Category: News/Social Media

The Washington Post Relies on Journalists Who Turn Out to Be Terror-Linked

BY HUGH FITZGERALD

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/05/the-washington-post-relies-on-journalists-who-turn-out-to-be-terror-linked;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The Washington Post has begun to rival the Guardian in the shoddiness of its coverage of Israel and the Palestinians. It has been using terrorists as the sources for some of its stories, but identifying them only as “journalists.” More on this story can be found here: “The Washington Post Pretends Terrorists Are Both Journalists and Credible Sources,” by Sean Durns, Algemeiner, May 12, 2023:

Two recent reports by The Washington Post neatly encompass everything that is wrong with both the newspaper’s coverage of the Israel-Islamist conflict and the paper’s journalism itself. Both dispatches appeared on the same day, May 10, and both were filed by the newspaper’s Jerusalem bureau.

In a news report on an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) counter-terrorist operation, the Post treated a terrorist-linked entity as a credible source. While ostensibly about IDF strikes aimed at taking out leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a Gaza-based terror group, the article uncritically quoted casualty claims by “Palestinian health officials.”

Later, the Post noted that “four women and four children were among those killed in the morning strikes, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.”

These figures of four women and four children killed were put out by something called the “Palestinian Health Ministry.” But that “Ministry” is run by the terror group Hamas, and it has a long history of exaggerating the number of Palestinian civilian deaths caused by Israel.

Yet, notwithstanding its innocuous sounding name, the “Palestinian Health Ministry” is run by Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group. And it has a long history of lying to journalists, who — for some inexplicable reason — are more than willing to parrot its claims.

Did the Washington Post reporter not think to investigate this innocent-sounding “Palestinian Health Ministry” before credulously quoting its claims? It would not have taken long to find out that it is run by Hamas and has a history of lying to journalists, especially about the numbers of civilian casualties, with the goal of making Israel look bad. We still don’t know if the figure of the dead that the Health Ministry put out on May 10 – of four women and four children killed — was accurate, or was an exaggeration. But since the Health Ministry has a long record of exaggerating the toll on civilians, shouldn’t the reporter have at least identified the source as “part of the terror group Hamas, so its figures must be treated with extreme caution”?

In a July 7, 2021, report for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, entitled “The Media in the 2021 Gaza War,” Middle East analyst Lenny Ben-David noted that a “Hamas government body, the Health Ministry, was a primary source for international media outlets on the number of Gaza’s dead and wounded” in that conflict. However, the statistics supplied by the Ministry were “unreliable.”

Ben-David pointed out: “A study on Gazan casualties in the 2014 war published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs uncovered a Health Ministry official, Ashraf al-Kidra, who served as the ‘keeper of the statistics.’ Al-Kidra used a very broad definition of civilians, saying the term applied to ‘anyone who had not been claimed by one of the armed groups as a member.’”

Al-Kidra, a member of Hamas and the “keeper of statistics” at the Hamas-run Health Ministry, back during the 2014 Gaza conflict, was determined to maximize the number of “civilians” Israel killed. One way was simply to identify anyone who was not claimed as a member of any of the recognized terror groups – Hamas, PIJ, PFLP, Hezbollah – a “civilian,” even if that “civilian” had participated in terror attacks without being formally a member of any group, or had been responsible for lone wolf terror attacks. Al-Kidra’s broad definition of who is a “civilian” greatly expands the number of those “civilians” killed by those wicked Israelis.

It makes perfect sense that a terrorist group would lie and manipulate casualty statistics for propaganda purposes. Indeed, that’s part and parcel of what terrorist groups do across the world.

Hamas itself has acknowledged as much. For example, in a 2018 interview, Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar admitted to Al-Jazeera that the group believed in “deceiving the public” for propaganda purposes.

Of course, Hamas tries to deceive the world’s Infidels. It is only following the example of Muhammad, who in a famous hadith declared that “war is deception.”

And Hamas, which runs the Health Ministry, encourages civilian casualties.

Hamas has always targeted Israeli civilians and employed Palestinian human shields — a double war crime. The group has used schools to hide its weaponry, equipment, and fighters, and, as recently as the 2014 conflict, used ambulances as “transport vehicles” and hospitals as “command centers.” During the 2021 war, the group was infamously caught using the building that housed Associated Press offices for operations — a war crime that was obfuscated by news outlets like The Washington Post.

The members of the AP, though they shared the same office building with a Hamas command-and-control center, claimed in May 2021, after their office building had been leveled by Israel, to have been completely unaware of Hamas’ presence. They were, of course, warned well in advance by Israel to vacate the building, which they did. That warning also allowed the Hamas operatives to get out safely, but the IDF saw that its first duty was to warn civilians, even if that also meant alerting Hamas. The upshot was that Israel was raked over the coals by the international media for having attacked the building where Hamas had one of its main offices because the AP and other news organizations also had their offices destroyed. No gratitude was expressed by the AP to Israel for having warned its staff to leave in time, even though that warning also allowed Hamas to vacate the premises.

In short: Hamas runs the Health Ministry. And it is in their interest both to encourage civilian deaths and to lie about them.

Why the Post’s Jerusalem bureau seems to think it’s in their reader’s interest to treat Hamas-run entities as credible is a question that warrants asking.

Either the reporters in the Washington Post‘s Jerusalem bureau are extraordinarily ignorant, in not realizing that the Health Ministry in Gaza was controlled by Hamas, or they are malevolent, in attempting to hide the fact of Hamas’ control of the Health Ministry and its doubtful statistics from their readers. Either explanation ought to have disqualified them from further reporting on Israel and the Palestinians.

As Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington D.C.-based think, noted: “If you are a journalist citing ‘ministry of health’ statistics out of Gaza, you might want to take some time off and reconsider your professional standards for sources.”

Regrettably, the Post isn’t interested in taking time off from misleading readers. The newspaper’s story on the counter-terrorist operation came complete with a pull quote from Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas operative, which called terrorism “resistance.”

Why was Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas, given pride of place with a pull quote in which he describes what Hamas does – murder civilians in terror attacks – as “resistance”? Why was that given as a pull quote so as to draw attention to a Goebbels-level lie? Hamas has only one goal, unchanged since its 1964 Charter – to destroy the state of Israel, to expel or kill all of its Jews, and to replace Israel with a Palestinian Arab state “from the river to the sea.”

Worse still, the Post continued its own well-worn habit of supplying misleading casualty stats, claiming that “this year has been one of the deadliest in recent memory for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank.”

The paper asserted that “since January, at least 95 casualties have been killed by Israeli security forces or settlers” whereas only “17 Israelis and one foreign national have been killed by Palestinians.”

But the overwhelming majority of Palestinians killed have been terrorists — a fact that was documented by nonpartisan think tanks like the FDD, among others, long before the Post’s May 10 report.

The Washington Post provided only figures about the numbers of Palestinian and Israeli dead It did not report on how many of those dead were civilians, and how many of the Palestinians who were killed were members of terror groups. Why not? Very likely because the paper’s reporters wanted to create more sympathy for the Palestinians, who had more than five times the number of casualties as did the Israelis, by hiding the fact that at least 80 of those 95 Palestinians were members of two terror groups, Hamas and PIJ. That puts an entirely different slant on the conflict.

Indeed, as the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has highlighted, many of the slain Palestinians have been claimed by the terrorist groups themselves. By contrast, all of the Israelis were murdered by terrorists — and all, except one, were civilians.

It is abhorrent to conflate the victims of terrorists with slain terrorists when listing casualties.

