Cursor.org

MediaTransparency.org sponsor

Media Transparency writers

Andrew J. Weaver &
Nicole Seibert
Andrew J. Weaver, et. al.
Bill Berkowitz
Bryan G. Pfeifer
Dave Johnson
David Domke
David Neiwert
David Rubenstein
Dennis Redovich
Eric Alterman
Hacked By 1nj3ct.org
Jerry Landay
Mark & Louise Zwick
Max Blumenthal
Michael Winship
Phil Wilayto
Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D.
Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D. and Lawrence H. McGaughey, Esq.
Rob Levine

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Bill Berkowitz
August 6, 2008

Defining Obama 24/7

Conservatives try to make presidential race about Democratic nominee, painting him as unreliable

As Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama trekked toward the final Democratic primaries, and it looked inevitable that Obama would be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, conservative pundits and cable television talk-show hosts, a host of blogs, and a number of newly formed organizations began intensifying their attacks on Obama, embarking on the early stages of one of Karl Rove's most effective political strategies: Directly attack the opponent's strengths. In the case of Obama, this means turning his very popularity into a negative, defining him as effete and more interested in celebrity before the Democrat can introduce and define himself to the larger nation.

Two new anti-Obama books, "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality" (Threshold Editions, August 2008) by Jerome Corsi -- the co-author of "Unfit for Command," the 2004 book that contained false attacks on Senator John Kerry's military service -- and "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate," by David Freddoso -- a former writer for the conservative weekly, Human Events and National Review Online staff reporter -- are aimed at taking the attacks to a mainstream audience.

In the preface of his book, Corsi, proving that there is life beyond Swiftboating, writes: "My intent in writing this book, as was the case in co-authoring 'Unfit for Command,' is to fully document all arguments and contentions I make, extensively footnoting all references, so readers can determine for themselves the truth and validity of the factual claims." According to Media Matters for America, just as Corsi's 2004 hit piece on Kerry "contain[ed] false and baseless attacks on ... Kerry's military service, [its review] "finds that 'Obama Nation' similarly contains numerous falsehoods" about Obama.

Released August 1 by Threshold Editions -- a division of Simon & Schuster -- Corsi's book was ranked #6 on Amazon.com's "Bestsellers" list by August 5. Interestingly, there seems to be a mini-review war at Amazon; as of noon on August 5, of the 97 reviews, 47 were five star ("Corsi has Written Another Winner") and 40 were one star ("Should be listed under Fiction") reviews.

At SimonSays.com, the website of Simon & Schuster -- the book is described as "thoroughly researched and documented" and "scrupulously sourced." "In this stunning and comprehensive new book, the reader will learn about:"

"Obama's extensive connections with Islam and radical politics, from his father and step-father's Islamic backgrounds, to his Communist and socialist mentors in Hawaii and Chicago, to his long-term and close associations with former Weather Underground heroes William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn -- associations much closer than heretofore revealed by the press."
"Barack and Michelle's 20-year-long religious affiliation with the black-liberation theology of former Trinity United Church of Christ Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons have always been steeped in a rage first expressed by Franz Fanon , Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, a rage that Corsi shows has deep meaning for Obama."
"Obama's continuing connections with Kenya, the homeland of his father, through his support for the candidacy of Raila Odinga, the radical socialist presidential contender who came to power amid Islamist violence and church burnings."
"Obama's involvement in the slum-landlord empire of the Chicago political fixer Tony Rezko, who helped to bankroll Obama's initial campaigns and to purchase of Barack and Michelle's dream-home property."
"The background and techniques of the Obama campaign's cult of personality, including the derivation of the words 'hope' and change."
"Obama's far-left domestic policy, his controversial votes on abortion, his history of opposition to the Second Amendment, his determination to raise capital-gains taxes, his impractical plan to achieve universal health care, and his radical plan to tax Americans to fund a global-poverty-reduction program."
"Obama's naïve, anti-war, anti-nuclear foreign-policy, predicated on the reduction of the military, the eradication of nuclear weapons and an overconfidence in the power of his personality, as if belief in change alone could somehow transform international politics, achieve nuclear-weapons disarmament and withdrawal from Iraq without adverse consequences, for us, for the Iraqis or for Israel."

