Loesch Not Aware that Opinions Are Expressed on Editorial Pages

You just can't get anything past that Dana Loesch. The "media critic" who purportedly runs the site Big Journalism yesterday brilliantly unveiled a New York Times employee expressing his personal opinion!! Here's the tweet in question:



Loesch described this as "Bias in the media" and titled her piece "The Totally Objective New York Times Weighs In On GOP Response." The only problem with her astute observation is that Andrew Rosenthal is not a reporter, but the Editorial Page Editor at the New York Times. You know, the place in the newspaper where opinions are expressed.

I hope nobody tells Loesch that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch also has an editorial page or we'll be in for months worth of brilliant media criticism.

h/t to Eric Boehlert and Simon Maloy.

Dana Loesch Reminds Us That Right-Wing Bloggers Lie Every Day

Check out this tweet from Dana Loesch:


This claim is absolutely, categorically false. Media Matters, to their credit, would not touch this story with a ten-foot pole. Eric Boehlert mentioned it in a post, but the post did not claim that the story was "fake;" rather, it criticized CNN for allowing Breitbart on the network after he has been discredited multiple times. And, for the record, Breitbart did not fail to hit Boehlert's low expectations for him: Breitbart explicitly cited a source that he later admitted was not credible to make the claim that Congressman Weiner "had relationships" with "quite young girls." Relying on unvetted information from completely untrustworthy sources is not the kind of garbage a respectable news organization should entertain.

So yeah, Loesch lied again, or at least did not bother to check her facts. Keep that in mind as she spends the next week lecturing people about how principled Breitbart bloggers are.

Looks Like Dana Loesch And Jim Hoft Owe Eric Boehlert An Apology

Dana Loesch and Jim Gateway Pundit Hoft both got the vapors in recent days claiming that Media Matters Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert was "laughing at a Fox News reporter getting assaulted." First of all, they both took Boehlert's quotes out of context, since he actually made clear both in the interview they cite and online that it's not OK to hit reporters:

no one should be hitting any reporters or anything like that.

What Boehlert was laughing at was the fact that Fox was acting surprised that pro-union protesters might not like Fox after weeks (or arguably years) of dishonest anti-union reporting.

But second, and far more hilariously, is that a new video appears to show that the Fox News reporter Mike Tobin was lying when he claimed he was punched in the arm by protesters. He actually got the "shoulder tap of death" after he pushed a protester's hand away:


So I guess we can expect Loesch and Hoft to admit they were wrong and apologize to Boehlert any time now, just as any rational person would....

Hilarious! Loesch Sends Big Journalism Readers to Troll Student Newspaper

Talk about being thin-skinned! The Washington University student newspaper StudLife had an article on Friday asking for opinions on CNN hiring Dana Loesch as an election analyst. The article included quotes from members of the Young Americans for Liberty, the College Republicans, a media professor, and yours truly. Yet Loesch apparently was offended by the article and put a link up on her site Big Journalism to complain about the student newspaper "considering the merits of silencing Dana Loesch:"

Naturally, many of her followers put up angry comments on the site without even reading the article. Pretty hilarious.

While I'm at it, since StudLife (understandably) only included part of my comments after they asked me to weigh in, I thought I'd post them all here:

Hiring Dana Loesch as an election analyst severely damages the credibility of CNN as a news organization, not because of the fact that she's extremely conservative, but rather because she is a proponent of the Andrew Breitbart approach to journalism which is fundamentally dishonest when it comes to the gathering and presentation of information.

Andrew Breitbart was disgraced last year after he released a blog post and video claiming Shirley Sherrod was "racist" that resulted in Sherrod being fired. It was later found out that the video was highly edited and completely changed the context of Sherrod's comments, which were actually meant to illustrate that race does not matter. Dana Loesch was one of the leading people in the country pushing Andrew Breitbart's false claims to the media, and continues to defend him to this day. You can listen to an interview of Loesch and Breitbart the day after the story broke suggesting that Sherrod was racist here.

A bit closer to home, Loesch was completely dishonest about the Bristol Palin controversy at Wash U. As you can see at the 2:58 mark of this video from the past weekend, she claimed that Wash U paid Van Jones $20,000 to speak at the school. Actually, Van Jones usually speaks for $20,000, but agreed to speak at Wash U for only $5,000. Green Action applied for a small amount more for a panel, but they were turned down. She also tweeted and blogged about actress Kate Walsh, absurdly implying that Walsh's retweet at the request of a student was "organizing a rally" against Bristol Palin, which set off an array of false stories in the media that suggested that Walsh had something to do with Bristol Palin being disinvited.