The critical information left out in The Washington Post report is this: many – about 80 — of those 95 Palestinians killed in 2023 were not civilians, but terrorists. And all but one of the 19 Israelis killed were civilians, murdered by terrorists.

Additionally, the Post’s claim that “violence has intensified this year between Israel and Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza under Netanyahu’s new government” is misleading. As FDD’s Jonathan Schanzer and Joe Truzman detailed in a Feb. 24, 2023, Washington Examiner op-ed, the uptick in violence can be traced back to 2021 — before the current Netanyahu government.

The rise in violence between Israel and the Palestinians did not begin when the Netanyahu government took over. It began, rather, in May 2021, after a series of attacks on Israelis from Hamas and the PIJ led Israel to respond in what was known as Operation Breaking the Wave.

Indeed, as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) pointed out in a Nov. 18, 2021, op-ed, the violence has more to do with internal Palestinian upheavals than Israel’s latest coalition. Current Palestinian Authority President (PA) Mahmoud Abbas reigns but barely rules; the PA-controlled West Bank is increasingly fragmented and Iranian-proxies like Hamas sense an opportunity to make inroads in the areas controlled by Fatah, their erstwhile rival.

In the West Bank, both Hamas and PIJ have been gaining members at the expense of the PA. The violence on the West Bank has recently been mostly among different Palestinian factions, with Hamas readier to challenge the authority of the PA, which is wildly unpopular. 80% of Palestinians now say they want Mahmoud Abbas to resign. The intra-Arab violence has gotten so bad, and the Palestinian Authority so unable to control it, that Arabs in Hebron appealed to the King of Jordan to send troops to reestablish order (he didn’t). This intra-Arab violence is likely to continue in Gaza once the current fighting with Israel ends. Then there may be a settling of scores between PIJ and Hamas fighters, with the former angry that Hamas abandoned it entirely during its battle with Israel, and the latter may want to deliver a final blow to its Gazan rival, the PIJ, now that Israel has so thoroughly weakened it.

But as CAMERA has noted, the Post doesn’t really cover Palestinian internal matters— not unless Israel can be blamed. Palestinians are but cannon fodder for their columns.

The Washington Post only covers Israel-Palestinian violence, not the intra-Arab rivalries and fighting that plague both Gaza and the West Bank. It needs always to have an anti-Israel angle to its stories, and that angle is lacking in the stories of PA vs. Hamas battles in the West Bank and the Hamas vs. PIJ conflict in Gaza. So internal disputes among the Palestinians are given short shrift in the Post.

This attitude, and the Post’s brazen contempt for basic journalistic standards, were evidenced in the Jerusalem bureau’s other May 10 report.

That dispatch, entitled “A year after journalist’s fatal shooting, report finds patter of Israel inaction,” regurgitated claims made by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that since 2001, the IDF has been responsible for the deaths of 20 reporters.

Yet, according to CAMERA’s Arabic department, no fewer than eight of those “reporters” have been linked to US-designated terrorist groups, serving their propaganda and media arms. Their levels of affiliation vary. As CPJ’s own report notes, some worked for media outlets associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and others for Hamas.

Almost half of the 20 journalists whom the Committee to Protect Journalists has accused Israel of killing turn out to be members of terror groups. They served in the propaganda and media offices of Hamas, with lesser numbers working for the PFLP.

One, Muhammad al-Bishawi, was killed inside the “Palestinian Center for Studies and Media” in Nablus, which even CPJ calls “a Hamas information office,” during the assassination of Hamas official Jamal Mansour. According to his biography for the Hamas-affiliated students movement, of which he was a member, Bishawi was working at the center, and Mansour was his boss. Another “journalist,” Khaled Riyadh Hamad, was an operative of Hamas’s al-Qassam brigades (Hamas itself refersto him as a “martyred Jihad warrior of al-Qassam”) — and was buried wrapped in the movement’s flag.

Muhammad al-Bishawi and his boss Jamal Mansour both worked in the Hamas propaganda offices, while Khaled Riyadh Hamad was an operative of the Al-Qassam Brigades – in other words, a Hamas fighter — as well as a journalist.

All three, then, can be considered as terrorists who were furthering the work of Hamas, even if two worked in propaganda, and only one was considered to be a “martyred jihad warrior” from having taken part in a violent attack.

Sameh al-Aryan, Mahmoud al-Kumi, Ahmed Abu-Hussein, Yousef Abu-Hussein, and Hussam Salama, all worked for media outlets associated with the PFLP or Hamas.

These five also worked in the media outlets linked to two terror groups – Hamas and the PFLP. That means at least eight of the twenty so-called “journalists” whom Israel is accused of killing since 2001 were really members of terror groups. They were as much a valued part of those terror groups as were those who shot or stabbed Israeli civilians.

CPJ itself notes as much. But The Washington Post failed to mention this salient fact.

Those who work for the media arms of terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda’s Inspire Magazine or the Islamic State’s Dabiq are certainly not considered “journalists” — even by the Post. Curiously this standard is dropped when the terrorist groups in question have Israel as their primary target.

The PFLP and Hamas and their propaganda entities routinely celebrate the murders of Israeli civilians. That they’re considered “reporters” by the CPJ is disqualifying.

The Post omits other relevant information, notably the fact that CPJ’s report covers multiple wars and at least two Intifadas (one of which lasted nearly five years and cost more than 1,000 Israelis their lives). Reporting from combat zones is inherently dangerous, particularly when terrorist groups use human shields — or when they disguise themselves as journalists.

Indeed, although the newspaper doesn’t mention it, there have been several instances of terrorist group’s donning garb and pretending to be journalists. In 2018, the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, published an open-source report entitled “Palestinians use indications of media affiliation to protect themselves during anti-Israel military activities and terrorist attacks,” which documented this phenomenon. And as recently as the summer of 2022, a Palestinian journalist named Ghufran Hamed Warasneh attempted to stab IDF troops.

Not only are some of these “Palestinian journalists” in fact working full-time for terror groups –Hamas, PIJ, and the PFLP – but some terrorists disguise themselves as journalists, complete with press passes, and signs indicating their media affiliation, when they conduct anti-Israel “military attacks and terrorist attacks.” They hope thereby to prevent Israeli attacks on themselves – they are deceptively decked out in the garb of journalists, with notepads, recorders, mikes, video cameras, and signs reading “PRESS. ”

All of this seems relevant to the Post’s report. But The Washington Post seems incapable of telling the difference between terrorists and journalists, or terrorists and credible sources. And that is a fact worth noting.

The Washington Post accepts as reliable sources such Hamas-run organizations as the “Palestinian Health Ministry” in Gaza, despite that body’s long history of falsifying statistics, including greatly inflating the number of civilians killed by Israel. Furthermore, the Post fails to inform its readers that many of those it describes as “journalists” killed by Israel – 20 over 22 years, or less than 1 a year – are in fact operatives of terror groups. At least eight out of the twenty, and possibly more, turn out to be members of Hamas and the PFLP. Finally, some terrorists disguise themselves as journalists in the hope of escaping attacks by the IDF. The Washington Post has a lot of remedial work to do, including firings and hirings among those in its Jerusalem bureau, if it wants its coverage of Israel and the Palestinians to be taken seriously.