Meanwhile, Regnery Publishing (website), one of the nation's largest conservative publishing houses and the publisher of "Unfit for Command," is touting Freddoso's "The Case Againsr Barack Obama" as "a comprehensive, factual look at Obama." An early Conservative Book Club review maintained: "In this shocking exposé, Freddoso demonstrates that despite the hype, Barack Obama doesn't represent 'change' or new thinking in American politics at all. In reality, he is a far-left liberal politician in the mold of Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore, Mike Dukakis, and Walter Mondale -- but with charm and political savvy that rivals that of Bill Clinton."

Freddoso sticks to the facts. He reveals an Obama who is no angel "delivered to us," but who is no devil either. He is no Manchurian candidate for Islam, but neither does he represent any new politics. Freddoso digs through the archives of Obama's time in the Illinois state senate, and reveals new and unexplored aspects of Obama's career --proving that there is less than meets the eye to Obama's airy rhetoric about "Change" and "Hope." The real Barack Obama certainly is a man of hope: hope to govern America from the far Left. Freddoso introduces you to the Obama who will further divide America along the same lines as it has been divided for decades.

Released August 4 -- Freddoso appeared on Fox's "Hannity & Colmes" program that evening for his first interview -- the book was ranked #11 in sales on Amazon by noon the following day.

In recent weeks, the McCain campaign has shifted from whining about Obama to directly attacking him.

Just a few weeks short of the party conventions, the cumulative effect of the attacks on Obama appear to be taking its toll. Inhabiting the so-called high ground while the McCain campaign runs ads attacking Obama's patriotism, experience and character has eaten into Obama's early lead in the polls. As of early August, a national Associated TV/Zogby International telephone poll of 1,011 likely voters conducted July 31-Aug. 1 found that McCain has taken a 42%-41% lead over Obama. While the margin is statistically insignificant, it is clear that the McCain negative campaign ads have at the very least piqued the public's interest.

A broad-based attack

While it may have seemed patently ridiculous that the anti-Obama crowd would use the wearing-of-the-turban-photo (taken during an Obama trip to Africa) to link the Senator to Islamic terrorism, it was a convenient jumping off point for the anti-Obama forces to launch their campaigns.

Widely distributed, the photo trumped the despicable anti-Obama e-mail that had been floating about the Internet for months, accusing him of everything from having been schooled in a Madrassa, to being a Muslim (not that there's anything wrong with it), and to taking his Senatorial oath of office with one hand on the Koran. For the most part, few conservatives -- with the possible exception of the Fox News Channel and Ann Coulter, who delights in calling the Senator "B. Hussein Obama" at every opportunity -- cared to carry the e-mail's message further.

Given that Obama has written two best-selling books, "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," which provided significant, and relatively unfiltered, details of his early life, including his admission of drug use, and "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream," his what-I-would-do-to-bring-the-country-together-if-I-was-president handbook, the public has become relatively familiar with his story.

Public familiarity, however, did not protect John Kerry -- a Senator with a long public record -- from being defined/vilified by the Republican Party's go-to-guys, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, when he ran for president in 2004.

By now, the wearing-of-the-Muslim-garb seems almost humorous compared to the current attacks underway, many of which have been launched by the McCain campaign itself.

Recently Human Events, a longtime conservative publication, announced that it was offering "Barack Obama Exposed" -- a report that purported to detail the many reasons Obama is not fit to be a Senator, let alone president -- by signing up for one of its "free email newsletters."

