There is rampant dishonesty throughout the legacy media, but perhaps there is no news outlet as dishonest as CNN — and blatantly so.
In the wake of the violence at Charlottesville, Va., in which neo-Nazis and other white supremacist groups clashed with Alt-Left members of Antifa, both seeking to shut down the others’ political speech using violence, CNN has deliberately fanned the flames of hatred and division by casting nearly all politically conservative organizations — some 900 of them — as “hate groups.”
And the network is citing one of the most profound hate groups in the country in order to make its overly broad accusations: The Southern Poverty Law Group.
As reported by The Washington Times, scores of conservative organizations were both caught off-guard by the arbitrary designation and angered by it:
Brad Dacus was thousands of miles away in California last weekend when the Charlottesville protest erupted, so he was flabbergasted when CNN labeled his Pacific Justice Institute a “hate group.”
“Here are all the active hate groups where you live,” said the CNN wire story headline on Chicago’s WGN-TV website.
The article listed the 917 organizations on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s much-disputed “hate map,” which names racist groups like the Aryan Nation alongside mainstream conservative organizations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council.
Dacus’ conservative organization, which is based in Sacramento — in the Deep Blue, Alt-Left craziness that is California — pursues religious liberty cases; his organization was on the CNN list right below the Pacific Coast Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
“Why is the Southern Poverty Law Center doing this? It’s simple. They want to vilify and isolate anyone that doesn’t agree with their very extremist leftist policy and ideology,” he told the Times. “This isn’t about defending civil rights. This is about attacking civil rights.”
Many other conservative organizations were equally outraged and called on the Fake News Network to pull the article.
“I am shocked that CNN would publish such a false report on the heels of the Charlottesville tragedy,” said Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel’s founder and chairman. “To lump peaceful Christian organizations, which condemn violence and racism, in with the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists is offensive. This is the epitome of fake news and is why people no longer trust the media.” (Related: Alt-Left leader vows to ‘crush skulls’ at Conservative prayer rally with nail-embedded bat.)
Often, in the past, conservative groups have called out a number of legacy media outlets for their inaccurate — and some believe purposefully — false characterizations of them as hate groups. They say not only are such designations wrong, but they put members and employees at risk for violence.
And in fact, political violence has been visited on some of them thanks to incorrect designations from the SPLC, a genuine hate group. The Times notes that in 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins shot and wounded a security guard at the Family Research Council, later telling police he wanted to kill as many of the group’s employees as possible after finding them on an SPLC “hate map.”
In a tweet to CNN, Tom McClusky, a former vice president of governmental affairs at the FRC, said, “Thanks for the reminder @CNN of this inaccurate map. Last time I saw it one of my friends got hit with a bullet. Real responsible reporting.”
The Liberty Counsel sued charity tracker GuideStar for defamation after the latter added the SPLC tag to its list of non-profit organizations. Later GuideStar removed the labels but said information would nonetheless be available on request.
“Using the Southern Poverty Center as a source for information shows that CNN is not interested in reporting news but rather creating scandal and security threats,” Staver told the Times.
Then again, neither CNN nor the SPLC is interested in fairness or honesty — they seek only the complete and utter destruction of political opponents. No wonder our country is tearing itself apart.
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.
Sources include:
Please contact us for more information.