How CNN Continues to Promote Anti-Israel Views

BY HUGH FITZGERALD

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/05/how-cnn-continues-to-promote-anti-israel-views;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

CNN has long seemed to harbor an animus toward the Jewish state. But last year it came under new leadership, and there was hope that it would improve its coverage of Israel and the Palestinians. Alas, that did not happen. More on this subject can be found here: “CAMERA Op-Ed: CNN Abandons Professional Journalism,” by David Litman, CAMERA, May 11, 2023:

When CNN came under new leadership last year, the message to the public was that the network wanted to “rebuild trust as a non-partisan news brand.” At the time, David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, spoke proudly of his vision of CNN’s journalism “doing what journalists do best, which is to fight to tell the truth…” Unfortunately, some at CNN seem to be fighting something else – accountability for shoddy reporting.

Take, for example, CNN’s silence over an overtly antisemitic cartoon that remains on its website despite numerous emails, phone calls, and social media posts directed at the network. There have also been articles in both Jewish and major national media outlets expressing criticism and disgust and a video exposé. The cartoon – published uncritically – portrays Jews celebrating Passover surrounded by a sea of blood, an unmistakable reference to the centuries-old blood libel that Jews use the blood of murdered gentile children for rituals or in the matzah they bake for Passover. Even The Guardian, an outlet known for regularly minimizing the problem of antisemitism, had the ethical sense to respond and take down a similarly antisemitic cartoon.

But the response from CNN? Crickets.

A cartoon showing Jews celebrating Passover in a sea of blood – a clear reference to the blood libel that goes back to the Middle Ages, when Jews were accused of killing Christian children and using their blood to bake matzoh. A cartoon, in other words, worthy of Der Stürmer was put up on the CNN website, and despite all kinds of protests – emails, phone calls, social media posts, despite articles about the cartoon’s offensiveness in both Jewish and national media, CNN stubbornly refuses to take the cartoon down, or even to explain why it refuses to do so. The only conceivable explanation is that someone — or perhaps several someones — high up at CNN is simply an antisemite, and is not appalled by, but rather likes, this blood libel against Jews on the CNN website.

Another recent example suggesting a shocking disregard for accountability came courtesy of Christiane Amanpour. During an interview with a former Israeli ambassador, the longtime CNN personality seemingly fabricated polling data to suggest “the latest polls” show the Palestinian people “want a peaceful, two-state solution to co-exist” with Israelis. Yet every single poll CAMERA could find taken by Palestinian pollsters consistently showed the exact opposite – a substantial majority against a two-state solution.

What was CNN’s response to calls for evidence of the anchor’s glib claim? Silence.

Christiane Amanpour confidently asserted that “the Palestinian people want a peaceful, two-state solution to co-exist,” but her factoid was false. Every single poll of the Palestinians shows that the vast majority are against a “two-state solution” and continue to want a “Palestine” exclusively for Arabs, that will include all the territory “from the river to the sea.”

When CNN was contacted to provide evidence for Amanpour’s claim, since no poll of the Palestinians support her claim, instead of forthrightly admitting she had been mistaken, she simply refused to reply. That’s what is called “stonewalling” and has no place in a reputable news organization.

Amanpour is the best-known, but hardly the only offender at CNN when it comes to covering Israel. There is CNN’s correspondent Frederik Pleitgen, whose coverage of the murders of Lucy Dee and her two daughters left much to be desired, as CAMERA has noted:

Even more recently, CNN correspondent Frederik Pleitgen described in these words an incident in which terrorists shot at a car with an Israeli mother and her two daughters (and then pulled the vehicle closer to fire at close range to make sure the women were dead):

“There was a shooting incident where a car received a bullet shot, or gunshots, with the family in it. It was a mother and her two daughters, and the two daughters were killed in that crash.”

The evasive, circuitous wording stood in stark contrast to his direct description in the same broadcast of the shooting death of a Palestinian, in which he plainly stated, “the Israeli military shot and killed a 15-year-old boy.” Despite a message from the correspondent that he was aware of the criticism, the communication ended as soon as the topic of publicly addressing and correcting the issue was raised.

Think of the difference. The active voice was used for those wicked Israelis, who “shot and killed a 15-year boy.” There was no mention by Pleitgen that the 15-year-old boy had been throwing Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers, attempting to set them on fire.

The passive voice, however, was used for the deliberate murders of Lucy Dee and her two daughters: “There was a shooting incident.” Not a “killing.” A “shooting incident.” And “a car received a bullet shot.” What a bizarre construction. And then that car that “received a [presumably single] bullet shot” just happened to have “the [Dee] family in it.” The way the account was phrased leaves one with the impression that the mother emerged unscathed because she is not mentioned as a victim; Pleitgen says only that “the two daughters were killed in that crash.” Nor were the daughters “killed” in a car crash. Their car crashed after they had been shot to death by a Palestinian terrorist, armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. After the crash, he kept firing; the victims were reportedly shot a total of 22 times. That does justice, unflinchingly, to the event. Pleitgen’s account was a travesty of the truth.

Here is how CNN”s Frederik Pleitgen ought to have reported the story: “A Palestinian terrorist with a Kalashnikov shot and killed an Israeli mother, Lucy Dee, and two of her daughters, Maina and Rina, as they drove through the West Bank on April 7.”

Christine Amanpour has quite a history of anti-Israel animus. This past January, she interviewed an Israeli documentary filmmaker, Dror Moreh. Toward the end, Amanpour asked Moreh:

“You are an Israeli. I don’t know whether you were in Israel at the time, but you said that this red line in the neighboring country of Syria, where all these atrocities were being committed really, really made you angry and upset. Many will want to know, you know, do you feel equally angry about the horrible situation that’s going on in your own country, and the human rights attacks, and killings of Palestinians. Obviously, we know Israelis are also attacked, but what is your perspective, as an Israeli, given the whole “never again” paradigm in which you place this investigation?”

An article on Amanpour at CAMERA.org provided a dozen examples of her palpable want of sympathy for the Jewish state.

Before delving into the appropriateness of comparing the justifications for the Syrian regime’s attacks on its own citizens versus Israel’s measures to defend against terrorism, let us first put in perspective the scale of the violence.

The United Nations estimates that in ten years of conflict in Syria, over 306,000 civilians (not including combatants) have been killed, or about 30,000 a year.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed in total from December 1987 (the start of the First Intifada) to May 2021 approximately 14,000 Israeli and Palestinian lives, including both civilians and combatants. That’s about 400 per year, which includes particularly deadly periods like the Second Intifada and the various wars and operations against Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

Put another way, the Syrian civil war cost more than twice as many lives in a single year – without even counting combatants – as have been killed in 34 years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

There simply is no comparison.

But even beyond just the numbers, Amanpour’s comparison is morally obscene and dripping with partisan framing. Syrian regime atrocities are not just atrocities because of the sheer scale of civilian casualties. They are atrocities because the Syrian regime targeted civilians, barrel bombing hospitals and dropping chemical weapons on civilian areas.

CNN may be under new leadership, but it will continue to appall as long as it allows such people as Christine Amanpour and Frederik Pleitgen to mold the minds of millions on the subject of Israel and the Palestinians. What would it take to convince David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, who has spoken proudly of his vision of CNN’s journalism “doing what journalists do best, which is to fight to tell the truth,” that Amanpour and Pleitgen have demonstrated that when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians they are unable to meet that standard, and both deserve to be treated as Fox treated Tucker Carlson – that is, they should be swiftly shown the door.

PAY ATTENTION: Biden, media ripped for ‘dropping the ball’ on border~Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., argues the Biden White House is aware of how ‘out of control’ the border has become.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton join Maria Bartiromo to discuss how their states are taking the lead on the border crisis.

The Biden admin doesn’t ‘want to face reality’: GOP rep.

Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., argues the Biden White House is aware of how 'out of control' the border has become.

MARK DICE: Trump’s CNN Town Hall is Causing Liberal Media Meltdown!

CNN hosted a Town Hall Event Wednesday night with Donald Trump in New Hampshire. Kaitlan Collins was the moderator, but she ended the event 20 minutes early because Trump mopped the floor with her and the audience was laughing at his jokes.

We Already Have a Disinformation Governance Board: Media Decides What You Can and Cannot Hear From RFK Jr.

We Already Have a Disinformation Governance Board: Media Decides What You Can and Cannot Hear From RFK Jr.

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/05/03/we-already-have-a-disinformation-governance-board-media-decides-what-you-can-and-cannot-hear-from-rfk-jr-n1692356;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Old Joe Biden’s handlers tried and failed to establish their own little Ministry of Truth, the Disinformation Governance Board, but they were likely not devastated by the ignominious failure of this initiative. That’s because they already have plenty of Disinformation Governance Boards: they’re known as “news outlets.” The mainstream media happily carries water for the establishment line, as we saw again this week with ABC’s censorship of its own interview with a Democrat presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., because his views on vaccines dissent from the establishment line.

Linsey Davis of ABC began by warning viewers not to support this man; she introduced Kennedy as “one of the biggest voices pushing anti-vaccine rhetoric, regularly distributing misinformation and disinformation about vaccines, which scientific and medical experts overwhelmingly say are safe and effective based on rigorous scientific studies.” The network then proceeded to cut Kennedy’s own words about the vaccines, not allowing him to make his case.

Numerous viewers found this disturbing. The problems with it were succinctly articulated by an unlikely voice: Bruce Pearl, Auburn University’s basketball coach, who tweeted Monday, “How is this Ok? How can the media simply edit or censor what a candidate has said about a topic, in this case, COVID, because ABC says that it’s dangerous or misinformation? Isn’t it our job to hear a candidate and determine that for ourselves?”

It is, or at least it was. Davis was upfront and unapologetic about the network’s censorship of the video, explaining that “during our conversation, Kennedy made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines.” She claimed that “data shows that the Covid-19 vaccine has prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths from the disease.” She detailed other supposedly false claims that Kennedy made and concluded, “We’ve used our editorial judgment in not including extended portions of that exchange in our interview.”

Yet Davis’ own claims were unproven at best. Kennedy’s website, The Defender, features an April 14 article with the headline, “45 Times as Many Deaths After COVID Shots in Just 2 Years Compared With All Flu Vaccine-Related Deaths Since 1990, Data Show.” The subtitle: “The authors of a peer-reviewed meta-analysis of national and international COVID-19 vaccine adverse events during the first two years of the rollout said their findings highlight the importance of reevaluating public health policies that promote universal mass injection and multiple boosters for all demographic groups.” Did Davis offer any specific refutation of these claims? Of course not. The guardians of acceptable opinion don’t have to defend themselves.

The same imperiousness showed through in the part of the interview that did air. According to the Daily Caller on Friday, Davis challenged Kennedy “over his claims that there is a correlation between vaccinations and autism.” Davis asserted that what Kennedy was saying had been “debunked.” Kennedy asked, “Wait a minute, who debunked it?” Davis replied, “We have not seen any kind of scientific connections from the CDC, the World Health Organization…” Kennedy said, “They’re captured agencies.” Davis didn’t bother to explain why this wasn’t so.

Related: I Love This Guy: RFK Jr. Slams Dems for Rigging the System

After the interview, Kennedy charged that what ABC did was actually illegal, noting that “47 USC 315 makes it illegal for TV networks to censor Presidential candidates.” He stated, “I’m happy to supply citations to support every statement I made during that exchange,” and naively added, “I’m certain that ABC’s decision to censor came as a shock to Linsey as well.” This is unlikely. Censorship is the hallmark of the contemporary Left.

In a certain sense, however, ABC’s censorship of Kennedy is encouraging. It demonstrates that Leftists are not at all confident that people will end up agreeing with them if they hear opposing viewpoints. But of course, once Leftists realize this, they turn to the forcible silencing of those opposing views. ABC demonstrated that it thinks the people who are unfortunate enough to watch the network are too stupid to think for themselves or evaluate truth claims on their own. It also showed that it thinks Leftist “news” outlets properly have the authority to determine what the American people see and hear and what they do not.

RFK Jr. is a lone voice on the Left standing against this trend. But will our moral superiors even allow Americans to hear what he says?

‘THE ULTIMATE PUNISHMENT’: DeSantis Signs Bill Allowing Death Penalty for Pedophiles~DeSANTIS UNLOADS ON LIB MEDIA: ‘They are Trying to GET YOU and USE YOU’

DeSANTIS: "In Florida, we believe it’s only appropriate that the worst of the worst crimes deserve the worst of the worst punishment."

DeSANTIS UNLOADS ON LIB MEDIA: 'They are Trying to GET YOU and USE YOU'

Do not give them the satisfaction that they are some type of neutral gatekeepers because they are not.”

New York Times Reporter a Stout Defender of Hamas

BY HUGH FITZGERALD

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/05/new-york-times-reporter-a-stout-defender-of-hamas;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The New York Times has a new reporter, even worse than those already covering Israel and the Palestinians. She is Raja Abdulrahim, who, when a college student, was helped by financial aid from CAIR, and she has remained loyal to that organization, an unindicted co-conspirator in the country’s largest terrorism financing trial. She has a special sympathy for Hamas, about which she has had nothing bad to say, and now that she works for the Times, her opinion pieces, masquerading as news reports, carry much greater weight. More on Abdulrahim’s sympathetic coverage of Hamas can be found here: “The New York Times’ Gift to Hamas,” by Tamar Sternthal, CAMERA, April 23, 2023:

In 2019 and again in 2022, Gaza residents launched the “We Want to Live” campaign, protesting Hamas corruption, taxes, and policies that condemn citizens to a life of poverty.

Whenever Hamas leaders want more money, they simply impose a new tax – on gasoline, on heating oil, on electricity, on food. Few dare to openly protest; on a few occasions when Gazans have been pushed to public protests, they have been clubbed into submission by the bullyboys of Hamas. Some protests dramatically show the depth of their immiseration: Gaza merchants were recently filmed dumping their produce as a protest of a heavy Hamas tax crushing Gazans struggling to make ends meet, making them unable to buy the products that the merchants had to sell.

But Hamas, it seems, can count on The New York Times’ Abdulrahim to be more compliant than ungrateful Gaza residents. Indeed, Abdulrahim’s 1200-plus word article highlighting the dire financial situation of the Gaza Strip does not mention Hamas once, a glaring omission sure to have brought great holiday cheer to the territory’s repressive regime (“As Gaza Celebrates Eid, a Gift for Women — and a Duty For Men,” in print April 21).

Since her university days, Abdulrahim was groomed to provide coverage favorable to Hamas. As a student sponsored by CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose executives were unindicted co-conspirators in the United States’ largest terror finance case in history), Abdulrahim defended anti-Israel terror groups, denying that Hamas and Hezbollah are terror organizations that have murdered innocent Israeli civilians. Now, as a Times reporter, she churns out propaganda on behalf of Palestinian terrorists, justifying CAIR’s long-ago investment in the young writer.

Two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Abdulrahim, then a student at the University of Florida, defended Hamas and Hezbollah in a letter to her campus newspaper, the Independent Florida Alligator, denying that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. The Sept. 26, 2001 letter stated: “I decided to respond to Guy Golan’s letter (‘Jews must help all Arab people’) from Monday’s Alligator because he erroneously refers to Hamas and Hizbollah as ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘terror organizations’ that have ‘murdered innocent Israeli civilians.’”

