It’s against longstanding ethical standards for a journalist to be involved in politics.
Imagine the offense when self-proclaimed journalists start a super PAC.
That’s what WorldNetDaily’s Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi have done. They are on the advisory board for the newly formed Takeover Super PAC, which claims a mission to “challenge America’s new political establishment and party bosses to restore limited government as described in the U.S. Constitution.”
Farah sent out an email to the WND mailing list touting his new super PAC:
A new organization, Takeover Super PAC, has been created by a group of people I trust. They’re shrewd and solidly-conservative patriots. I believe Takeover Super PAC will launch the next, and LAST, American revolution. They will challenge America’s new political establishment and party bosses to restore our Constitution.
Remember how we overpowered Obama and his comrades in 2010? The Tea Party proved we ARE the majority. Now it’s time to make our voices heard once again!
I’m putting everything behind Takeover Super PAC.
Farah also put everything behind his birther obsession, and now nobody believes WND. Pretty soon, his “everything” won’t mean much.
It wouldn’t be a Farah project if he wasn’t asking people for money (which tells us that he is not, in fact, putting everything behind his super PAC), and Farah’s email links to a donation page.
Interestingly, Farah’s email fails to indicate that it is a paid political ad, which would seem to violate federal election law. After all, using WND’s email list for a solicitation to the super PAC is in effect a donation. Further, nowhere on the wegbsite does the super PAC indicate its tax status, beyond very faint type at the bottom of the donation page admitting that “Contributions are not tax deductible as charitable donations for Federal income tax purposes.”
Farah and Corsi are not alone in this effort; the super PAC’s advisory board also includes right-wingers like Floyd Brown, Richard Viguerie and William Murray. Media Matters has the details on Brown, a longtime right-wing smear merchant who runs the Farah-founded Western Journalism Center, as well as a recap of Farah’s and Corsi’s wingnuttery.
William Murray is the son of atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and he has become an uber-Christian as well as uber-homophobic. Murray once blamed a train crash on homosexuality.
Those are the kind of people who are running the Takeover Super PAC. Expect it to be run the same way WND is run — without regard for the facts.