WorldNetDaily has been spending the year begging for money to stay afloat while also exaggerating its traffic counts to create the illusion of a fully functioning business. It does more of the latter in a Nov. 27 article:
The establishment media are lashing out in the aftermath of the stunning 2016 presidential-election result, which it almost unanimously had discounted as impossible, demanding sanctions against so-called “fake news” websites.
But the hysteria may have more to do with fear of competition than with the pursuit of truth, as independent news organizations such as WND are soaring in both traffic and reader engagement. And the growth of WND is continuing even after the election.
According to Alexa, WND is now the 187th most popular site of all websites in the United States and in the top 1,500 group of all websites globally.
Actually, WND hasn’t been maintaining its election-driven traffic boost. While it may have been ranked No. 187 at the time of the article, it’s currently ranked No. 259 and falling.
WND immediately uses that ranking to play the victim:
Despite, or perhaps because of, this growth, WND, along with sites such as Breitbart, Red State and the Daily Wire have been smeared as “fake news” sites since the election, even though the definition seems to have more to do with ideology than accuracy.
Google and Facebook have also said they will be targeting revenue sources for so-called “fake news” sites.
The brief moment of self-criticism the establishment media engaged in after the election has ended, as outlets such as the Times now demand Facebook and other social networking titans essentially shut down competitors.
The move is coupled with a campaign to label independent journalism as “hate speech,” an accusation leveled at Breitbart and also WND.
Well, not so much: WND’s history of publishing fake news — its anti-Obama birther crusade is just one example — is unambiguous.
And it wouldn’t be WND if there wasn’t a massive dose of self-aggrandizement to go along with this desperate self-promotion:
“WND has always – for 20 years – risen to the top of the charts for political coverage during presidential election years,” said Joseph Farah, founder, editor and chief executive officer of the pioneering alternative news site. “But this year the growth trend continues after the election. This is something we’ve never seen before. Perhaps Americans are finally getting the message: What we euphemistically call the ‘mainstream media’ is the real purveyor of ‘fake news.’ If you want to the truth, the real story, you’ve got to look for alternative sources of news. And WND, from the beginning, has been the place of refuge for real journalists with experience and values and professional standards.”
This time, it really is different. Almost 70 percent of voters believe the news media is not “honest and truthful” and almost 80 percent say it is “biased.”
With the establishment media’s credibility destroyed, Americans are turning to WND, a trusted source that has been around almost since the beginning of the Internet. Now, the facts show WND is the real mainstream when it comes to where Americans go to get the real news.
The real fake news, maybe…