A Jihad Watch reader recently called my attention to “Media Bias/Fact Check,” which claims to be “The Most Comprehensive Media Bias Resource,” but is actually yet another viciously biased hard-Left site that tries to discredit all who dissent from their agenda by falsely claiming that they’re presenting inaccurate information.
Predictably, Media Bias/Fact Check finds Jihad Watch to be a “Questionable Source.” It claims that “in general, all stories on Jihad Watch serve as propaganda to frame Muslims negatively, while portraying Christians/Americans as persecuted and in danger.” Anyone who actually reads Jihad Watch will know that we cover jihad activity around the world, not just in the U.S. and against Christians, but there is a reason behind Media Bias/Fact Check’s inaccurate claim here. It goes on to say: “The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled Robert Spencer a White Nationalist, while the Anti-Defamation League has done the same.”
Note that this site devoted to media accuracy has the same link in that sentence for both the SPLC and the ADL. It’s an SPLC link; the ADL doesn’t like me at all, but to my knowledge has never defamed me as a white nationalist. The SPLC’s “evidence” that I’m a white nationalist is based solely on an article I wrote in 2011, defending Western civilization. The article simply criticized multiculturalism. It did not discuss race at all. The SPLC states: “Spencer’s piece is punctuated with a recommended reading list that might have been taken from the bookshelf of John Tanton, the racist architect of the modern nativist movement.” I had nothing to do with the compilation of that reading list, and did not see it before the piece was published. None of the books on it are genuinely racist; they’re simply against mass migration of non-Europeans into Europe, the devastating effects of which we are seeing now.
The SPLC article also refers to “Anthony M. Esolen’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, which was published by the white nationalist Regnery Press…” Regnery Publishing is not “white nationalist.” It is a leading mainstream conservative publishing house that has published books by numerous mainstream conservative figures, including David Horowitz, Dinesh D’Souza, Ann Coulter, etc.
I saw on Media Bias an address to contact them and ask for corrections, and sent them this:
To the editor:
I challenge you to produce evidence of any inaccurate story that we have ever posted at Jihad Watch and not corrected or taken down once we learned it was not accurate.
I further challenge you to produce evidence of your claim that I am a white nationalist.
These claims are pure libel.
Robert Spencer
Director
Jihad Watch
Of course I got no answer. Sites such as Media Bias/Fact Check aren’t genuinely interested in accuracy at all. They’re just defamation factories for the hard Left.
The Media Bias/Fact Check site does contain some examples of stories at Jihad Watch it claims are false:
A factual search reveals numerous failed fact checks by IFCN fact checkers.
- Sweden has begun referring to “Christmas” as “Winter Celebration” in to appease their Muslim population. – FALSE
- Maine’s House Democrats voted to allow female genital mutilation. – FALSE
- Somali Muslim refugees “took over” the small town of Shelbyville, Tennessee and targeted local Christians with “violent Islamic crimes”. – FALSE
- “House Democrats strike to implement Sharia law!!” – PANTS ON FIRE
Let’s take these in order.
1. The Jihad Watch post makes it quite clear that it was not “Sweden,” as Snopes has it, but “one of Sweden’s leading regional dailies” that referred to Christmas as the Winter Celebration. And it did. Snopes sets up a straw man by claiming that we represented this as Swedish government policy, which we never did.
2. Snopes’ false claims about the supposed inaccuracy of the Jihad Watch post are refuted here.
3. Most of the Snopes article is claiming that Freedom Daily, not Jihad Watch, got a story wrong. Freedom Daily quotes from this Jihad Watch post. All the alleged inaccuracies that Snopes points out are in the Freedom Daily article, not the one from Jihad Watch.
4. There is no mention of or link to Jihad Watch in the story linked from Politifact. The story does link an article I wrote at FrontPage, saying: “Some websites said the resolution would equate hate speech with violence.” This is presented at PolitiFact as self-evidently false. It is not false. It has become much clearer in the last few years that equating “hate speech” with violence is a central part of the Left’s agenda.
Does a propaganda site such as Media Bias/Fact Check actually sway any of the undecided to their side? Only if they’re terminally uninformed. But there are many such people in America today, and thanks to the Left’s stranglehold on education, more all the time.
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