Her latest lengthy feature [in the New York Times] in service of Hamas, covers in great detail the coastal territory’s enduring custom of giving cash gifts to female relatives despite severe economic hardship. “Despite economic pain, Palestinian Muslims follow a costly annual custom,” was the subheadline in the international print edition.

About the bankrupting tradition, Abdulrahim explains:

To give the eidiya [the gift given as part of celebrating Eid], some men will go into debt. Others will wait until their wives get their eidiya from relatives before turning around and using that money to give the gifts to their other female relatives.

However bad one’s financial situation is, we have to go and give,” said Mr. Helles’ father, Hamid al-Abid Helles.

Abdulrahim stresses the wretched state of the impoverished people of Gaza, who don’t even have enough money to buy the presents they are required to give to female relatives at Eid. Some go into debt to pay for the Eidiya gifts they will give, while others wait until their own female relatives receive their Eid gifts, and then they re-purpose them, sending them as their Eid gifts to others. We are made to feel keenly the economic pain of the Gazans. But Abdulrahim has no intention of putting the blame for their poverty where it belongs: on the despotic regime of Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007.

Hamas has caused that impoverishment in two ways. First, the Hamas leaders have helped themselves to billions of dollars in aid money, which they then squirrel away abroad, in bank accounts, on stocks, or on real estate. Abdulrahim never raises the issue of Hamas’ corruption.

While Abdulrahim tactfully refrains from mentioning the word “Hamas,” she reserves blame for the coastal territory’s bleak financial situation solely on the Israeli-Egyptian blockade, writing:

These days, coming up with the money for the eidiya is especially onerous. The 16-year-blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt has undermined the living conditions of more than two million Palestinians and led an unemployment rate of nearly 50 percent, among the highest in the world.

Notably, even on the narrow issue of the blockade, Abdulrahim violates the journalistic imperative to report basic information, neglecting to include even one word about the reasons for the Israel-Egyptian restrictions. In contrast, this recent AP report, which cites the Israeli-Egyptian blockade only in passing, commendably informs: “A crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade imposed after Hamas violently wrested control of Gaza in 2007 has made it difficult for Hamas to smuggle Iranian-made rockets into the coastal enclave in recent years.”

The blockade not only prevented the smuggling by Hamas of Iranian-made rockets into the Strip, but prevented “dual-use” materials that could be used to build weapons, or terror tunnels, from entering Gaza. Abulrahim makes no mention of why Israel imposes its blockade; in her telling, it seems inexplicable and cruel.

More broadly, Abdulrahim’s pronounced pro-Hamas agenda does not leave any space to note Hamas’ responsibility for stifling the local economy by investing in terror infrastructure as opposed to economic development and social welfare.

In Gaza, Hamas built an entire network of underground tunnels (since destroyed by Israel), where its operatives and their weapons could remain hidden from the view of Israeli pilots. The men of Hamas were thus able, until recently, to move across the Strip through these tunnels without being observed. Now Israel has both located and destroyed that network of terror tunnels. These tunnels cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build, money that might have gone to schools, hospitals, and relief aid to the 65% of Gazans who now live below the poverty line. Abdulrahim has nothing to say about the spending choices Hamas has made, so scandalously indifferent to the wellbeing of Gazans.

Last May, the US Treasury Department revealed that Hamas’ Investment Office, which oversees a network of three Hamas financial facilitators and six companies, raised more than $500 million for the terror organization. “Hamas has generated vast sums of revenue through its secret investment portfolio while destabilizing Gaza, which is facing harsh living and economic conditions. Hamas maintains a violent agenda that harms both Israelis and Palestinians,” charged Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, Elizabeth Rosenberg.

All that money, coming to Hamas from rich Sunni Arab individuals in the Gulf, from the state of Qatar, and now, too, from Iran, which has chosen to overlook sectarian differences with Hamas for the greater good of the cause – the destruction of the Jewish state — adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Where does it all go? Much of it goes to the tens of thousands of members of Hamas, who live well amidst so much poverty. And while 60% of Gazans are unemployed, Hamas members and their relatives are assured of well-paid government sinecures. Abdulrahim ignores the economic benefits of membership in Hamas, a source of great resentment among the general population.

Meanwhile. the New Arab reported in July 2022 (“‘We Want to Live’: Gazans revive popular online campaign against Hamas“):

Residents in Gaza revived a three-year-old digital campaign against the Islamic Hamas movement, blaming it for the deteriorating living conditions in the territory over the years.

Under the hashtag “We Want To Live”, thousands of Gazans, including expatriates, joined the campaign which holds Hamas mainly responsible for the economic, political and social problems in the impoverished and besieged coastal enclave….

But Abdulrahim won’t touch these folks’ stories….

Hamas runs the Gaza Strip like a Mafia family. Those who are in the family – the “made men” of Hamas — get everything they want, for themselves and their relatives, while the general population endures a steady impoverishment. At the very top are the leaders, whose colossal corruption is a constant source of resentment and rage. Just two of those leaders, Khaled Meshaal and Mousa bin Marzouk, have each managed to accumulate fortunes of $2.5 billion. In addition, 600 “Hamas millionaires,” who have been allowed to take their more modest cuts from donors’ aid of between one and a few million dollars apiece, live in luxurious villas in the Strip.

Israel, meanwhile, is doing its best to improve the economic situation of Gazans. It has increased the number of work permits for Gazans from 7,000 to 17,000 in just two years and has now gone beyond even that number, providing more than 21,300 Gazans with work permits. And Jerusalem has made clear that if conditions are sufficiently peaceful, it is prepared to increase the number of such permits further still. Israel has similarly increased the work permits for Palestinians in the West Bank to more than 120,000. With these permits, Gazans can work in Israel and earn salaries seven times greater than what they can earn in Gaza – if that is, they can find work at all in the Strip. With these salaries, the Gazans working in Israel can support large numbers of people in their extended families. In fact, the only good economic news to report from Gaza is about an increase in the number of people who can now work in Israel.

Abdulrahim must know of the online protests against Hamas, and knows of the resentment and rage against Hamas felt by so many Gazans, but she fails to report on any of that. Hamas must be very pleased with Abdulrahim’s reporting. And so, it seems, is The New York Times.

Fox Commits Suicide

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/04/fox-commits-suicide;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Why would a network fire its top-rated show host? New in FrontPage:

Fox News intensified its spiral into irrelevance on Monday when it fired Tucker Carlson, the top-rated host on network television and a key figure of the resistance against the Leftist political and media establishment. On Wednesday, Carlson released a video explaining what happened. Without naming Fox, he explained what could possibly lead what is supposed to be a profit-making enterprise to cut off its chief source of profits.

Carlson began on an encouraging note: “One of the first things you realize, when you step outside the noise for a few days, is how many genuinely nice people there are in this country. Kind and decent people—people who really care about what’s true. And a bunch of hilarious people, also. A lot of those. It’s gotta be the majority of the population, even now. So that’s heartening.” Carlson didn’t say it directly, but this seemed to suggest that there are a lot of people out there who don’t buy the Left’s increasingly nonsensical view of the world and refuse to be intimidated into silence. That would be heartening indeed.

