We know all about Joseph Farah’s notoriously thin skin, and we knew he could not stay silent about a college professor who put WND on her list of fake-news outlets, and that Chelsea Schilling’s WND article mocking the “leftist” professor with publishing the most unflattering photos possible of her would not be sufficient punishment for such criticism.
Thus, Farah’s Nov. 24 WND column, in which he ranted that the professor who made the list, Melissa Zimdars, “had never actually worked in the media – only researched it and taught it.” Then, as he is wont to do, he drops his pants and engages in a manhood-measuring contest by devoting a very long paragraph to reciting his resume, though much of what he recited took place before he started WND. He then huffed: “Between Ms. Zimdars and me, who do you think is in a better position to determine real news from ‘fake news’?”
Actually, one does not need to have worked in journalism to be able to determine real news from fake, and one can argue that the extensive journalism experience Farah prides himself on having has only made him experienced in presenting fake news as real.
Farah then serves up his own, um, interesting definition of fake news:
Let me make my position on “fake news” clear. It does exist. It is most evident in the revolving door between politics and the media – a phenomenon that doesn’t bother the establishment media or establishment politics one little bit.
One thing you will note about my bio and the resumes of other news professionals at WND.com is the absence of any interest in partisan politics or the desire to be part of government.
That’s the nexus of where most “fake news” actually starts. When political activists can move seamlessly from election campaigns to directing newsrooms and back again, the line between news and political agitprop is blurred to the point of journalistic prostitution.
Farah seems to not be aware of journalistic prostitute (and WND employee) Jerome Corsi, who teamed up with Trump adviser Roger Stone to use the pages of WND to push sleazy rumors about Hillary Clinton. Indeed, Farah surely knows there has never been any line between news and political agitprop at his website — all its political “news” is designed to promote the Republican or conservative and denigrate the Democrat or liberal.
Farah also seems to have missed that revolving door happening between news and government happening not only with the Trump campaign — which hired the head of Breitbart News to run the campaign — but within his own website, in which political prostitute Jerome Corsi touted how “WND author and Oxford professor Theodore Roosevelt Malloch is being referred to the Trump transition team as a candidate for either ambassador to the United Nations or to the United Kingdom,” according to “sources close to the vice-president-elect, Mike Pence.”
And as usual — despite all the evidence that WND does, in fact, traffic in fake news — Farah manages to portray himself as the victim rather than the perpetrator:
I do, however, thank Ms. Zimdars and the major media that touted her “list,” however misguided and wrong-headed it was. Why? Because there really is such a phenomenon as “fake news.”
It’s found in scandalously phony reports like the one published by Ms. Zimdars and broadcast nationally by outlets thrilled by the condemnation of their anti-establishment competition. (To her credit, following WND’s report on Ms. Zimdars’ effort, she pulled it from her own website, though it circulates forever on, ironically, “fake news sites.”)
It’s found in websites without names and addresses associated with it that I strongly suspect are fronts for those who seek to undermine enterprises like WND.com. (One notoriously exploitive example is called WorldNewsDaily, which intentionally and shamelessly seeks confusion with the oldest, enduring similarly named site you are reading now.)
Needless to say, given how litigious WND is, it can easily sue that “notoriously exploitative website” out of existence (or at least into changing its name and look). Yet, strangely, it apparently hasn’t.
Farah concludes by stating how to “put an end to” fake news: “In one word – discernment.” Remember, people like Clark Jones have already discerned that WND is a provider of fake news, and he knows better than pretty much anyone.
UPDATE: Farah’s insistence that he and everyone else at WND have an “absence of any interest in partisan politics” is further belied by the fact that, according to The Intercept, a pro-Trump super PAC paid WND $2,000 for “online voter contact.” That probably consists of the super PAC renting WND’s mailing list, but it’s definitely interest in partisan politics.