There's much more I can talk about if you're interested, from Loesch's unending support of James O'Keefe and his cronies even after he was convicted of entering a congressional office under false premises and even after they were caught planning to sexually humiliate a CNN reporter, to the inflamed rhetoric of the St. Louis tea party where Loesch says "I love the smell of fire when it's burning tyranny" while her friends set fire to a photo of Congressman Russ Carnahan, to her conspiracy theories about President Obama ordering "thugs" to beat up tea party members in St. Louis, to her attacks on local school teachers based on misinformation, and much much more.

What I find really strange is that CNN seems to recognize that Breitbart and O'Keefe are toxic, and they rarely if ever have them on as guests. But by hiring Breitbart's top lieutenant Loesch (editor of his site Big Journalism), they seem to be suggesting that they're more interested in the appearance of credibility than actual credibility, because hiring Loesch is endorsing the exact same dishonest approach to journalism only without the baggage of O'Keefe and Breitbart's names. There are plenty of honest people out there who can effectively communicate a conservative message, so I see no reason why CNN should hire a person with Loesch's track record of pushing blatant misinformation.

"Editing" Big Journalism

So how's Dana Loesch doing in her role as "editor" of Breitbart's Big Journalism site? Apparently, not very well:

Yesterday at Breitbart's BigJournalism, Jeff Dunetz served up yet another badly premised, nigh unreadable piece on the many outrageous evils of the "progressive media," which on its own is hardly worth mentioning. But there was one passage in Dunetz's sloppy harangue that indicates the high level of unseriousness we're dealing with here:

Israel is a favorite target of the progressive mainstream media. For example the New York Times,Washington Post and LA Times are famous for their anti-Israel bias. To mix things up a bit, they can blame the Jews too. Progressive media are famous for their attacks on Jews also. MSNBC commentator Pat Buchanan, for example, is a Holocaust revisionist who opposed did not support the Kagan nomination because it would put too many Jews on the Supreme Court (he also complained that there were too many Jews in the Senate).

Media Matters goes on to point out that Buchanen worked for three Republican presidents, ran for President as a Republican, and founded The American Conservative. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it the editor's job to make sure that nonsensical garbage like this doesn't get posted? I mean, I know that the Breitbart sites primarily trade on nonsensical garbage, but even brainwashed tea partiers would know that the claim about Buchanen is false.

h/t Eric Boehlert

It's Working! Right Wing Playing Defense On Loesch's Anderson Cooper Appearances

Yesterday, I wrote a post suggesting that if Anderson Cooper 360 was going to have Dana Loesch on the show to complain about how unfair it is that anyone would suggest there's something wrong with the tea party's extremist rhetoric, she should also be asked to explain the time that she said "I love the way a fire smells when it's burning tyranny" while her fellow tea partiers torched a photograph of Congressman Russ Carnahan (this was the day before they carried a coffin to his home). In that post, I suggested that people contact the AC360 show to share their concerns. That post was retweeted by at least 22 people on Twitter, and shared by 28 people people on facebook.

Apparently, this is getting the right wing agitated. Today, Meredith Dake, the executive producer of the Stage Right Show (and hence, intimately connected to the Andrew Breitbart Empire of Dirt), called on conservatives to contact AC360 and tell them how much the love Dana Loesch:

As an explanation, Dake said they needed to push back against "Eric Boehlert and the bigoted Left."

Boehlert is a frequent critic of Loesch and other Breitbart sock-puppets, and he had retweeted a call from @newsjunkie365 for people to contact the show with concerns:


Obviously, it's a free country and Cooper's show can have anyone they want on as guests. However, if they are going to boycottshun and shame Breitbart for his disgusting behavior, why would they reward Breitbart's second-in-command toady who engages in all of the same types of unethical activities? If they are going to have Loesch on to talk about extremist rhetoric, why wouldn't they ask her about her own? If they're going to interview her about Shirley Sherrod, shouldn't they at least do the basic research to know that she was one of the primary people attacking Sherrod and carrying Breitbart's water? If they are going to let her pretend to be an expert in journalism, shouldn't they know about the fact that she spread lies about the shooting based only on an anonymous comment on fringe blog Red State?

If you think so, then contact the AC360 show and ask them to start doing a little more research about their guests' backgrounds, and particularly Loesch's background. And no, getting a "career highlights" sheet from their publicist doesn't count.