That said, Carlson noted that the really important things that are happening in the U.S. today are going virtually unnoticed and undiscussed amid a general fascination with minutiae and trivia: “The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are. They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years, we won’t even remember that we had them. Trust me, as someone who has participated. And then at the same time, and this is the amazing thing, the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all. War. Civil liberties. Emerging science. Demographic change. Corporate power. Natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues? It’s been a long time. Debates like that are not permitted in American media.”

Indeed they aren’t, and yet the country is being transformed before our eyes, with most people still not realizing exactly what is happening. Carlson suggested that this was by design: “Both political parties, and their donors, have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state. That’s a depressing realization, but it’s not permanent. Our current orthodoxies won’t last. They’re brain-dead. Nobody actually believes them. Hardly anyone’s life is improved by them. This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue. And so it won’t.”

Carlson still hadn’t mentioned Fox or his firing, but this was coming close. “Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state” carried the implication that Fox was falling into line with the rest of the establishment media, and silencing voices that spoke about the deeper and more important issues the nation faces today. As Carlson continued, this implication became stronger: “The people in charge know this; that’s why they’re hysterical and aggressive. They’re afraid. They’ve given up persuasion. They’re resorting to force. But it won’t work. When honest people say what’s true, calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time, the liars, who have been trying to silence them, shrink and they become weaker. That’s the iron law of the universe. True things prevail. Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some. And that’s enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope. See you soon.”

Fox has indeed begun to shrink and become weaker. Fox lost $800 million in market value after firing Carlson. If it continues to drift into becoming a pale copy of CNN or MSNBC, it will continue to hemorrhage viewers. Carlson, meanwhile, is being inundated with offers and will certainly make good on his promise to “see you soon.” While his firing at Fox was a setback for patriots and a victory for the Left, as he himself emphasized in his statement, the game isn’t over. The firing itself appears to have backfired. Carlson’s firing has awakened numerous people who were previously unaware of how much the media endeavors to control what we see and hear so that we only think that thoughts that they consider permissible.

Tucker Carlson has been fighting against that effort for years and will continue to do so. Fox, on the other hand, if it becomes just another establishment voice, will fade into oblivion.

FOX News Pushing Anti-Gun Propaganda in News Stories

FOX News Pushing Anti-Gun Propaganda in News Stories iStock-458985737

BY LEE WILLIAMS

SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2023/04/fox-news-pushing-anti-gun-propaganda-in-news-stories/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between FOX News and CNN or MSNBC, especially when the topic is guns, especially after a mass shooting.

For at least seven years, FOX News has been citing fake mass-shooting data from the Gun Violence Archive – an anti-gun nonprofit we debunked years ago – in its digital and broadcast news stories. The reason is simple. The GVA inflates body counts, sometimes by more than 1,000%, so its overblown data has become catnip for the legacy media, which is constantly seeking more sensational headlines and news stories.

How does the GVA get its inflated numbers? They created their own definition of a mass shooting, of course. When most Americans hear the term, they picture a madman stalking the halls of a school or a shopping mall, coldly murdering innocent victims. What does not come to mind are rival drug crews shooting it out in Chicago, a deranged husband murdering his entire family, or a law-abiding gun owner acting in self-defense.

Yet for the GVA, anytime four or more people are killed or even slightly wounded with a firearm, it’s labeled a mass shooting. For example, according to the FBI and its more conservative definition, there were 30 mass shootings in 2019. The GVA claims there were 417. Despite the obvious bad math, the legacy media, politicians, and the gun-ban industry treat GVA’s reports as gospel. The Biden-Harris Administration, The New York Times, National Public Radio, USA Today, The Trace, and a host of other outlets all cite GVA’s fictitious data and use its overly broad definition when reporting about mass shootings.

The GVA uses dubious sources to gather its mass-shooting data, too. In a 2021 interview with the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project, Mark Bryant, a retired computer analyst, and GVA’s executive director admitted his researchers gather data from law enforcement Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as media accounts, even though the media is notorious for getting the facts wrong after a mass shooting.

Despite these bad sources and bad math, FOX News continues to cite the GVA in their stories, most recently Monday, after a mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky.

Missing attribution

Bryant founded the GVA in 2013, and FOX News began citing them as a news source just a few years later.

The network has never fully disclosed the nature of the anti-gun nonprofit to its viewers, or how it gathers its information. Here is a list of how FOX News has attributed the GVA data in news stories from the past seven years:

  • 2016 – “using information collected by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan research group.”
  • 2017 – “based on data from the Gun Violence Archive, which catalogs reports of gun violence in the U.S.”
  • 2018 – “according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.”
  • 2019 – “according to data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive (GVA).”
  • 2020 – “according to the Gun Violence Archive.”
  • 2021 – “according to data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).”
  • 2022 – “The Gun Violence Archive defines mass shootings as ones where ‘4 or more [people are] shot or killed, not including the shooter.’”
  • February, 2023 – “according to the non-profit Gun Violence Archive.”
  • March, 2023 – “according to the non-profit Gun Violence Archive.”

No comment

Both Trace Gallagher, FOX News Anchor/Chief Breaking News Correspondent, and Brett Baier, Chief Political Anchor and Executive Editor of Special Report, have cited GVA data recently in news stories.

I reached out to both on Twitter, warning them their credibility was at risk. Neither Gallagher nor Baier responded.

 

Neither Irena Briganti, Senior Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications – of FOX News Media, nor Porter Berry, Executive Vice President, and Editor-in-Chief of FOX News Digital, responded to emails seeking their comments and an explanation as to why the network was pushing flawed and biased data in news stories.

Takeaways

I should disclose I am a regular FOX News viewer. I turn it on in the morning after my computer warms up and it stays on throughout my workday. I check the FOX News website at least hourly, and I cannot miss an episode of Tucker, who fearlessly holds the powerful accountable, or Gutfeld, who is always good for a laugh.

Still, what FOX News is doing is dead wrong. They are aiding and abetting the gun banners by repeatedly citing overblown mass shooting data, which can lead the uninformed into believing that “gun violence” – another term FOX should stop using – is far worse than it really is. FOX is the most-watched cable news network in the country.  Millions of people tune in to its programming. That could be a real game-changer if the network would start telling the truth rather than promulgating debunked lies.

In my humble opinion, FOX should immediately stop citing GVA data and issue a clarification and an apology to its viewers. That’s what’s required journalistically, and it’s also the right thing to do. I hope FOX’s editors and producers take corrective action quickly because America is watching.

This story is presented by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and wouldn’t be possible without you. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support more pro-gun stories like this.

About Lee Williams

Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.

Lee Williams

 

MSM Apologizes for ‘Misgendering’ Transgender School Shooter

MSM Apologizes for 'Misgendering' Transgender School Shooter

BY MATT MARGOLIS

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/03/28/msm-apologizes-for-misgendering-transgender-school-shooter-n1682087;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

There was some confusion on Monday regarding the identity of the shooter who killed six people, including three children, at a private Christian school near Nashville, Tenn. Local officials identified the shooter as 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale.

Nashville Police Chief John Drake identified her during a press conference as “a 28-year-old female that lived in the Nashville area,” and later confirmed that Hale “does identify as transgender, yes.”

Drake also confirmed that Hale was a former student at the school and that she had a manifesto.

Since early reports consistently referred to Hale using feminine pronouns before her transgender identity was confirmed, mainstream media outlets, which strive to use a person’s “preferred pronouns” in reporting, were unsure if Hale was a biological female who identified as a male or a biological male who identified as a female. Once the confusion was cleared up, and they realized they’d been using the “wrong pronouns,” some outlets felt compelled to post corrections/apologies.

