement like the UN says it's not the hottest 20 years, I got to disagree with you." But the audience was left unaware that Morano was highlighting a short time period to obscure the overall warming trend, as illustrated by this chart from Skeptical Science:

img

If the role of the media is to inform its audience, anchors must recognize how people are informed and misinformed. When people are repeatedly exposed to a myth, it becomes more familiar and they are more likely to believe it. By giving Morano a platform to claim that average temperatures have not warmed in nearly 20 years, Morgan enabled him to familiarize CNN's audience with climate myths.

It's not surprising that Morano seized the opportunity to spread confusion about climate change. Morano is paid over $150,000 by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, an organization that has received funding from oil companies.* As New York Timesreporter Andrew Revkin explained, "industry-funded groups have used the media's tradition of quoting people with competing views to convey a state of confusion even as consensus on warming has built." Morano has promoted extreme attacks on climate scientists and those that accept global warming. His website often publishes the email addresses of scientists, leading to a barrage of hate mail, and he defended a billboard campaign comparing those who accept climate science to the Unabomber, saying it was "edgy."

While Morgan tried to pin down Morano to acknowledge certain facts -- that the earth is warming and the vast majority of climate scientists agree that burning fossil fuels is the major cause of this warming -- Morano seemed to be stuck in an alternate universe, making the on-air exercise a waste of time. Or as Nye concluded at the end of the segment, "We just don't agree on facts. So we aren't getting anywhere."

*This post has been updated to include Morano's salary.

CNN ran a Benghazi special on Tuesday night hosted by Erin Burnett. Unfortunately, it was riddledwith basic factual errors that had been debunked months prior.http://mm4a.org/193xNMt

Related: Disproving Fox's latest Benghazi conspiracies with evidence from Fox guests and Republicans:http://mm4a.org/1ckUJeb

CNN

CNN has yet another GOP problem

CNN has yet another GOP problem

CNN's Rick Santorum: “The president cared a lot about the corruption in Ukraine”

press secretary whines after CNN’s Anderson Cooper ridiculed her outrageous lies Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos

Fox News’ Chris Wallace shreds acting defense secretary for ‘abandoning the Kurds’ to be slaughtered by Turkey

CNN panel explodes in anger as Rick Santorum defends assault weapons after latest shooting

CNN’s Anderson Cooper rips Trump for cowering in fear of the NRA — after he slammed Republicans for doing exactly that

Early life

Career

Personal life

Honors and awards

Controversies

Published works

See also

Trump Lovers Are Already Claiming Explosive Devices Sent to Obama, Clinton and CNN Are 'False Flags'

CNN Threatened With Lawsuit After Reporting GOP Candidate's Gross Comments About Women

CNN: Two-Thirds Accurate, One-Third Misleading

Fox News: Misleading Most of the Time

S.E. Cupp Attacks Climate Science and Climate Scientists on MSNBC

Contents

Early life

Career

Personal life

Bibliography

CNN Gives Climate Change Denial A Platform

BlogDecember 5, 2012 10:08 AM SHAUNA THEEL

CNN

press secretary whines after CNN’s Anderson Cooper ridiculed her outrageous liesWalter Einenkel / Daily Kos

Early life

Career

Personal life

Honors and awards

Controversies

Published works

See also

CNN: Two-Thirds Accurate, One-Third Misleading

Fox News: Misleading Most of the Time

S.E. Cupp Attacks Climate Science and Climate Scientists on MSNBC

Contents

Early life

Career

Personal life

Bibliography

CNN Gives Climate Change Denial A Platform

BlogDecember 5, 2012 10:08 AM SHAUNA THEEL

press secretary whines after CNN’s Anderson Cooper ridiculed her outrageous lies Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos