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WorldNetDaily, also known as WND, is a conservative online news site.

Background

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 with James H. Smith, former publisher of the Sacramento Union (and former CEO/publisher of the revived Sacramento Union webpage). This group supplied Christopher Ruddy (founder of NewsMax) with "additional expense money, funding for Freedom of Information Act requests, legal support and publicity" during his investigation of a Bill Clinton conspiracy surrounding the suicide of Vince Foster.Foundations controlled by conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife gave $330,000 to the Center in 1994 and 1995.Sacramento Union but sold it before Farah's tenure as editor. Under Farah's editorship, the paper turned a more conservative direction; by the time Farah resigned 15 months later, the paper's circulation had dropped nearly 30 percent. The Union ceased publication in 1994.) By May 1997, Farah set his eyes on the Internet and set up WorldNetDaily as a project of the Western Journalism 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.*" target="_blank" >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.[http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/aug2001/nf20010828_333.htm Currently the webpage has a staff of approximately 20 people.

Description

The site features links to news articles and political/social commentaries and frequently rewrites articles by other news organizations to place under its own byline. (Source please?)Subsequently, some feel WorldNetDaily has also provided many stories criticizing liberals and stories that have encouraged 9/11 Conspiracy TheoriesYet, the website is not solely limited to political commentary or news. Reportedly, this brand of news has been successful as noted by Farah in a 3-page interview in the John Birch Society's magazine The New American, Farah claimed that by March 1998 the website was receiving 20,000 to 30,000 hits per day. In the April 17, 1998, issue of Dispatches (a WorldNetDaily-published magazine now known as Whistleblower), Farah claimed 150,000 hits per day. WND currently claims 8 million visitors a month to its website. [http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49578Although WND features exclusive stories, it also features many articles that originate with other news services that correlate with its right-leaning views.

Currently, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson has threatened/pursued legal action against WorldNetDaily and Paul E. Vallely for allegedly publishing false information about the Plame Affair.

The website markets conservative and religious merchandise through its own retail operation, ShopNetDaily.

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 relased books by political pundits like Katherine Harris, Michael Savage, and Farah himself. The partnership with Thomas Nelson Publishing ended shortly before the 2004 electionThomas Nelson has continued the division under the Nelson Current imprint.Cumberland House Publishing[http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40983" target="_blank" >* and has released books by Jerome Corsi, Tom Tancredo and Ken Blackwell, among other authors.

Congressman Jim Welker controversy

In March 2006 Republican Colorado State Representative Jim Welker was criticized for forwarding a WorldNetDaily article by Jesse Lee Peterson.* 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."

Examples of controversial articles

9/11

  • The cover story of the March 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine sought to debunk 9/11 conspiracy theories. The magazine noted:
WorldNetDaily.com weighs in: "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."

    • WND was refuted by Popular Mechanics authors:

There was such a jet in the vicinity--a Dassault Falcon 20 business jet owned by the VF Corp. of Greensboro, N.C., an apparel company that markets Wrangler jeans and other brands. The VF plane was flying into Johnstown-Cambria airport, 20 miles north of Shanksville. According to David Newell, VF's director of aviation and travel, the FAA's Cleveland Center contacted copilot Yates Gladwell when the Falcon was at an altitude "in the neighborhood of 3000 to 4000 ft."--not 34,000 ft. "They were in a descent already going into Johnstown," Newell adds. "The FAA asked them to investigate and they did. They got down within 1500 ft. of the ground when they circled. They saw a hole in the ground with smoke coming out of it. They pinpointed the location and then continued on." Reached by PM, Gladwell confirmed this account but, concerned about ongoing harassment by conspiracy theorists, asked not to be quoted directly.

Valerie Plame-CIA leak

  • WND has also been told misinformation about the Plame leak. After two and a half years after the original Plame leak, it was noted on November 5, 2005 Fox News commentator Paul E. Vallely told WND:

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."

    • Over that weekend Vallely supposedly recalled another time Wilson allegedly shared classified information on his wife's CIA status. As noted above Vallely said he was told once in Spring 2002, but the WND on November 9, 2005 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.

On Saturday, WorldNetDaily published a story based on an interview with Maj. General Paul Vallely, a distinguished career military man and Fox News analyst, who said Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the man at the center of the CIA leak case, had told him in casual conversations in the Fox News studios that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA employee - more than a year before this was first disclosed publicly in a column written by journalist Robert Novak.
    • Joseph Wilson has currently threatened/pursued legal action against WorldNetDaily and Vallely.

Dirty bombs in the United States

  • On March 20, 2002 WND cited Robert Morey as an expert, even though his Ph.D is from an unaccredited institution. The article said that he told the FBI:
"that Muslim Pakistanis brought into the U.S. a small nuclear device called a 'dirty bomb' through Niagara Falls out of Canada," says. "They are driving this nuclear device in the back of a van or a car waiting for bin Laden to tell them when it's time to set it off."

Middle East reporting

In early 2005, WND hired Aaron Klein to run a Jerusalem bureau.Klein's articles have regularly promoted the causes of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza who oppose Israeli disengagement from those areas.far-right Kach and Kahane Chai movement without disclosing those ties.*" target="_blank" >When Eden Natan-Zada shot and killed four people on a bus in Gaza on August 4, 2005, he was beaten to death by a mob while he was hand-cuffed, Klein wrote an article for WND claiming that Zada was "murdered" by a "mob of Palestinians."[http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45608

See also/Related

References

External links

News websites | Websites critical of Islam

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "WorldNetDaily".

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