ConWeb Artists
AIM Column | By Bethany Stotts | August 12, 2008
Perhaps Krepel didn’t actually listen to Pastor Hagee’s speech?
At the left-wing blog, ConWebWatch, dedicated to “monitoring” conservative news websites, Terry Krepel has doggedly been criticizing Accuracy in Media.
Krepel also serves as a senior editor at Media Matters the liberal media watchdog “dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”
But if Krepel’s critique of this correspondent’s August 1st article, “McCain’s Reverend Wright?,” is any indication, Krepel’s criticisms of AIM are largely misplaced.
In “McCain’s Reverend Wright,” this correspondent discussed how news outlets were associating Pastor John Hagee with John McCain (and, specifically, the McCain campaign), even after the two men publicly distanced themselves from each other. Some media outlets even go so far as to call Pastor John Hagee McCain’s own Reverend Jeremiah Wright. “This election may well come down to which candidate can better control his crazy pastors—and after yesterday’s weirdness at the convention center, McCain has fallen behind by about two cubits,” Dana Milbank wrote for the Washington Post.
Apparently Krepel takes exception to what the AIM article didn’t discuss: that Pastor Hagee was supposedly “retracting” his apologies for his controversial statements on Hurricane Katrina and the Catholic Church. “Stotts ignores that Hagee’s new apparent defense of his inflammatory remarks—and more specifically, his claim that his critics ‘do not understand the Bible view’—seems to contradict his previous retraction of them,” Krepel writes.
The author then goes on to quote Pastor Hagee’s apology about his comments connecting Hurricane Katrina with God’s wrath on homosexuals.
Krepel fabricates a sense of contradiction, underplaying Hagee’s consistent stance on his belief in God’s sovereignty.
Hagee issued a statement in May, saying that
“As a believing Christian, I see the hand of God in everything that happens here on earth, both the blessings and the curses...But ultimately neither I nor any other person can know the mind of God concerning Hurricane Katrina. I should not have suggested otherwise. No matter what the cause of the storm, my heart goes out to all who suffered in this terrible tragedy. There but for the grace of God go any one of us.”
In his column, Krepel omits the first sentence and then ends at “otherwise,” heightening the contrast with the next sentence.
Pastor Hagee said at the 2008 CUFI summit that “It is deeply troubling to pick up a newspaper and read sweeping condemnations of things you did in fact say but which are not new or controversial to those who believe in an all-powerful God who is sovereign and intervenes in human history.”
In both instances, Pastor Hagee was consistent in his assertions about God’s sovereignty and control over human events. But Krepel insists on finding inconsistencies; he also asserts that Hagee is retracting his apology to Catholic League President Bill Donohue.
“Is Hagee now un-retracting his retractions and standing by his attacks on Catholics and gays once again? It appears so. Why didn't Stotts notice that?,” writes Krepel. If Pastor Hagee were intent on “attacking” Catholics, it wouldn’t make much sense to invite them to his Summit. During the banquet Pastor Hagee recognized Bill Donohue and two other Catholic leaders as his honored guests. He had the following to say about the conflict:
“As some in the media sought to play us one against the other, we did something the media was not expecting—we acted like Christians. We sat down together, brother to brother, and talked. As a result of those meetings, we developed a friendship, we developed a greater understanding, and now Christians United for Israel has formed a new alliance. We’re honored to have with us tonight some of the most important Catholic lay leaders in America and they have brought many of their friends with them.”
Perhaps Krepel didn’t actually listen to Pastor Hagee’s speech?
Hagee went on to say that “We have promised that in the future we’re going to open the borders of our tent and bring the Catholics who are pro-Israel to this event and celebrate our union because we are brothers and sisters in the faith.” So Hagee is not only not “attacking” Catholics, he is trying to forge an alliance with them.
Krepel’s column is most dishonest in that not only does he focus on unrelated—and unfounded—topics, but criticizes this correspondent for getting distracted by the very purpose of my original article. “Perhaps because she was too busy trying to decouple Hagee from McCain, even though prominent McCain supporter Joe Lieberman was a featured speaker at Hagee’s CUFI event,” writes Krepel. Mr. Krepel thereby shows that he either failed to grasp the original message of the article or intends to mislead his audience about AIM’s reporting.
He writes,
“Would Stotts let Obama get away with Barack Obama, for instance, claiming that a close adviser who, say, spoke at an event that also featured Rev. Jeremiah Wright was acting "independent" from him? We suspect not.”
Regardless of the arrogance communicated by his claim to know how a person he has never met would act in a hypothetical situation, Krepel’s argument is logically inconsistent.
Barack Obama was married and baptized by Reverend Wright, attended his church for two decades, and told MSNBC in March that Reverend Wright “helped bring me to Jesus, helped bring me to church.” The public would not therefore need to look to the actions of an Obama representative to understand the candidate’s relationship with Rev. Wright, as the media did with the McCain campaign. Obama’s actions speak for themselves.
