Media Matters Daily Summary

Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story. Quick Fact: RedState's Erickson again advances smears of Jennings In an attack against Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, RedState.com's Erick Erickson again advanced the repeatedly debunked falsehood that Jennings "encouraged a sexual relationship between a boy and an adult" and the smear that Jennings "supports NAMBLA." Read More Quick Fact: On Fox, Rove falsely suggests Obama is responsible for entire FY09 deficit Fox News contributor Karl Rove asserted, "Since President Obama came to office, the federal deficit has grown by $1.46 trillion," falsely suggesting that Obama is responsible for the entirety of the increased deficit. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office, which calculated that the government recorded a $1.4 trillion deficit in fiscal 2009, projected before Obama took office that the deficit for fiscal 2009 would be $1.2 trillion. Read More Wash. Post lets Palin mislead readers on climate change On December 9, The Washington Post published an op-ed by Sarah Palin calling on President Obama to boycott the Copenhagen conference, which advanced several debunked claims about what recently stolen emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia "reveal" about the scientific consensus on man-made climate change, including the claims that climate scientists "manipulated data to 'hide the decline' in global temperatures, and tried to silence their critics by preventing them from publishing in peer-reviewed journals." Palin also claimed that "we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes." Read More Special Report, Washington Times insinuations about DeParle's tenure at health care corporations undermined by facts On the December 8 broadcast of Fox News' Special Report, host Bret Baier cited a misleading Washington Times article to report that "five firms" for which White House Office for Health Reform director Nancy-Ann DeParle had previously worked "were accused of things such as overcharging Medicare and failing to warn patients of the dangers of their products." In fact, of the companies The Washington Times cited as having legal issues, two apparently do not involve formal allegations of wrongdoing and in one, all of the activities resulting in legal action occurred prior to DeParle's tenure with the company. Read More Gateway Pundit falsely suggests Jennings' organization handed out explicit safe-sex booklet to children The Gateway Pundit blog falsely suggested that the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, a group founded and formerly headed by Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, had distributed to children an explicit safe-sex booklet. In fact, a community health group -- not GLSEN itself -- reportedly said that it had mistakenly "left about 10 copies" of the booklet on an informational table it rented at a 2005 GLSEN conference at Brookline High School in Massachusetts; the group reportedly apologized for doing so; GLSEN stated that if it had known the booklets had been at the conference, it would have demanded they be removed; and the Brookline school superintendent reportedly said he believed no students had actually taken the book. Read More Hacked: Word of emails' theft quickly spread from blogs of climate-change skeptics to right-wing political blogs After hackers reportedly stole emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), word of the criminal breach and use of the emails to attempt to undermine the overwhelming consensus on global warming moved from the blogs of climate-change skeptics, where links to the emails were originally posted by anonymous commenters, to foreign media outlets and right-wing political blogs. Media Matters for America tracks the story's movement across the Internet, which took less than two days and culminated in a call by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) for an investigation into "the IPCC and on the United Nations on the way that they cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled." Read More Wash. Times continues its relentless campaign against Jennings In the latest of an obsessive series of editorials vilifying Department of Education official Kevin Jennings, The Washington Times again advanced discredited attacks to assert that Jennings is "unfit to serve as a senior presidential appointee". The editorial falsely claimed that Jennings encouraged a sexual relationship between a student and adult, attempted to tie Jennings to the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), and falsely suggested that Jennings supported a controversial workshop at a 2000 event sponsored by the group he founded, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Read More Fox abortion coverage again reveals blurred lines between network's "news," "editorial" programming On both Fox News' Happening Now - which the network states is a "news" program - and Fox & Friends -- which Fox News considers "editorial" programming -- Fox News hosts prompted Sen. Orrin Hatch to falsely claim that the amendment he co-sponsored with Sen. Ben Nelson is an attempt to "just put the Hyde amendment" -- which forbids the use of federal funds for abortions except in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest - into the Senate health care reform bill. In fact, the bill already explicitly prohibits the use of federal funds to provide coverage for abortions that are not allowed under the Hyde Amendment, and the Hatch/Nelson amendment would restrict funding of abortion beyond the Hyde restrictions; the Hatch interviews thus again demonstrate how Fox's "news" programs echo the same falsehoods and GOP talking points as their "editorial" programming. R ead More Human Events falsely claims EPA's Carlin a "scientist" who was "silenced," links him to CRU email "scandal" Human Events' Jed Babbin falsely claimed that Alan Carlin - who Babbin called a "leading EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] scientist" - had been "silenced" because "EPA regulators refused to consider" his report "rejecting the theory that emission of greenhouse gases causes global warming," and compared this "coverup" to the "scandal" over the purported contents of emails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). In fact, Carlin is an economist, not a scientist; both Carlin and climate scientists have pointed to "flaws" in his report; the EPA nonetheless reportedly stated that his report had been reviewed for use in their final report; and Carlin is indeed listed among the "authors and contributors" of that final report. Read More Breitbart's headline falsely claimed Gore "admit[ted]" temps cause CO2 increases but "not the other way around" A headline at Andrew Breitbart's website Breitbart.tv falsely claimed that Al Gore admitted that "temperatures cause CO2 to increase not other way around." In fact, in Gore's 2007 congressional testimony that Breitbart highlighted, Gore acknowledged that temperature increases have occasionally preceded CO2 increases, but also that "[t]he opposite has also been true in the past"; moreover, Breitbart omitted Gore's ensuing comments, which reflect the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, that "what's happening now is that we because of human action are overwhelming all of those cycles." Read More You can help support our work; become a volunteer media monitor, or donate to Media Matters for America.