If WorldNetDaily is going down on March 1 — which seems entirely possible given that as of today’s fundraising email, WND still needed $29,000 to make its $200,000 goal by that date — it’s going down in a state of denial.
We’ve pointed out that WND editor Joseph Farah’s daily fundraising letters to WND readers conspicuously refuse to discuss one big reason WND is in dire straits right now: the amount of dubious content and outright fake news it has published that has earned its untrustworthy status by major search engines and by Facebook.
Farah’s Feb. 27 letter was also published at the WND website, and as usual, he’s blaming anyone other than himself for WND’s state of affairs:
Well, consider that none other than CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, has now publicly confirmed – to the letter – everything I’ve been saying for weeks.
In a speech he gave Monday in Barcelona, the CNN chief urged U.S. government authorities to pay closer attention to the raw power wielded by Google and Facebook, who together are making it all but impossible for news organizations to “survive.” That’s right – he said that.
“In a Google and Facebook world, monetization of digital and mobile continues to be more difficult than we would have expected or liked,” Zucker said. And without something new to support news organizations, he added, “good journalism will go away.”
Of course, the difference between WND and CNN – aside from the fact that WND is committed to real news while CNN, due to its hatred of President Trump, is daily drowning in the fake variety – is that CNN is owned by super-wealthy Time Warner and has tremendous resources to float it even as the Digital Cartel dries up its advertising. WND has no such resources, no big corporate backers and no billionaire “sugar daddies.” WND has always earned its own way.
While monetization has been an issue for all media, Farah is, also as usual, not telling the full story — because Farah is part of the problem.
Every day, WND regularly steals content from other media outlets to repost, but never asks permission or provide monetary compensation for doing so. While WND links back to the original source, that source sees no revenue from WND’s links. And WND has never belonged to a news syndicate or cooperative in which monetization of news content is baked into the membership. While Farah has previously insisted WND’s theft of content is merely “fair use,” the fact remains that it is indeed theft.
Further, Farah’s claim that “WND is committed to real news while CNN … is daily drowning in the fake variety” is laughable on its face. We’d be willing to wager that WND has published more fake news in the past year than CNN ever has.
So, not even this near-death (or perhaps actual death) experience will not persuade Farah to be honest with his readers about WND’s low-quality content, let alone explain any plans to do something about it. That’s a major sign that WND deserves to die.