Krepel’s comments on this article makes it clear that his “media critiques” focus more on fitting Accuracy in Media’s reporting to a preconceived ideological model rather than the dissemination of truthful and accurate information. By focusing on a 200 word section of a 1,300 word article in order to advance his own theories on Pastor Hagee, Krepel places AIM’s reporting in an ill-fitted mold and misleads his own readership.
Bethany Stotts is a Staff Writer for Accuracy in Academia, and can be contacted at
9 Comments | Post a Comment
One is reminded of the slice and dice of the “100 year war” remarks (I believe McCain originally stated “50 years,” but accepted a shouted suggestion about 100 years), but *only* if our troops were safe and secure. This last was cut out.
We’ve been in Germany and Japan since WW II, and in S Korea since the Korean War (which is ongoing, although this consists largely of “talks” going on somewhere), but longer than 50 years in all 3 cases. This was the point of McCain’s remarks. He was obviously not talking about a 100-year shooting war, but the same thing we’ve done in Germany, S Korea, and Japan.
Similarly, the “first Gulf War” never ended as Saddam was called upon to follow 16 or 17 UN resolutions, which he never did. Our presence in Iraq is simply a continuation of the “first Gulf War.” Bush didn’t “lie us into war”: we were still at war due to Saddam’s intransigence.
The particular strain of political partisanship that emerged in the mid-‘90s has grown into petty and unceasing ideological warfare between “left” and “right” - - and the vast majority of moderate and middle-of-the-road American citizens have consequently been left to fend or themselves - - while partisanship destroys our government and turns the formerly “United” States into the Divided States.
Terry Krepel has responded to this article at conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog. It’s where you can find the original ConWebWatch item Ms. Stotts is criticizing here (but, for some reason, did not feel the need to provide a link for so her readers could judge for themselves).
We’d supply an actual clickable link, but the comment system blocks them as spam that needs to be moderated. Copy and paste the above URL into your browser and click on “Accuracy in Media” in the lefthand bar for the quickest access to it.
I actually read through some of the posts. One hit upon Obama’s refusal to put his hand over his heart during the playing of the National Anthem, which I imagine others have seen several times, as have I. If memory serves, Hillary and Bill Richardson have their hands over their hearts, while Obama’s arms hang loose, his hands folded “over his genitals.” (Maybe he didn’t like the rendition of the National Anthem, which was pretty awful.)
ConWeb notes: Perhaps AIM could share with its readers the rationale for putting such a hateful, inaccurate, genital-obsessed piece of crap on its website.
Uh, because this actually happened and the picture of same is familiar (verifiable)? I wouldn’t have characterized Obama’s position (or an accurate description thereof) as “genital obsessed,” but maybe that’s just me. But any who have seen this picture might accurately describe it as such.
Google on: Obama refuses to place hand over heart during National Anthem (I did.)
This will bring up the video of this incident on YouTube. Seeing is believing. Believing everything you read is much less demanding.
Here’s the picture in question next to the “Bearack Obama” teddy bear that recently went for US $2002.00 on ebay. Hilarious!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2057630/posts?page=75#75
I read one time: Never lie about something that is really easy to check.
With Google, that’s about everything! (Of course, both sides of an argument might be presented, but this is one picture that says a lot, if not a thousand words.)
Curious: while the MSM is experiencing falling circulation figures, they continue to push Obama… and the American public is catching on. They’re basically paying to propagandize! Where’s the return on investment in that?
;>)
voxoreason: That “genital-obsessed” column AIM reprinted on July 25, by Olavo de Carvalho, was, in fact, a smear piece full of demonstrably false claims and distortions about Obama and also called him a sociopath. Shouldn’t AIM have standards that reflect, you know, accuracy, rather than any random right-wing whackjob’s rantings?
Or does AIM believe it must do whatever it takes, including, abandoning any standard of accuracy, in order to stop Obama? If it considers de Carvalho’s rant to be acceptable for publication, why trust Cliff Kincaid?
Terry K
I exposed a “demonstrably false” lie and provided the info necessary for anyone with a double-digit IQ to VERIFY IT FOR THEMSELVES. Is there an acceptable number of lies that are okay for liberal liars? (I simply don’t have the time to check out all of your propaganda.) Or do you simply count on the ignorance of American voters? (Actually, I think this latter would be a good strategy. It’s worked pretty well up to this point, but seems to be failing lately as voters start to pay attention. Be assured: I will vote.)
I stand by my remarks. And that rendition of the National Anthem really did suck out loud. They could probably have hired a technically-gifted singer for what John Edwards was paying his ho, even without the child support!
But just to show that there are no hard feelings:
What’s black and brown and would look good on Obama?
A hungry rottweiler.
;>)
If I can be of further assistance, please let me know.
August 13 at 9:11 am | #1 | Link
Conweb is another example of the disinformation campsign that the left continues to do on the right by taking one word, sentence, paragraph, or article piece out context to throw their moral relatism in.