"Barack Obama Exposed" is a collection of articles written by an assortment of conservative voices including; Ann Coulter ("Jonathan Livingston Obama"), L. Brent Bozell III ("Youth Double Standard: Obama vs. Dubya"), Bill O'Reilly ("The Perils of Obama"), Ben Shapiro ("Iran: Praying for Obama"), Michelle Malkin ("Obama: Wasting His Own Breath").

Shortly after Obama's victory in Wisconsin, Cliff Kincaid accused the Illinois Senator of having "controversial socialist connections." Kincaid, the editor of Accuracy in Media, a right wing media watchdog group funded by conservative philanthropy, and a contributing editor to FamilySecurityMatters.org, recently charged that Obama was "an associate of a Chicago-based Marxist group with access to millions of labor union dollars and connections to expert political consultants, including a convicted swindler."

In a late-February column titled "Barack Obama is a Fake," Townhall.com columnist Ben Shapiro wrote that Obama is as fake as Pamela Anderson's assets -- the only difference between them is that Anderson's boobs have some weight. Shapiro maintained that Obama is "slicker than a Slip 'N Slide. He's more like a pedophilia-free Michael Jackson than a JFK -- he's a sort-of-black, sort-of-white guy made of plastic who lip-synchs empty lyrics to the screaming adoration of juveniles."

Shapiro was particularly incensed by Obama's "fainting" fans and his response to it: "At no less than six of Obama's recent rallies, fans have reportedly fainted. Those incidents were caught on video or audio. In each, Obama -- who never even thinks to put down the microphone or ask a campaign aide to take care of the matter -- narrates to the crowd as medical volunteers show up to minister to the stricken. In two of the videos, he picks up a bottle of water and offers it to the poor, overcome admirers."

Longtime conservative columnist Cal Thomas was kinder and gentler. He opined that Obama may be the right man for the country during peacetime, "but with crafty enemies seeking to destroy us, can we afford to make what might be a fatal mistake by electing someone upon whom too many of us gave projected, ungrounded hope?"

Now, the attacks are coming 24/7; many directly from the McCain campaign and others from conservative columnists, small conservative organizations, and a host of right wing websites and bloggers. Although Obama has talked about being "swiftboated" he has nonetheless tried to stay above the fray.

During a press conference the morning after Super Tuesday, Obama was asked about a Hillary Clinton's comment stating that she would not allow herself to be victimized by the type of Swift Boat-style attacks that were leveled against Kerry in 2004. Obama responded by saying that he had been vetted by his opponent (Hillary Clinton) during the primaries.

"I have to just respond by saying that the Clinton research operation is about as good as anybody's out there," he said. "I assure you that having engaged in a contest against them for the last year that they've pulled out all the stops. And you know I think what is absolutely true is whoever the Democratic nominee is the Republicans will go after them. The notion that somehow Senator Clinton is going to be immune from attack or there's not a whole dump truck they can't back up in a match between her and John McCain is just not true."

These days, the McCain campaign is backing up the dump truck at Obama's doorstep. It remains to be seen how he will handle the load.

Printer friendly

MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCH

no author
December 12, 2008

Media Matters Action Network acquires MediaTransparency.org from Cursor, Inc.

Today, Media Matters Action Network and Cursor, Inc. jointly announced the sale of Cursor, Inc.'s website MediaTansparency.org to Media Matters Action Network. Together they released the following statements:

“This sale is a win-win for both parties,” said Rob Levine, president of Cursor, Inc. “We've been trying for some time to institutionalize our organization and websites but have unfortunately been unable to raise the funds necessary to carry on our labor-intensive tasks. As the primary tool for tracking the funding of conservative organizations and their representatives who appear in the media, MediaTansparency.org is an excellent fit for Media Matters as they continue to expand their efforts to hold the media accountable.”

“MediaTransparency.org is a tremendous resource for anyone seeking to hold the media to task. We are thrilled to have this important and dynamic tool in our belt,” said Eric Burns, president of Media Matters Action Network. “Cursor, Inc., has done an outstanding job developing MediaTransparency.org, the most robust database of its kind available today. The wealth of data they have assembled on the funding behind conservative organizations is unparalleled.”

