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WorldNetDaily

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TypeOnline Newspaper
FormatWebsite
Owner(s)WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.
Founded1997
HeadquartersMedford, Oregon
Websitewww.worldnetdaily.com

WorldNetDaily, also known as WND, is an American conservative online news site, founded in 1997. It is currently in the top 75 News sites as listed at Alexa.[1]

Foundation

WND was founded in 1997 by Joseph Farah. In 1991, after resigning as editor of the Sacramento Union, Farah co-founded the Western Journalism Center, known for its promotion of conservative causes, with James H. Smith, former publisher of the Sacramento Union.[2] In 1994 and 1995, foundations controlled by conservative financier and former owner of the Union Richard Mellon Scaife gave $330,000 to the Center.[3] By May 1997, Farah set his eyes on the internet and set up WorldNetDaily as a project of the Center. In 1999, WorldNetDaily.com, Inc., with offices in Cave Junction, Oregon, was incorporated in Delaware as a for-profit subsidiary of the non-profit Western Journalism Center with the backing of $4.5 million from investors.[4] As a result, Farah and the Western Journalism Center possess the bulk of the WND stock, but the remainder is owned by about 75 private investors. In August 2001, Business Week cited Farah who claimed WND had begun to turn a profit.[5] Currently the webpage has a staff of approximately 25 people.[6]

Description

WorldNetDaily is a for-profit website that provides primarily conservative-oriented news and editorials, as well as publishing letters to the editor and maintaining forums and a daily poll. Besides providing articles authored by its own staff, the site links to news from other publications. The website features editorials from the site's founder, Joseph Farah and other conservative authors such as Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, and David Limbaugh[7]. The site also offers products for sale in a fashion similar to its news articles, advertising these products with related news stories. Typically these are products sold by its related book service, WND Book Service, publishing house, WND Books, or its retail operation, ShopNetDaily. The site also contains advertisements for WND's printed magazine, Whistleblower, and other companies. WND also operates the G2 Bulletin, a subscription-only website described as an "intelligence resource" for "insights into geo-political and geo-strategic developments."

WorldNetDaily claims to be "the largest independent, full-service newssite in the world."[8]. WND currently claims 8 million visitors a month to its website.http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17546. As of November 8, 2006, it is listed by Alexa as the most popular website in the "Conservatism > News and Media" category.[9] WorldNetDaily articles are often linked by other websites, including the popular Drudge Report.

From July 2000 to early 2002, WorldNetDaily offered a service called TalkNetDaily, which provided an Internet audio stream of a daily talk show by then-WND columnist Geoff Metcalf.[10]

WND Books

WorldNetDaily also publishes books under the name WND Books. The imprint was launched in 2002 through a partnership with Thomas Nelson Publishers (a prominent Christian publishing house) and released books by political pundits like Katherine Harris, Michael Savage, and Farah himself. The partnership with Thomas Nelson Publishing ended shortly before the 2004 election[11]; Thomas Nelson has continued the division under the Nelson Current imprint.[12] The WND Books imprint was subsequently published under a partnership with Cumberland House Publishing[13] and released books by Jerome Corsi, Tom Tancredo and Ken Blackwell, among other authors. In 2007, Los Angeles-based conservative publisher World Ahead Publishing will become the publisher of WND Books.[14]

The books include:

  • Kenneth Blackwell and Jerome R. Corsi. Rebuilding America: A Prescription for Creating Strong Families, Building the Wealth of Working People, and Ending Welfare. WND Books, May 4, 2006. ISBN 1581825013
  • Tom Tancredo. In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America's Border and Security. WND Books, 2006. ISBN 1-58182-527-7

Congressman Jim Welker controversy

In March 2006 Republican Colorado State Representative Jim Welker was criticized for forwarding a WorldNetDaily commentary by Jesse Lee Peterson. [15] Congressmen criticized Welker for uncritically sending a copy of the article by email, which included the statements "President Bush is not to blame for the rampant immorality of blacks" and accused "welfare-pampered blacks" of waiting for the federal government to save them from Hurricane Katrina. Welker stated that he did not agree with everything in the article. He said that the reason he sent it was because of its message "about society victimizing people by making them dependent on government programs."[16]

