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Skriven 2009-03-31 02:13:02 av Ross Sauer (1:123/789.0)
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=========================
Never consider a bullshit spreader like Floyd Brown down for the count,
people.

The Return of the Western Journalism Center

With a new smear artist at the helm in Floyd Brown, the WJC is armed and
ready to hurl discredited conspiracy theories at President Obama the
same way it attacked President Clinton when Joseph Farah ran it.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 3/31/2009

------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------

How is Barack Obama's birth certificate like Vince Foster?

To answer that, we must go back to the very beginning. After leaving the
Sacramento Union in 1991, Joseph Farah and former Union publisher James
Smith founded the Western Journalism Center -- under whose aegis Farah
later founded WorldNetDaily. (After WND was spun off as a for-profit
subsidiary in 1998, the WJC's share of of it was gradually transferred
over the years to Farah.)

As ConWebWatch has noted, Farah likes to peddle the story that the WJC
was founded "to fill a growing void in my industry's commitment to
investigative reporting" and that its "mission was not ideological." In
fact, the WJC didn't do all that much actual investigating; its main
function was to attack the Clinton administration by promoting
conspiracy theories surrounding the death of deputy White House counsel
Vince Foster -- it accepted $330,000 in donations from then-Clinton-
hater Richard Mellon Scaife toward that end, and other conservative
foundations contributed as well -- and it went dormant as soon as
Clinton left office.

Now that there's a Democrat in the Oval Office again, guess who's back?

The first hint of its resurrection came last August with a WorldNetDaily
commentary by Andrea Shea King touting Jerome Corsi's factually dubious
anti-Obama book, asserting that the book contains "legitimate questions
about Obama that the author meticulously documents in the book's nearly
700 footnotes." The article contained the tagline, "This column was
commissioned by the Western Journalism Center."

After undergoing a slight name modification -- it now prefers to call
itself the slightly more highfalutin'-sounding Western Center for
Journalism -- the WJC website is functional again, if only as a blog
linking to other articles trashing President Obama and the so-called
"liberal media" in general while offering no original commentary.
According to its archives, blog posts began sporadically last September,
but the blogging efforts have ramped up over the past few months. All
posts thus far are anonymous.

The WJC blog's "about" page touts its previous efforts at publicizing
conspiracy theories over the death of Vince Foster:

It first made its mark following the suspicious death of Deputy White
House Counsel Vincent Foster during the Clinton presidency. Officially
ruled a suicide by authorities, reporter Christopher Ruddy-with
assistance from the Center for Western Journalism-unearthed evidence
that shouted, "cover up!" No matter how hard they tried to conceal the
real cause of Foster's death, Ruddy's dogged investigations clearly
showed that the suicide ruling was phony.
Unmentioned is the simple fact that numerous investigations by people
who weren't rabid Clinton-haters (and even a few who arguably were, like
Kenneth Starr) discredited Ruddy's conclusions by repeatedly and
inconveniently ruling that Foster committed suicide. Also unmentioned is
the Scaife double-dealing: For much of the time he wrote about Foster,
Ruddy worked for the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, meaning
that Scaife was essentially paying the WJC to promote one of his own
reporters. (Ruddy then went on to found Newsmax with Scaife's financial
assistance.) As ConWebWatch noted, even Ann Coulter has dismissed
Ruddy's reporting on Foster, calling his 1997 book on it, "The Strange
Death of Vincent Foster," a "conservative hoax book."

The statement continues, and tells us who's guiding the WJC now:

Today the Center is lead [sic] by columnist and veteran broadcaster
Floyd Brown. The Western Center for Journalism is a vigorous watchdog
that keeps a check on government abuse and the media. The Center
believes strongly in open public debate. It also believes that informed
public debate requires quality journalism and reporting.
Yes, that Floyd Brown, who does indeed identify himself as WJC chairman
on his own website. He's a longtime right-wing hitman -- the guy behind
the notorious Willie Horton ad in 1988 -- who last year was peddling
smears of Barack Obama and falsely suggesting that Obama is a Muslim.

So change "vigorous" to "vicious" on that "about" page and you get a
more accurate idea of what we can look forward to from Brown's WJC.

Floyd BrownFurther, does anyone really believe that a smearmonger like
Brown is interested in "quality journalism "? As long as it attacks
Democrats in general and Obama in particular, that's good enough for
Brown.
Indeed, the WJC's first major anti-Obama salvo under Brown is exactly
what one would expect from an organization with a history of peddling
discredited claims: an enthusiastic embrace of the Obama birth
certificate conspiracy theory.

In a March 24 email sent to those on Newsmax's mailing list, Brown and
the WJC demonstrate WorldNetDaily-esque levels of obsession over the
conspiracy (capitalization and italics in original):

Is the biggest political crime in American history taking place right
before our eyes? Is the man in the White House INELIGIBLE, according to
the Constitution, to sit in the Oval Office... is he a FRAUD... a
USURPER?

Barack Hussein Obama could put the issue to rest right now by simply
releasing his ACTUAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE!

But he WON'T release his ACTUAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE. In fact, he is
actively RESISTING efforts to compel him to release his ACTUAL BIRTH
CERTIFICATE.

