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Joseph Farah
Farah in 2013
Born	Joseph Francis Farah (1954-07-06) July 6, 1954 (age 70) Paterson, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation	Journalist, author
Alma mater	William Paterson University (BA)
Notable awards	The Washington Times Foundation National Service Award (1996)
Spouse	Judy Smagula (divorced) Elizabeth Graham
Children	5, including Alyssa

Joseph Francis Farah (born July 6, 1954) is an American author, journalist, and editor-in-chief of the far-right website WorldNetDaily (WND). Farah gained prominence for promoting conspiracy theories surrounding the suicide of Vince Foster and is a proponent of birtherism, a debunked conspiracy theory that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States.

Early years

Farah was born in Paterson, New Jersey, on July 6, 1954, to parents of Syrian and Lebanese ancestry. His father was a schoolteacher. He graduated from William Paterson University, in Wayne, New Jersey with a B.A. in Communications.

Career

Farah worked for six years as executive news editor at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner until the paper shuttered in 1989.

On July 22, 1990, Farah became editor of The Sacramento Union. The paper had been losing up to $3 million annually, and in early 1990 it was purchased from Richard Mellon Scaife by Daniel Benvenuti Jr. and David Kassis. Farah and the paper's owners envisioned the paper as a conservative alternative to The Sacramento Bee. "We just thought the way to go was to be unabashedly conservative in our approach," explained Farah to The Washington Post. Among other things, Farah convinced Rush Limbaugh to write a daily column, which ran on "Page 1." Farah prohibited advertisement for films rated NC-17 in the newspaper.

In 1991, Farah left the Union and co-founded the Western Journalism Center. He writes a weekly print column for The Jerusalem Post which is nationally syndicated through Creators Syndicate.

He launched the online WorldNetDaily in 1997. The website has been categorized as far-right and is known for publishing unreliable or fringe material.

In April 2019, WorldNetDaily announced that Farah had suffered a stroke and would withdraw from the website's day-to-day operations until he recovers.

Promotion of conspiracy theories

Farah gained prominence for promoting conspiracy theories surrounding the suicide of Vince Foster.

Farah is a proponent of birtherism, the conspiracy theory related to Barack Obama's status as a natural-born citizen of the United States and resultant eligibility to serve as U.S. president, stating, "It'll plague Obama throughout his presidency. It'll be a nagging issue and a sore on his administration, much like Monica Lewinsky was on Bill Clinton's presidency" and "It's not going to go away, and it will drive a wedge in an already divided public." Despite the release of Obama's notarized birth certificate abstract, he continued to promote birtherism.

Personal life

He is married to Elizabeth Graham and is a conservative evangelical Christian. He has five children, including a daughter from a previous marriage to Judy Smagula, Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as the Press Secretary for Vice President Mike Pence and later served as Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Media Affairs and Press Secretary for the Department of Defense.

Books

• Collaborated with Rush Limbaugh on See, I Told You So (1994)
• Farah, Joseph; Richard Pombo (1996). This Land Is Our Land: How to End the War on Private Property. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-14747-1.
• Farah, Joseph (2005). Taking America Back: A Radical Plan to Revive Freedom, Morality, and Justice. WND Books. ISBN 978-1-58182-469-8.
• Farah, Joseph (2007). Stop the Presses!: The Inside Story of the New Media Revolution. WND Books. ISBN 978-1-58182-469-8.
• Farah, Joseph (2008). None of the Above: Why 2008 Is the Year to Cast the Ultimate Protest Vote. WND Books. ISBN 978-1-935071-01-3.
• Farah, Joseph (2010). The Tea Party Manifesto: A Vision for an American Rebirth. WND Books. ISBN 978-1-935071-28-0.

References

1. Sources describing WorldNetDaily as far-right:
   • Balleck, Barry J. (June 1, 2018). "Farah, Joseph Francis". Modern American Extremism and Domestic Terrorism: An Encyclopedia of Extremists and Extremist Groups. ABC-CLIO. pp. 110–111. ISBN 9781440852756. Retrieved September 15, 2024 – via Google Books. Joseph Francis Farah (b. 1955) is editor in chief and CEO of WorldNetDaily (WND, About), a far-right "news" Web site he founded in 1997
   • Strømmen, Hannah M. (October 30, 2024). "The War Bible". The Bibles of the Far Right. Oxford University Press. p. 152. ISBN 978-0-19-778989-6. Retrieved September 15, 2024 – via Google Books. Farah is the editor-in-chief of the far-right news website World Net Daily, which is cited several times in Breivik's manifesto.
   • Andersen, Robin (September 29, 2017). "Weaponizing Social Media: "The Alt-Right," the Election of Donald J. Trump, and the Rise of Ethno-Nationalism in the United States". In Andersen, Robin; de Silva, Purnaka L. (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Media and Humanitarian Action. New York: Routledge. pp. 490–491. doi:10.4324/9781315538129-49. ISBN 9781315538129. Retrieved September 15, 2024 – via Taylor & Francis. It started in January 2016 with an opinion piece Ulukaya wrote for CNN Money, about his efforts to motivate businesses to help end the refugee crisis. Though Ulukaya never mentioned Muslims, the piece attracted the far-right website World Net Daily that published a story titled, "American Yogurt Tycoon Vows to Choke U.S. With Muslims."
   • Moffitt, Benjamin (February 2, 2023). "What Was the 'Alt' in Alt-Right, Alt-Lite, and Alt-Left? On 'Alt' as a Political Modifier". Political Studies. 72 (3). Sage: 903–923. doi:10.1177/00323217221150871. Retrieved September 15, 2024. Despite Trump's claim that there was no alt-left, within days, editor of the far-right site World Net Daily Joseph Farah published a column entitled 'Let's take a look at the Alt-Left'
   • Massing, Michael (February 2009). "Un-American". Columbia Journalism Review. Far-right Web sites like World Net Daily and Newsmax.com floated all kinds of specious stories about Obama that quickly careened around the blogosphere and onto talk radio.
   • Sullivan, Andrew (September 6, 2009). "Obama's in the ER but he'll get his reforms". The Sunday Times. ISSN 0956-1382. One of the most popular far-right websites, WorldNetDaily
   • Bruno, Debra; Bruno, Debra (February 21, 2016). "There's the major media. And then there's the 'other' White House press corps". The Washington Post. Les Kinsolving, a reporter for the far-right World Net Daily, was a familiar White House gadfly from the days of the Nixon administration on.
   • Mackey, Robert (August 15, 2020). "White House Plants Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theorists Among Reporters in Briefing Room". The Intercept. Retrieved July 30, 2022. ... Powe is a former blogger for WorldNetDaily, the far-right website that helped create the racist 'birther' conspiracy theory to undermine President Barack Obama.
   • Perry, Samuel (October 12, 2020). "Evangelical leaders like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell Sr. have long talked of conspiracies against God's chosen – those ideas are finding resonance today". The Conversation. WND is a far-right website that entered the mainstream during President Obama's presidency. The website was a hub for the birther conspiracy.
2. Black, Jane (August 28, 2001). "On the Web, Small and Focused Pays Off". Business Week. Archived from the original on October 24, 2001. Retrieved December 14, 2008.
3. Bruno, Debra (February 21, 2016). "There's the major media. And then there's the 'other' White House press corps". The Washington Post.
4. Massing, Michael (February 2009). "Un-American: Have you listened to the right-wing media lately?". Cjr.org.
5. ^ Roig-Franzia, Manuel (April 2, 2019). "Inside the spectacular fall of the granddaddy of right-wing conspiracy sites". The Washington Post.
6. ^ Holt, Jared (February 3, 2020). "Hiding in Plain Sight: The White Nationalist Who Toiled Inside a Right-Wing Media Powerhouse". Right Wing Watch. Retrieved June 28, 2022.
7. ^ Martin, Jonathan (February 25, 2009). "Shelby says he has no doubts on Obama citizenship". POLITICO. Retrieved March 2, 2023.
8. ^ Babington, Charles; Ramer, Holly (April 27, 2011). "In NH, Trump takes credit for Obama birth info". San Diego Union-Tribune. Retrieved March 2, 2023.
9. ^ Stelter, Brian (April 27, 2011). "In Trying to Debunk a Theory, the News Media Extended Its Life". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
10. ^ Stephen Goode (March 4, 2003). "Putting faith in the founding fathers: WorldNetDaily.com cofounder Joseph Farah challenges all Americans to take back their country by embracing traditional values and spurning today's MTV culture". Insight magazine. p. 4. Archived from the original on October 23, 2004. Retrieved January 16, 2022.
11. ^ William Trombley (May 16, 1991). "Paper Chase; Media: The Sacramento Union is Trying to Attract Readers and Advertisers by Billing Itself as 'Pro-American,' 'Pro-Life,' and 'Pro-Business.'". The Los Angeles Times.
12. Pat Guy (July 13, 1990). "New editor for 'Sacramento Union'". USA Today.
13. ^ Howard Kurtz and Charles Trueheart (October 23, 1990). "At Sacramento Union, A Conservative Bent". The Washington Post.
14. Dorothy Giobbe (September 17, 1994). "Western Journalism Center director says it's non-partisan, not pro-right wing". Editor & Publisher.
15. "About Joseph Farah". Creators.com.
16. Mark O'Keefe (November 24, 2002). "Conservative media flex muscles". Newark: The Star-Ledger.
17. "WorldNetDaily". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved March 8, 2020.
18. "Shed a tear for WorldNetDaily — or maybe don't. But the downfall of a far-right site is instructive". Salon.com. April 5, 2019. Retrieved March 8, 2020.
19. Fisher, Max (September 9, 2009). "The Fringe-Fighting Pundit Who Fears Nothing". The Atlantic. Retrieved March 8, 2020.
20. Coaston, Jane (November 28, 2018). "Jerome Corsi, the conspiracy theorist now entangled in the Mueller investigation, explained". Vox. Retrieved March 8, 2020.
21. Tim Jones (December 8, 2008). "Court won't review Obama's eligibility to serve". Hartford Courant. Archived from the original on June 12, 2011. Retrieved March 12, 2009.
22. "Born in the U.S.A". FactCheck.org. August 21, 2008.
23. @PhilippeReines (August 15, 2019). "Alyssa Farah's mother Judy Farah..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.

External links

• WorldNetDaily Official website
• Washington Post Online Chat Session with Joseph Farah
• Appearances on C-SPAN

• 1954 births
• Living people
• 20th-century American male writers
• 20th-century American non-fiction writers
• 20th-century evangelicals
• 21st-century American male writers
• 21st-century American non-fiction writers
• 21st-century evangelicals
• American conspiracy theorists
• American critics of Islam
• American Evangelical writers
• American male non-fiction writers
• American newspaper editors
• American people of Lebanese descent
• American people of Syrian descent
• American political writers
• Lebanese evangelicals
• New Jersey Republicans
• Syrian Protestants
• WorldNetDaily people
• Writers from Paterson, New Jersey