Controversial articles

WND has published many articles that have created controversies and criticism of the site by other media outlets. Some of these include:

United Airlines Flight 93

In 2004, WND published a commentary by James Sanders entitled "The Downing of United Airlines Flight 93"[17]which proposed that, to defend Washington D.C., Flight 93 had been intercepted and shot with a missile by a military aircraft. It also alleged that the government had tried to cover up this information. The article stated:

"Witnesses to this low-flying jet ... told their story to journalists. Shortly thereafter, the FBI began to attack the witnesses with perhaps the most inane disinformation ever--alleging the witnesses actually observed a private jet at 34,000 ft. The FBI says the jet was asked to come down to 5000 ft. and try to find the crash site. This would require about 20 minutes to descend."[17]

According to a Popular Mechanics article entitled "Debunking the 9/11 Myths",[18] which mentions WorldNetDaily, there was a low flying jet in the vicinity on descent into Johnstown.

Valerie Plame leak

WND has also published controversial claims about the Plame leak. A 2005 report by Media Matters for America includes the following quote from a WND article:

Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely told WorldNetDaily that Wilson mentioned Plame's status as a CIA employee over the course of at least three, possibly five, conversations in 2002 in the Fox News Channel's "green room" in Washington, D.C., as they waited to appear on air as analysts.


...

Vallely says, according to his recollection, Wilson mentioned his wife's job in the spring of 2002 -- more than a year before Robert Novak's July 14, 2003, column identified her, citing senior administration officials, as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."[19]

As noted above Vallely said he was told once in the spring of 2002, but on November 9, 2005, WND reported:

After recalling further over the weekend his contacts with Wilson, Vallely says now it was on just one occasion – the first of several conversations – that the ambassador revealed his wife's employment with the CIA and that it likely occurred some time in the late summer or early fall of 2002. He is certain, he says, the conversation took place in 2002.[20]

Middle East reporting

In early 2005, WND hired Aaron Klein to run a Jerusalem bureau.[21] ConWebWatch, a group critical of conservative news, in early 2006 alleged that Klein's articles promoted the causes of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza who opposed Israel's unilateral disengagement plan from those areas.[22] The grop also argued that Klein did not disclose the ties of Israeli activists tied to the far-right Kach and Kahane Chai movement.[23] When Eden Natan-Zada shot and killed four people on a bus in Gaza on August 4, 2005, he was beaten to death afterwards by a crowd that witnessed the shooting. Klein wrote an article for WND claiming that Zada was "murdered" by a "mob of Palestinians" after the shooting, although he also mentioned that police called the shooting a "Jewish terror attack." [24] Klein has also written numerous articles critical of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.[25]

Terri Schiavo case

WorldNetDaily published numerous stories about the Terri Schiavo case. Its articles were generally biased in favor Terri Schiavo's parents and against her husband, Michael Schiavo.[26] (WND did, however, modify at least one story following criticism to this effect.[27]) Diana Lynne, who "covered the Terri Schiavo story for three years as a reporter and news editor for WorldNetDaily,"[28] wrote a book, published by WND Books, that showed a similar bias toward Terri Schiavo's parents and against Michael Schiavo.[1]

Litvinenko and terrorism conspiracy

On December 3, 2006 a WND article said that: "Reports that KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko converted to Islam before his mysterious poisoning with radioactive polonium 210 is raising suspicions that he may have been involved in a plot to smuggle the deadly substance to terrorist groups."[29] According to an article in The Times, apparently mentioning the WND article, the evidence for these suspicions was "gossip from his Muslim next-door neighbour."[30]