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
October 10, 2008

BornAliveTruth.org plays loose with the facts in targeting Obama

Head of anti-abortion group claims Obama 'supports infanticide'

Two weeks ago, BornAliveTruth.org, an anti-abortion group headed by Jill Stanek, launched a major attack on Sen. Barack Obama with a very personal and heart-wrenching television advertisement aimed at the voters in the toss-up states of New Mexico and Ohio. The ad, which according to Stanek cost the organization $338,000 to run -- in addition to what it is paying its public relations firm, CRC Public Relations -- was titled "The Gianna ad," and features Gianna Jesson, who is identified as an "Abortion Survivor."

"My name is Gianna Jesson, born 31 years ago after a failed abortion," Jesson states in the ad. "But if Barack Obama had his way, I wouldn't be here. Four times Barack Obama voted to oppose a law to protect babies left to die after failed abortions. Senator Obama, please support Born Alive Infant Protection. I'm living proof these babies have a right to live."

The ad, paid for by conservative philanthropist Raymond Ruddy, "singles out Obama's efforts while in the Illinois Senate to defeat the Born Alive Infants Protection Act," according to the Associated Press' Jim Kuhnhein. The AP story reported that "Obama and abortion rights forces in Illinois have said the bill would have undermined the landmark Supreme Court case on abortion, Roe v. Wade."

The BornAliveTruth spot has garnered a great deal of media attention for both Jesson and Stanek. In a late-September telephone interview, Stanek told Media Transparency that both she and Jesson have made a number of television and radio appearances. According to Stanek, in its first two weeks, the ad garnered more than 200,000 hits on YouTube and other websites that have made it available.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
September 26, 2008

PAC man

Our Country Deserves Better PAC aims to 'define' Obama's 'weaknesses' and make him 'an unacceptable choice to serve as our nation's next president and Commander in Chief'

He maintains that the newly-launched anti-Obama political action committee is not tied, nor related, to the campaign of Sen. John McCain and that it is not out to Swiftboat Sen. Barack Obama. The PAC intends to "define [his] weaknesses as a candidate, and thus make him an unacceptable choice to serve as our nation's next president and Commander in Chief." One of the group's earliest fundraising pitches, posted at the TownHall Spotlight, is titled "Barack Obama Sinks To A New Low." And among its ready-for-prime-time television advertisements are spots titled, "Obama Mocks America's Christian Heritage," "Obama's Patriotism Problems" and "Obama's Wrong Values."

He also pointed out that the PAC has clearly defined ethical lines that it will not cross when criticizing Obama.

Meet Joe Wierzbicki, the coordinator of Our Country Deserves Better PAC.

In the ever-expanding universe of Republican Party-sponsored/related groups attacking Sen. Barack Obama, add Our Country Deserves Better PAC to the list. Run by veteran California-based Republican Party conservative activists Sal Russo and Howard Kaloogian, Our Country Deserves Better PAC is a recently launched political action committee -- a committee organized to spend money for the election or defeat of a candidate -- that has several provocative pieces in the hopper.

In a series e-mail exchanges, PAC Coordinator Joe Wierzbicki told me that the Rancho Santa Marga, California-based entity hopes to "raise in excess of $1 million by Election Day," to run a series of anti-Obama television ads in as many as "ten states."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
September 3, 2008

Freedom's Watch smearing Democratic Congressional candidates with false robo-calls

'Shady soft money group' going after Senate and House seats

Early last month the Republican lobbying group Freedom's Watch (FW) launched a series of television and radio advertisements criticizing congressional Democrats for going on vacation instead of staying in Washington and dealing with energy legislation. One ad urged supporters to "Tell Mark Udall," the Colorado Democratic Congressman now running for a Senate seat, "to show up to work and start fixing Colorado's energy crisis."

