At NewsBusters, we'd like to remember the late Noel Sheppard by recounting some of his "greatest hits." One day after the launch of this blog in 2005, Rush Limbaugh cited a Noel post and said he "contributes to the Media Research Center's NewsBusters squad. Brent Bozell and his boys have put up a new blog."
The blog was titled "Economic Disconnect Is All In The Reporting." Over the last eight-plus years, Noel created many of the biggest NewsBusters hits. The biggest – at 1.1 million pageviews – is his discovery shortly after the 2012 election that Jamie Foxx referred to "our Lord and savior, Barack Obama" during the "Soul Train Awards" on BET.
In December, Palin told Noel she was grateful for our (actually, his) quick reaction: "What would we do without you guys? Thank you so much for all you do to defend conservatives and insist on fairness and accuracy in media."
On April 22, 2008, Noel picked up on the news that one of the most famous shots from Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth movie about global warming — footage of ice shelves collapsing in Antarctica — were actually fictional, generated by a computer. The item was picked up by The Drudge Report and was discussed by Rush Limbaugh on his radio program that day.
Noel loved hammering Al Gore. On May 3, 2010, he noticed most of the media weren't showing Gore's new mansion as the Los Angeles Times did. This news contradicted Gore’s profession to Congress that “Every penny that I have made, I have put right into a non-profit deal, Alliance For Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge” of global warming.
On September 20, 2011, after the media attacked Texas Governor Rick Perry for his assertion that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme,"Noel dug up video of MSNBC host Chris Matthews saying the same thing on Hardball back in 2007: "It's a bad Ponzi scheme, at this point, yeah." Numerous Web sites quickly picked up on the find, with the Mediaite Web site noted: "The conservative blogosphere is abuzz over NewsBusters' unearthing of a 2007 video that featured MSNBC's Chris Matthews."
Noel also quickly pounced on how, after repeatedly mocking Sarah Palin as someone who would do poorly on Jeopardy!, Chris Matthews bombed during his appearance on a celebrity edition of the game show. Sheppard's May 15, 2012 post – which included clips of Matthews past mockery of Palin – was picked up by the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post and Fishbowl DC.
On June 12, 2012, Noel picked up on an interview that newly-named Current-TV host Joy Behar gave to the Web site Mediaite, in which she mocked likely GOP nominee Mitt Romney for saying that Americans want less government. "That is an idiotic statement…. I'd like to see his house burn, one of his millions of houses burning down. Who's he going to call, the Mormon fire patrol?" Sheppard's item was picked up by the Drudge Report.
Last December, Sheppard caught ABC's Barbara Walters telling CNN's Piers Morgan that in 2008, "we thought he [Obama] was going to be… the next Messiah." Drudge also picked up that story, helping to drive more than 450,000 visitors to that post.
The one that really made me laugh out loud was Charlie Daniels telling Piers Morgan on Twitter that Morgan and his crew "wouldn't last five minutes in the swamps Phil Robertson hangs out [in]."
Also:
> Brent Bozell: “Our Noel Sheppard Passed Away”
> Tim Graham: “Remembering Noel Sheppard In TV Appearances”
> Matthew Sheffield: “A Tribute to My Friend, Noel Sheppard”
> NB Staff: “FNC’s Megyn Kelly on Noel Sheppard: ‘I Was a Personal Fan of His...I Really Respected Him’”