WorldNetDaily published a commentary[31] in December 2006 written by Jim Rutz of "Megashift Ministries" where he claimed that eating soy at a young age increases the chance that a child will be gay, and that soy's estrogen content will feminize a young boy. Such claims are contradicted by research done by scientists at the University of Pennsylvania.[32]. The article was referenced by Frank Rich in a New York Times op-ed piece on December 17, 2006, describing the reaction to homosexuality in the Republican Party.[33] The liberal advocacy organization People For the American Way mocked Rutz's claims in their online "RightWing Watch" feature, commenting "sometimes you just have to marvel at the things published by WorldNetDaily."[34] In response to the interest in the article, WorldNetDaily later published columns by Rutz providing documentation to back up his claims.[35][36]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Alexa - Sites in: News". Alexa. Retrieved 2006-12-16.
  2. ^ "Joesph Farah and WorldNetDaily". ConWebWatch. Retrieved 2006-10-28.
  3. ^ "'Arkansas Project' Led to Turmoil and Rifts". Washington Post: A24. 1999. Retrieved 2006-05-03. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  4. ^ ""World's 'No. 1 website' goes for-profit"". World Net Daily. Retrieved October 31. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  5. ^ "On the Web, Small and Focused Pays Off". BusinessWeek Online. Retrieved 2006-11-04.
  6. ^ "WorldNetDaily: About Us". Retrieved December 1. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  7. ^ "WorldNetDaily: Columnists". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved December 16. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  8. ^ ""WND most popular 'political site'"". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved August 24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  9. ^ "Alexa - Browse: News and Media". Retrieved November 8. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  10. ^ ""Metcalf Live -- Monday through Friday"". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved April 7. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ "Joseph Farah and WorldNetDaily". ConWebWatch. Retrieved November 14. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  12. ^ "Thomas Nelson Launches Political Imprint". The Write News. Retrieved November 18. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  13. ^ "WND Books signs 'Unfit for Command' author". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved November 21. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  14. ^ "New publishing partner for WND Books". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved November 23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  15. ^ "Moral poverty costs blacks in New Orleans". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved November 22. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  16. ^ "Racially charged e-mail stirs outrage". Rocky Mountain News. Retrieved December 17. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  17. ^ a b ""The Downing of United Airlines Flight 93"". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved August 15. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  18. ^ ""Debunking the 9/11 Myths"". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved November 29. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  19. ^ ""Two years into leak investigation, Gen. Vallely suddenly claims, in contradictory statements, that Wilson revealed Plame's identity to him"". Media Matters for America. Retrieved November 29. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  20. ^ ""General wants Wilson apology Threatened again with lawsuit over claim of 'outing' CIA wife"". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved November 29. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  21. ^ "WND to open Jerusalem bureau". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved January 21. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  22. ^ Krepel, Terry. "Something to Hide". ConWebWatch. Retrieved January 23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  23. ^ Krepel, Terry. "Where the Killer Is A Victim = work = ConWebWatch". Retrieved January 26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  24. ^ Klein, Aaron. "Arab mob lynches Israeli who killed 4". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved January 26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  25. ^ Krepel, Terry. "WorldNetDaily Undermines Olmert". ConWebWatch. Retrieved January 23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  26. ^ Krepel, Terry. "A Less-Than-Whole Story". ConWebWatch. Retrieved January 26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  27. ^ Krepel, Terry. "A Less-Than-Whole Story". ConWebWatch. Retrieved January 26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  28. ^ "'Terri's Story' author on Farah show". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved January 26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  29. ^ Farah, Joseph (December 3, 2006). "Radioactive spy Islamic convert?". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved 2006-12-14.
  30. ^ Hume, Mick (December 5, 2006). "Emergency! I've been poisoned by speculation". The Times. Retrieved 2006-12-14.
  31. ^ "Soy is making kids 'gay'". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved December 26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  32. ^ "Congratulations, It's a Soy!". Research at Penn. Retrieved December 26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  33. ^ Frank Rich. "Mary Cheney's Bundle of Joy". New York Times.
  34. ^ "Soy Makes You Gay". Right Wing Watch. Retrieved December 26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  35. ^ "The trouble with soy – part 2". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved December 26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  36. ^ "The trouble with soy, part 3". WorldNetDaily. Retrieved December 26. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
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