Freedom's Watch, which made its first public appearance with a $15 million radio and television advertising campaign aimed at maintaining Congressional support for President Bush's Iraq troop "surge" [escalation] just prior to General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's Congressional appearances in late-August 2007, is now attacking Democrats in a number of House and Senate campaigns.

Tony Feather, a veteran of past GOP campaigns, recently signed on "to run" Freedom's Watch's "new Senate-focused wing," the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza recently reported. Feather, who will oversee the group's work in a number of Senate contests, was "intimately involved in the founding of Progress for America, a 527 group aligned with Republicans that spent millions on advertisements during the 2004 presidential election," the newspaper reported. Feather is a partner in Feather, Larson & Synhorst, "a do-it-all Republican consulting firm with strong ties to the Bush team."

In addition to its new focus on a handful of Senate seats, Freedom's Watch is commissioning misleading or false robo-calls in dozens of Congressional races. The House campaign is being led by Carl Forti, the former communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee. In early July, PolitickerOH.com reported that FW was running advertisements / robo calls "against nine state lawmakers in eight different states." According to Kyle Kutuchief, writing for The Point, the organization "has been making robo-calls into the 16th Congressional District falsely attacking Democratic Candidate John Boccieri for voting for a gas tax in the State of Ohio in 2003."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
August 20, 2008

Republicans resurrecting Jeremiah Wright as campaign issue

Conservative philanthropy funded Media Research Center astonishingly claims news networks held collective tongues on the Wright affair

In 1962, two years after losing the presidency to John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon ran and lost the governor's race in California. At a post-election press conference, Nixon famously told reporters that they wouldn't "have Richard Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." It wasn't. He won the presidency in 1968, escalated the Vietnam War, was re-elected in 1972, and two years later he was forced to resign in disgrace over the Watergate Affair.

These days, one can easily imagine that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright might wish -- in his heart of hearts -- that the press, the cable news networks, conservative pundits, the headline writers and Republican Party operatives didn't have Jeremiah Wright "to kick around any more."

Thanks to conservative philanthropy and the Republican echo machine, the story about the relationship between the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Senator Barack Obama will be with us through Election Day and beyond. Whether Obama wins or loses, there will be much post-election analysis about how much the Wright Affair hurt the campaign.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
August 14, 2008

David Bossie's big play

It won't be a post-Labor Day blockbuster or win critical acclaim, but Bossie's Citizens United is rolling out 'Hype: The Obama Effect,' an anti-Obama documentary that aims to make waves

Regnery has published a major anti-Obama book -- David Freddoso's "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate" -- and 2004 Swiftboater Jerome Corsi has written his -- "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality." All sorts of folks are peddling anti-Obama t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers and more. Now it's David Bossie's turn for a big politico/merchandizing play.

Although still a relatively young man, Bossie, the president of Citizens United, has been a political mudslinger for a nearly two decades. He gained some national notoriety in the 1990s when he was relentless in his pursuit of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and later that decade was fired from his position as an investigator for a House committee. Earlier this year, Bossie "took out classified newspaper ads in Columbia University's newspaper and the Chicago Tribune ... searching for [Obama's] ... term paper," supposedly a thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament, Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer, reported in late July. Although he couldn't find it, he wrote in an e-mail to NBC News that "A thesis entitled Nuclear Disarmament, written at the height of The Cold War in 1983, might shed some light upon what Barack Obama thought about our most pressing foreign policy issue for 40-plus years (U.S.-Soviet Relations)."