“There was confusion later on Monday about the gender identity of the assailant in the Nashville shooting,” the New York Times tweeted. “Officials had used ‘she’ and ‘her’ to refer to the suspect, who, according to a social media post and a LinkedIn profile, appeared to identify as a man in recent months.”

The New York Times was not alone.

“Police on Monday afternoon said that the shooter was a transgender man,” USA Today tweeted. “Officials had initially misidentified the gender of the shooter.”

Following confirmation from authorities that Hale was transgender, CNN removed all references to the suspect being a woman from its initial reports and updated its story with a paragraph blaming Nashville police for misgendering Hale.

“Police have referred to Hale as the ‘female shooter’ and at an evening press conference added that Hale was transgender. When asked for clarification, a spokesperson told CNN Hale used ‘male pronouns’ on a social media profile.”

Think about this for a minute, Audrey Hale just murdered six people, including three children, and the media’s big concern is to absolve themselves of responsibility for “misgendering” Hale by blaming local officials for identifying Hale (correctly) as a female.

Reports indicate that Hale had multiple targets intended for her attack before she was shot and killed by police.

For our VIP Subscribers: How the Trans Movement Hurts Victims of Sexual Assault

This is hardly the first time the media has kowtowed to criminals this way. Last year, when actor Ezra Miller was accused of child trafficking and sexual abuse of a minor, the media similarly went to great lengths to avoid “misgendering” him because he identifies as “non-binary.” Variety magazine even altered a victim’s testimony to replace male pronouns with gender-neutral language.

It is extremely disconcerting to see the media placate the transgender community by prioritizing the avoidance of “misgendering” criminals. This misplaced emphasis is particularly troubling, given this latest tragedy that resulted in the loss of six innocent lives.

Arizona Supreme Court Finally Hands Kari Lake a Win, but the Media Doesn’t Want You to Know About It

Arizona Supreme Court Finally Hands Kari Lake a Win, but the Media Doesn't Want You to Know About It

BY KEVIN DOWNEY, JR

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2023/03/23/arizona-supreme-court-finally-hands-kari-lake-a-win-but-the-media-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-it-n1680767;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The Arizona Supreme Court handed GOP 2022 gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake a win and is forcing a lower court to look at voter signature verification issues.

The decision is a huge win for Lake, who has all but declared war on those she believes are involved in shady Arizona elections.

What does this decision mean?

Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel wrote that the court would decide whether or not Lake could prove her claim — that Maricopa County did not comply with Arizona election law regarding ballot tabulation. Lake must also prove that there were enough potentially fraudulent votes to affect the outcome of the election based on a “competent mathematical basis to conclude that the outcome would plausibly have been different, not simply an untethered assertion of uncertainty.”

Lake announced in January that she had three whistleblowers who claim 130,000 votes had been rejected because of bogus signatures, but “higher-ups” insisted they be counted.

These 130,000 votes are key because Democrat Katie Hobbs “won” by only 17,000 votes. If Lake can prove electoral skullduggery — which she claims she can — this may turn Arizona upside down, and will likely give credence to the “conspiracy theory” of election fraud in Arizona during the 2020 elections.

FACT-O-RAMA! Most of the Arizona election “problems” — such as malfunctioning voting machines — took place in Maricopa County, considered a Republican stronghold.

As expected, lefty Pravda news outlets are downplaying Lake’s victory.

Knowing full well that many people only read headlines, the liberal spin game is on. Left-wing websites are pushing the narrative that most of Lake’s lawsuit was dismissed. While true, they all “forgot” to mention the all-important decision that Lake now has a chance to put her money where her mouth is and prove mass voter fraud involving ballots with bogus signatures.

Let’s look at some lefty headlines:

Politico: Arizona court declines most of Kari Lake’s appeal over governor’s race

Time Magazine: Arizona Court Declines Most of Kari Lake’s Appeal Over Governor’s Race

L.A. Times: Arizona high court declines most of Kari Lake’s appeal over her loss in governor’s race

What happens if Lake can prove she was cheated? That remains a mystery. Hobbs has been in the governor’s seat for three months.

FREUDIAN SLIP-O-RAMA! Look at the “mistake” Newsweek made in its reporting about two LOWER courts decisions: 

Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Professor Paul Bender told Newsweek that there is little chance Lake will be successful in taking over the governor’s mansion. If nothing else, a Lake victory will show the nation that elections can be and are being stolen from We the People, even though the left has bent over backward to suggest that elections — at least after 2016 — are fraud-free.

FACT-O-RAMA! Liberals screeched that the 2016 election was stolen from them by “Trump-Russia collusion” but swear the elections in 2020 were the “most secure ever.” Then why did the Democrats fight to stop investigations into 2020 election fraud nationwide?

O.J. Simpson wasn’t convicted of stabbing two people to death, but at the end of the trial, we all knew he was a murderer.

Media Ignore Bank Records: “Biden Has Been Bought Off by the Chinese Communist Party”

Media Ignore Bank Records: “Biden Has Been Bought Off by the Chinese Communist Party”

BY SELWYN DUKE

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/media-ignore-bank-records-biden-has-been-bought-off-by-the-chinese-communist-party/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Barack Obama once reportedly said of Joe Biden, the man he worked with for eight years, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up.”

We can only imagine how much Biden could mess things up were he compromised via foreign cash payments. But we perhaps don’t have to imagine how much he has messed himself up in taking those payments — because he left a recently uncovered bank-record paper trail a mile long.

The evidence is so profound, mind you, that commentator Thomas Lifson writes, “Joe Biden has been bought off by the Chinese Communist Party.” This doesn’t mean the mainstream media will report on it, though.

In fact, in time most odd, the story about the Biden bank records was followed the very next day by the revelation that Donald Trump might be arrested for an apparently legal non-disclosure-agreement payment. Why, a cynic could almost think that the latter is meant to distract from the former.

Lifson reports on the Biden story:

Thanks to the efforts of [Representative] James Comer [R-Ky.], we already have bank records of $1 million flowing to Biden family members through a cutout named Rob Walker, shortly after Biden left office as VP.

There is no indication of any particular services performed for this treasure, nor is there any expertise among the recipients, who include the current POTUS’s son Hunter, his brother James, Hunter’s mistress-at-the time Hallie Biden (who is also his brother’s widow and Biden’s daughter-in-law) and an entity simply named “Biden.”

Rep. Comer, appearing on Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futures program on Fox News, said that this is “only the beginning.” There are “as many as 11 other deals” that are being examined by his committee.

“We’re gonna follow the money. We knew there was a money trail; we’ve spoken to enough people that were involved in the shady business games all around the world,” Comer also told Bartiromo. “Everything that we’ve subpoenaed thus far was accurate from what our whistleblowers were telling us, and we have a whole lot more information.”

The Washington Examiner provides more detail, writing:

The first deal refers to a report released by House Oversight showing Hallie Biden … received $35,000 from accounts tied to Hunter Biden’s associate Rob Walker, including $25,000 that appears to have originated from a Chinese company. The report cited bank records from Walker that were subpoenaed by the committee earlier this year.

The committee’s report showed the Chinese company State Energy HK Limited transferred $3 million to Robinson Walker LLC, an account belonging to Walker, two months after Joe Biden left the White House as vice president in 2017.

Hallie Biden received an initial payment of $10,000 from Walker’s account on Feb. 13, 2017, and another $25,000 on March 20, 2017, according to the report. Lawmakers wrote in the report that “Biden family members and their companies began receiving incremental payments over a period of approximately three months” following the initial payments.