He's dug in his heels. He has teams of lawyers fighting efforts to get
him to release his ACTUAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE, while his underlings look
down their noses at the American people and call these legitimate
requests "garbage."

And the one pivotal question that those who attempt to dismiss the
controversy cannot answer is:

If Barack Hussein Obama has nothing to hide, what's the problem? The
more he resists, the more you have to wonder.

Meanwhile the liberal press is trying to drag this story into a dark
alley and bludgeon it to death.

It's time for you and me to weigh in and FORCE THE ISSUE! Let's call-out
the liberal media.

Let them know they must report this story and that there is nowhere to
run or hide.
The email goes on to insist that it's "Not Conspiracy Theories... Just
The Facts" -- then goes on to cite claims by WND columnist Janet Folger
Porter that even it admits "may be convoluted, but it is well-worth
examining" -- that Obama's visit to Pakistan in 1981 somehow proves he's
not an American citizen because "No record of Obama holding an American
passport prior to the one he received once becoming a U.S. senator has
been found." Porter, unsurprisingly, doesn't explain how she would know
this, since passport information is supposed to be confidential and
government contractors have been fired for improperly accessing it.

Porter insisted that Obama "couldn't get into Pakistan with a U.S.
passport," only with an Indonesian one, and "the only way you can get
one of those is if you are an Indonesian citizen." In fact, a 1981 New
York Times article indicates that "Tourists can obtain a free, 30-day
visa (necessary for Americans) at border crossings and airports," and an
August 1981 State Department travel advisory explains how Americans can
obtain visas for visiting Pakistan.

The email builds up to a full-frothing climax, which demolishes any
notion that Brown and the WJC care about honest journalism and exposes
the naked partisanship at the heart of the organization:

If Obama was in fact born in Kenya, the information may save the United
States from bankruptcy: Since Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20, stocks
have plummeted to catastrophic lows.

The Dow has fallen 20.4 percent. Investors have lost an estimated $2.5
trillion in market value.

All because an arrogant young man - obsessed with 19th century Marxism -
is trying to wreck the United States of America.

But suppose he isn't legally president after all? Then that fact would
surely nullify all his official acts, and acts he plans to put into
place, including the following:

-- His recent executive order rescinding the Mexico City Policy and 
committing U.S. taxpayers to fund abortion worldwide;

-- His upcoming appointments, including FCC members who might attempt to 
shut down conservative talk radio;

-- Any treaty he might sign that would weaken our defenses in an 
increasingly dangerous world;

-- And the signing of legislation giving amnesty to illegal aliens.

We need to act quickly before the entire nation is standing on a street
corner, rattling a tin cup.

Brown's rant is ultimately all about fundraising -- sprinkled throughout
the email are reminders that "donations to the Western Center for
Journalism are tax deductible."

In between all the ranting, Brown includes the airbrushed history of the
WJC, complete with the dubious assertion that "Ruddy's persistent and
dogged investigations eventually showed that the suicide ruling was
phony." It continues:

The Center is working to provide quality journalism and reporting by
exposing bias and falsehoods in the mainstream media so that true
information will be available.

The Western Center for Journalism website covers a wide variety of
topics from media bias, to media industry news, and articles about
online news sources and the impact of "citizen journalists."

In addition, the Center trains individuals to become "Citizen
Journalists" and bloggers. These individuals are provided with technical
training and practical advice on quality reporting and commentary.
There's no evidence on the WJC website that it actually does any of this
sort of training of "citizen journalists." And if the WJC actually cared
about "quality reporting and commentary," why didn't it investigate
Porter's bogus allegations on Obama's visit to Pakistan before copying
them to its email?

Another issue: Will the people behind this incarnation of the WJC other
than Brown ever publicly reveal themselves and disclose their funding?
After all, one way to be a credible "vigorous watchdog" -- if that's
what Brown and crew really want, instead of the partisan hacks they have
so far demonstrated themselves to be -- is to provide transparency.
We're guessing that Smith, who was last seen in 2005 getting ousted from
a reincarnation of the Sacramento Union (the most recent version, a
freebie biweekly tabloid, went kaput in early March), is still involved;
Farah likely isn't, at least not on a day-to-day basis, though it would
be easy to surmise that he has some input given WND's similar obsession
with (and willingness to lie about) Obama's birth certificate.

There's no reason to take the WJC seriously if it intends to operate in
the shadows. Of course, Floyd Brown's involvement and its conspiratorial
rantings are further reasons not to take it seriously.

If Brown's WJC refuses to offer "quality journalism" at home by avoiding
full transparency about its activities, personnel and funding, why
should anyone trust the garbage it hurls at Obama?

Right-wing haters like Brown and the WJC have decided that the birth
certificate will be to Obama as Farah and Ruddy decided Vince Foster was
to Clinton -- a crude conspiratorial cudgel around which to rally like-
minded haters.

But they don't seem to have noticed that the two are alike in another
way -- the WJC, then as now, will desperately cling to their
conspiracies long after actual facts have proven them wrong.

This site (c) Copyright 2000-09 Terry Krepel

--- Xnews/5.04.25
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