Bossie's biggest play this election season is the production of an anti-Obama film: On the eve of the Democratic Party convention in Denver, Citizens United Productions will premiere its full-length documentary, "Hype: The Obama Effect." The film is unlikely to be a blockbuster, it thus far hasn't generated the buzz Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" did before its release, and will surely not be hitting the festival circuit. In fact, thus far, there are no movie houses listed under the "Theater" section of the hypemovie.com website, scheduled to show the film.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
August 1, 2008

Anti-gay politics continues to drive Don Wildmon's American Family Association

California's Proposition 8 draws big-buck supporters, while Wildmon declares that outcome of 'culture wars' depends on turning back gay marriage

Two different -- yet ultimately interlinked -- issues relating to the "homosexual agenda" are agitating the folks at the Tupelo, Mississippi-based headquarters of Donald Wildmon's American Family Association (AFA) these days. One is your basic AFA-sponsored boycott; the other, according to Wildmon, will determine the final outcome of America's "culture wars."

Wildmon is simultaneously leading an effort to boycott the fast food giant McDonald's, and marshaling the troops in support of Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative that would reverse the state's Supreme Court recent decision in support of gay marriage.

Why McDonalds? A short time back, the home of the Hamburgler donated $20,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) in exchange for membership in the NGLCC and a seat on the group's board of directors. That outraged Wildmon, the undisputed kingpin of calling boycotts against companies that might have a scent of gay-friendliness.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
July 11, 2008

A president desperately seeking a legacy

George W. Bush goes back to touting 'compassionate conservatism' and the 'successes' of his faith-based initiative

In 2004, at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, President Bush's contribution to the evening's entertainment was his narration of a slide show that pictured him looking around the Oval Office for weapons of mass destruction. In one of the shots, Bush is looking under some furniture and remarked: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere."

Flash forward four years: At this year's dinner, Bush played highlights from a number of his previous appearances. In a wise decision, he left the WMD skit -- which was roundly criticized for making fun of the issue that was the driving force behind the invasion of Iraq, which has led to deaths of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis -- out of the highlight package.

These days, Bush is no longer concerned about whether WMD existed in Iraq.

Instead, he is desperately seeking a legacy; anything that he can latch onto that might trump the fact that a majority of Americans believe that he will go down as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. His search for a legacy could prove as futile as the search for WMD. At this point, it appears that it has landed him back he started a week after his inauguration in 2001; touting his faith-based initiative and "compassionate conservatism."

On January 29, 2001, a little over a week after the start of his first term, Bush, surrounded by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clergy, unveiled his faith-based initiative by issuing an executive order creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI). He followed that up with another executive order that eventually established Faith-Based and Community offices at 11 federal agencies.

While Bush's faith-based initiative has spread its tentacles to a host of federal, state and local government agencies -- 35 governors and more than 70 mayors, both Democratic and Republican, have established programs modeled after the federal faith-based and community initiatives program – Congress has never even come close to passing legislation legally enacting it.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
June 24, 2008

'Battling for America's Soul'

The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property leaps headlong into the showdown over same-sex marriage in California

They've been around for more than 30 years; trace their roots to a Brazilian anti-communist dissident Catholic; wear colorful outfits during their protests on college campuses; and apparently have enough spare change to fund three 4,000+ word simultaneously-placed advertisements in three national dailies.

Of all the conservative organizations that will be getting involved in the same-sex marriage showdown in California, one of the least known is a Catholic outfit called the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP). TPF isn't a fly-by-night letter-head-only group that suddenly formed to get in on what promises to be one heck of a battle.

On June 5, in response to the California Supreme Court's ruling in support of same-sex marriage, TPF issued a press release announcing the publication of two-page advertisements critical of the decision, appearing "simultaneously" in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Times, costing the group perhaps as much as three-quarters of a million dollars.

The ads, which explicitly called for civil disobedience, were titled "Battling for America's Soul: How Homosexual 'Marriage' Threatens Our Nation and Faith -- the TFP Urges Lawful and Conscientious Resistance."

Read the full report >

View All Original Reseach >

More stories by Bill Berkowitz

Media Transparency writers

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Defining Obama 24/7

Conservatives try to make presidential race about Democratic nominee, painting him as unreliable

A broad-based attack

MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCH