Topic: CNSNews.com
The idea that President Obama regularly apologizes for America while overseas has long been right-wing dogma, despite the fact that it never actually happened. The Media Research Center particularly loves this.
So, leave it to MRC "news" division CNSNews.com to perpetuate the bogus meme with a May 25 article by Patrick Goodenough, under the headline "Obama’s Japan Visit Starts With Apology–Although Not For Hiroshima."
What a fundmentally dishonest headline. CNS and Goodenough surely know that at no point did Obama ever claim he would offer an apology to Japan while visiting the site of the U.S nuclear attack on Hiroshima during his visit to Japan (and he did not). But it's clear that pandiering to right-wingers is more important to CNS than reporting facts -- a disturbing attitude for a self-proclaimed "news" operation.
Goodenough's actual article isn't much better, as he too is eager to amplify a false right-wing meme:
President Obama has said he will not offer an apology when visiting Hiroshima this week, but his trip to Japan began on an awkward note and expressions of regret, after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe opened a press appearance by sternly lecturing him over a murder allegedly perpetrated by a former U.S. Marine on Okinawa.
[...]
In his response Obama briefly addressed the Okinawa case, but reprised his remarks by stressing the importance of a bilateral alliance which he said has “helped to fortify peace and security throughout the region.”
He then said he had expressed to the prime minister his “sincerest condolences and deepest regrets” over the incident – the killing of a 20-year-old Japanese woman on the island.
Obama gave assurances that the U.S. would continue to cooperate with the investigation and ensure justice is done under Japan’s legal system.
Note that nowhere in Goodenough's reporting of Obama's remarks is any mention of the apology the article's headline claims and his own introduction suggests. Condolences and regrets over a crime are not apologies.
Goodenough caps off the article by quoting a writer from the right-wing Heritage Foundation (whose ideology he does not disclose) complaining that "Obama’s trip will appear to affirm the oft-expressed Japanese view of itself as victim due to its unique status as the only country to have suffered an atomic attack." Goodenough made no apparent attempt to seek out an alternative, non-conservative viewpoint.
Goodenough is capable of fair reporting when he wants to be, but in recent months he's taken the lazy way out by being content to put right-wing memes over facts, such as he work on Syrian refugees and anti-U.S. propaganda in Iran.
