Wow, what a distinction! LU hasn’t been so honored since we made the list of top conservative websites in 2015.
This time, the conferee is Melissa (“Mish”) Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication and media at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass. We learn from Mish’s faculty profile that “when she’s not researching and teaching, Dr. Zimdars has a radio show on Merrimack College’s station, WMCK, and spends a lot of time going to shows in the Boston area, listening to records, and eating fried foods that she should probably avoid.”
Maybe all that dietary fat is dulling her senses since her list, titled “False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical ‘News’ Sources,” attempts to codify entries using a numerical code but then stops short of applying said code to every site named. I can’t say, therefore, which of the named offenses she believes LU to be guilty of.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
She also includes, probably with an eye toward forestalling legal action, several disclaimers. An item marked “Disclaimer 1” reads:
All of the contents in this document reflect the opinion of the author and are for educational purposes only.
There is no “Disclaimer 2” (I presume her own journalism professors marked her down for inconsistent outlining), though she does hint at a second disclaimer later on, writing:
Many of the websites on this list continue to offer valuable journalism and/or satirical commentary…. And as a reminder, not all of the sources listed below should be considered fake.
Gee, Mish, armed with that kind of unambiguous information, your students should have a jolly good time separating factual websites from fictional ones.
Among the blogs and websites besides LU that are honored by their inclusion on her list are BizPac Review, The Blaze, Breitbart, and Zero Hedge. She also includes Bipartisan Report, but that must be a mistake because, name notwithstanding, the site hews left.
According to the many mainstream media sources that have picked up Zimdars’s list, which include the Los Angeles Times, station KMOV in St. Louis promises that Zimdars has only begun to fight and that she “is is [sic] reviewing hundreds of other websites and news organizations, including the popular Huffington Post.” You might be wondering why the HuffPo failed to make the first cut, but if so, you may want to cut down on the fried food, yourself.