“We don’t know what the Biden’s did in return for this money,” Comer said. “The lawyer said that it was a seed capital for business. We haven’t been able to find a business.”

Lifson points out that a “key moment” came six and a half minutes into Comer’s interview:

“The White House hasn’t been truthful about this from Day One. I don’t think the White House ever dreamed we would get bank records,” the congressman said. “I’ve got bad news for the White House: This is just the beginning. We’re gonna get a lot more bank records and they’re going to have to continue to backpedal and come up with some kind of reason why the Biden family has received millions and millions of dollars from our adversaries.” (Video below.)

Stating the obvious, Lifson also mentions that if a Republican officeholder — and especially President Trump — had been found to have taken oodles of cash from a geopolitical adversary he has been pandering to, it would be front-page news, and the word “treason” would figure prominently in it. Why, the Trump/Russia/collusion hoax was a media obsession for years, and an innocuous 2019 phone call Trump made to Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy was thought impeachment-worthy.

The kicker is that Biden was caught bragging (video below) at a January 2018 Council on Foreign Relations appearance about essentially the same thing Trump was impeached for: threatening to withhold aid to Ukraine for what might’ve been personal political gain.

If personal gain was the motivator, it’s not surprising that Biden might “mess things up” by boasting of his coercion, as self-exaltation is his wont.

Remember, though, that Biden’s son, Hunter, was paid $83,333 a month by Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings despite having no expertise whatsoever in that business. This brings us to why all these matters:

Is Joe Biden compromised by way of these foreign payments? Does Beijing have dirt on him that it uses to leverage favorable policy? Could he possibly be a Manchurian president?

And what of Ukraine? Could Biden’s total commitment to the nation’s war effort against Russia be influenced by dirt the Ukrainians might have on his family?

Perhaps this is unlikely; these are just thoughts. But this is why having a media that actually does its job — and exposes corrupt candidates so they’re not elected — matters.

Say what you will about Trump, but he lost money while in office and owing to his entry into politics in general. In contrast, Biden has parlayed political power into riches — even as our country gets poorer.

Drifting leftward: Fox News criticizes MassResistance for so-called “aggressive techniques” in pro-family activism.

SEE: https://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen4/23a/Fox-News-attacks-MassResistance/index.html;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Even worse: Fox now considers discredited Southern Poverty Law Center to be a legitimate news source! Trafficking in lies & distortions in their attacks.

But in the past, we were often featured on Fox news programs.

March 10, 2023
ALT TEXT
When Florida's governor confronted "Drag Queen" shows for children, Fox News used it as an excuse to attack MassResistance for our principled activism.

As the Fox News network continues to drift leftward (and pro-LGBT), MassResistance has gotten under their skin with our uncompromising pro-family activism!

Last month, the Fox News website published an article about how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was revoking the liquor license of a non-profit organization in Orlando for holding sexually provocative Drag Queen shows with children present.

ALT TEXT

Most of the article was reasonably unbiased and straightforward. (Fox is still willing to be concerned about Drag Queens being with children.) But the article concluded with something very odd. They put in a 2019 photo from California of a Drag Queen named "Pickle" reading to children in a public library. The photo’s caption was a nasty and dishonest attack on MassResistance for our efforts to help parents fight back against these shows. It had nothing to do with the content of the report.

ALT TEXT

The Fox article's caption of this photo is:

Drag queen "Pickle" reads from a book during the Drag Queen Story Hour program at the West Valley Regional Branch Library on July 26, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Drag Queen Story Hour is a program featuring drag queens reading stories to children at libraries, schools, and bookstores in cities across the nation. MassResistance, which has targeted Drag Queen Story Hour program in several cities, uses aggressive techniques to disrupt and generate conflict at city council meetings, pro-Trump demonstrations, and anti-LGBTQ protests. Some far-right Christian groups support the organization while the Southern Poverty Law Center considers them a hate group. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) (David McNew/Getty Images)

This is a typical leftist attack with complete disregard for the facts. The truth is:

  • MassResistance does not attempt to “disrupt and generate conflict” at government meetings or events. That is exactly what the Left does. We protest peacefully and speak the truth during scheduled comment periods. The Left can’t stand hearing the truth.
  • We certainly have never disrupted or generated conflict at pro-Trump demonstrations or “anti-LGBTQ protests.” Why would we? That is illogical, and a complete fabrication.
  • Fox News writes that “Some far-right groups support the organization.” Actually, a broad range of groups have said they admire our work. The term “far-right” is only a reflection of Fox’s leftist sensibilities, not mainstream America.

The Southern Poverty Law Center

But the most troubling and offensive part is Fox’s use of the odious Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as if it were a legitimate news source. The SPLC is itself a hate group and has been discredited across the spectrum as being a scam operation that targets conservatives. They gratuitously label hundreds of prominent conservative groups and Christian organizations as “hate groups” including Liberty Counsel, American Family Association, Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, Illinois Family Association, and many more, as well as MassResistance. The SPLC’s odious behavior is well-documented. Fox News' use of the SPLC says more about the degradation of their news organization than anything else.

Just who is "Pickle"? MassResistance did some research.

What kind of man dresses in women's clothes, calls himself "Pickle," and arranges to read gay-themed books to young children? Fox News wasn't interested. They obviously think this is normal behavior.

Back in 2019 our Texas MassResistance leader, Tracy Shannon, looked through Pickle's social media posts. She found lots of photos of him in "drag" with his arms around children; in various stages of undress; and posing with other homosexual men.

ALT TEXT
"Pickle" in his women's clothes (center) posing with his "friends."

Pickle wrote that when reading books to children, "Usually we stick to the sort of, distinctly overt queer themes. We figure, you know, we got them in the room may as well hit the nail over the head." All this reflects a disturbed person who should be nowhere near children.

In the old days, Fox loved us!

Before Fox began to cave on the LGBT issue, they considered us an important news source on this assault on children. For about a dozen years starting in the late 1990s, MassResistance’s Brian Camenker and others appeared on various Fox news shows to discuss the LGBT agenda in the schools, including: Hannity and Colmes, Fox and Friends, The O’Reilly Factor, America’s Newsroom with Megyn Kelly, and others.   

For example, in 2008 when we exposed the Boston Children’s Hospital “gender clinic” for children, Megyn Kelly interviewed Camenker at Fox’s headquarters in New York. And she was clearly pretty upset over it:

VIDEO: Fox News interviews MassResistance 5/21/2008 (3 min 30 sec)

(MassResistance was, in fact, the first pro-family organization to expose the looming transgender assault on children starting in 2007 on our radio show.) Sadly, Fox News simply let the subject drop after Kelly’s 2008 interview with Camenker.

In 2013, our friend Peter LaBarbera documented the further decline of Fox News on the LGBT issue. And it’s continued since then.

Final thoughts

It’s more important than ever for conservatives to hold the line, despite attacks from all directions.

Many people who don’t watch Fox News regularly haven’t realized how far the organization has slid on the “culture war” issues. Rupert Murdoch’s liberal sons, who now control Fox, are certainly the major source of that, as is the general direction of the people in the media. Even Tucker Carlson has a “gay” producer, so his show never critically looks at LGBT issues, except for the transgender assault on children topic that's currently in vogue among conservatives.

Fox News is still willing to appease their viewers by tolerating some conservative activists as on-air guests. But like the Left, they view serious, no-compromise pro-family activist organizations with hostility. Conservatives (especially those who are invited to appear on Fox News) need to push back. For a start, Fox News needs to be pressured to retract their libelous parroting of the SPLC’s “hate group” accusation.

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