As has become common of late, Joseph Farah is marking the anniversary of WorldNetDaily with perverse pride mixed with a money beg. From his May 3 column:
Today, we’re celebrating the 26th birthday of WND, which I founded on this day way back in 1997, making it America’s oldest independent Christian online journalism organization. Quite a milestone in the world of internet news.
And of course, as we begin our 27th year, we are all hoping and praying for many more years to serve our Lord and the American people by reporting truthfully and courageously on all the critical events shaping our nation’s present and future. But I’m sorry to say that WND’s future is by no means a certainty.
Since many of you are friends and longtime readers, and some are supporters, I’ll be very straight – even a little blunt: We really need your help, and we need it TODAY.
I’ve previously told you about the continual attacks on WND waged by everyone from Big Tech to predatory law firms to power-mad government itself, which have succeeded in reducing our annual revenue from $15 million to $1 million, prompting many layoffs, pay cuts for those who remained and radical cost-cutting measures all around. Yet, although we have survived and continued to produce great journalism even at that much-reduced level, we have run out of funds again.
The dismal Biden economy right now is causing many nonprofits – including ours, the WND News Center, a 501(c)(3) charity – to suffer devastating losses in their fundraising. As a result, we are currently down to less than half of the revenue on which we normally operate. This is now an emergency for us.
Unless something changes for us right now, we may be forced to close our doors, as have other major online news organizations recently, as you probably have read about. That is why I am humbly but urgently asking you for your generous support!
Later in his column, he repeated his usual victimhood line:
We did it! We were successful. We did really good journalism. And we were the biggest conservative and avowedly Christian online news publication in the world. We were at our pinnacle until 2016. And then, over the next few years, we nearly became … extinct. How is that possible?
To make it simple, Google became a monster – as well as Facebook and the rest of Big Tech. I’ve told enough of the story about that – even obsessing about it, crying about it, nearly giving up hope over it.
But that will never happen. Although we here at WND have been crushed financially, having been completely demonetized by the Internet Cartel and basically “running on fumes” … what keeps us going is the tremendous dedication of our staff, the support of loyal readers, and God’s blessing.
By the way, in case you’re wondering WHY Big Tech and the rest decided to go after us, the answer is two words: DONALD TRUMP! Although they were already suppressing us in search results as early as 2014, the persecution started in earnest in 2016 when Trump ran for president. The site was trashed, called “racist” and “extremist,” demeaned, defamed and shadow-banned – then demonetized completely and outright blackballed. At first I believed I could handle it, but soon I was overwhelmed by it, suffering a series of five strokes. But even that could not get me to quit.
As is also common for Farah, he continues to blame WND’s woes on everyone but himself. WND did not do “really good journalism” — it published false attacks (ask Clark Jones) and bogus conspiracy theories (ask Barack Obama). WND amply demonstrated its racism by publishing people like Colin Flaherty, and its extremism by pushing false anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories. And WND wasn’t demonetized by Google because of some grand conspiracy — Google simply decided to no longer have a business relationship with an entity that publishes falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
Though there were links throughout his column, Farah ended with a more explicit money beg:
Bottom line, if you’re in sympathy with me and with our intrepid staff, for whom – sad to say – we are having very serious trouble even making payroll, I’d like to humbly but urgently ask you for your support.
If I have moved you to donate today, there are a variety of ways to help WND.
In closing, let me just say thank-you once again to all who have kindly and generously supported us in the past, and for however you are moved to help us now in our time of urgent need. We are forever grateful.
If Farah can’t correct the record of all the falsehoods WND has published (without being threatened with legal action, anyway) and apologize for putting partisan narratives before the truth, there’s no way to gauge his humility.