MRC's Graham Complains CNN 'Blurred' Reporting, Opinion (In Article Clearly Labeled As Opinion) Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham huffed in a July 28 post:
CNN has blurred any distinction between reporting and editorializing not only on television, but also on their own website. On Thursday, CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr raged against President Trump just like every other correspondent and host on CNN....this time in a commentary on CNN's online opinion page.
Weirdly missing from Graham's post was a link to Starr's piece. Perhaps because if he did, MRC readers would discover that Graham is lying.
As Graham concedes, Starr's article is placed on CNN's opinion page in the "Political Op-Eds" section. The top of the article contains an editor's note stating, "Barbara Starr is CNN's Pentagon correspondent. The views expressed in this commentary are her own."
In other words, there is no blurring -- Starr's piece is clearly labeled as opinion.
If Graham really wants to attack reporters who also expressed opinions, he need not go any farther than down the hall at MRC headquarters, where reporter Susan Jones has a bad habit of injecting opinion into articles that are supposed to be "news."
He doesn't even have to leave the building to vent his outrage over alleged violations of journalistic standards -- at least, not if the MRC wasn't embracing double standards and refused to hold its own "news" operation to the same standards it holds the rest of the media.
CNS Beats WND To The Punch Of Promoting A Conspiracy Theory Topic: CNSNews.com
We're previously written about the creeping WorldNetDaily-ization at the Media Research Center, which is also happening at its "news" division, CNSNews.com. It's gotten to the point now that, due to WND's severe financial problems, CNS is beating WND to the punch on things that have historically in WND's wheelhouse.
Conspiracy theories, for example. Susan Jones came up with a doozy in a July 25 CNS article:
Let's take another look at that June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where Donald Trump Jr. met with a group of Russians who supposedly had dirt on Hillary Clinton, but never delivered any.
[...]
Transcripts released by the Senate Judiciary Committee in May show that the people who met with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, crossed paths not only with each other but also with people in the Clinton orbit. They all worked and socialized with each other at various times.
And some of them went out of their way to be in New York City on June 9, the day of the meeting.
Another fact: The June 9 meeting happened at a time when the Democrat Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign were paying Fusion GPS (through a law firm) to conduct opposition research on candidate Donald Trump. Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson testified that he started paying for the Steele dossier in “May or June of 2016.”
What follows is an examination of those alleged connections, which is so lengthy that one wonders if Jones has a wall of pictures and strings at the CNS offices dedicated to illustrating this.
It's not until Aug. 13 that WND's Art Moore got around to spinning its own version of the same conspiracy theory:
Newly released records and a pattern of efforts by Hillary Clinton operatives employed by Kremlin-linked figures to connect the Trump campaign to Russia indicate the infamous Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer and Trump campaign staff may have been a set up.
Lee Smith of RealClearInvestigations reported the first line of evidence includes emails, texts and memos recently turned over to Congress by the Department of Justice.
The records, he said, show how closely senior Justice Department officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation worked with employees of Fusion GPS, the research firm paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to create the still-unverified “dossier” of dirt on Trump obtained from Russian operatives.
Smith noted the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between high-ranking Trump campaign staff, including Donald Trump Jr., and a Russian lawyer is cited as key evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton.
But Smith contends a growing body of evidence indicates “the real collusion may have taken place among those who arranged the meeting rather than the Trump officials who agreed to attend it.”
WND is so decimated at this point that it must outsource its conspiracy theories -- and lets other right-wing outlets get to those conspiracy theories first.
What LGBT Stuff Is The MRC Freaking Out About Now? Topic: Media Research Center
So many LGBT freakouts at the Media Research Center, so little time.
Matt Philbin mocked the "good old days" when "if you show up at the border -- or, more likely, get caught crossing it illegally -- you can claim anti-LGBT discrimination in your home country and get asylum," then sneered at reports of undocumented transgender immigrants being mistreated by ICE: "Our immigration personnel are so benighted they haven’t figured out the special treatment required by .4% of the people they encounter. Monstrous!"
Philbin followed that by huffing over a story about a largely lesbian synchrohized swimming team that aspires to perform at the Gay Games. After quoting one participant saying about her chosen sport that "I get to be sporty, but I get to do it in a sparkly costume," Philbin cattily added: "Just like Bruce Jenner!"
The mysterious Jay Maxson was annoyed that after a few pro baseball players saw racist and homophobic tweets they made when they were teenagers resurface, Major League Baseball is pushing sensitivity training: "Three of MLB's 750 players have racially tinged skeletons in their Twitter closets, so now MLB must whirl into action. Sensitivity training assignments have been made, programs must be initiated and everyone must look deep inside to find that inner racist. That's the progressive media way." Because trying to root out homophobia is worse then the homophobia itself, apparently.
Melissa Mullins threw a fit over a New York Times theater critic having "abjectly apologized" for not referring to a transgender actress, huffing that "'Misgenders' is PC code for 'uses a pronoun that is offensive to the gender benders'" and concluding that "Once again, political correctness wins. And they don't celebrate 'ALL people.' They don't celebrate people who won't bow before their demands."
Gabriel Hays is weirdly disappointed that Guns 'n' Roses omitted from a massive box set reissue of its debut album the song "One In A Million," whose racist and homophobic content was retrograde when it came out and hasn't, shall we say, aged well since. Hays insisted the offensive song is "an integral piece of the original formula" and that "Many would skip this purchase on principle." He then bizarrely likened the song to a statue of a Confederate general:
Offensive and ignorant garbage? You bet. But should it be memory-holed -- especially in a big retrospective? Wouldn’t a “warts and all” approach be justified. It would certainly be more honest.
I know, it’s only rock n’ roll. But erasing history -- whether a dumb Guns N’ Roses song or statues of Robert E. Lee -- is engaging in Stalinism for the mere sake of not triggering someone.
And Rachel Peterson whined that transgender activists want better representation in movies, suggesting they're overrepresented already: "The New York Times estimates transgender people make up, '0.6 percent of the adult population.' This doesn’t stop activists from bashing Hollywood for not catering to them."
WND's Kupelian Also Begs For Money, Also Refuses To Concede Its Content Is The Problem Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah isn't the only WorldNetDaily bigwig who was begging for money last month. Manging editor David Kupelian took a shot at in in an Aug. 9 column by starting out being slightly conciliatory and suggsting that he knows WND's editorial product may have some issues:
Starting back in January, WND was almost alone in warning America that Google, Facebook, YouTube and the other tech giants have been trying to shut down independent news and opinion voices like ours.
Many didn’t believe it. Some thought it was sour grapes – blaming others for our problems. Others were put off because our stories often ended up asking readers for money. Still others, while realizing it was all true, didn’t care that much because, after all, WND is imperfect and in some way had offended, or let them down, in the past.
We suspect Clark Jones was a little more than "offended" when WND lied about him. We also suspect President Obama was a little more than "offended" when WND spent eight years spreadingfakenews about his birth certificate. Given those two examples alone, "imperfect" rather understates the case. And we weren't bothered by WND's incessant begging for money as much as the fact that one appeal was plagiarized.
And blaming others for WND's problems -- which is exactly what Farah and Kupelian are doing, by the way -- isn't "sour grapes," it's denial of reality. Kupelian never mentions that projection or how WND has been "imperfect" again in his column; instead, he echoes Farah in railing against the "Digital Cartel" of Google and Facebook, blaming them for running WND out of business. As an added bonus, Kupelian assertrf that the Southern Poverty Law Center called WND a "hate group" -- which it hasn't, according to a Wikipedia list of those groups and the SPLC's own writeup on WND.
Despite the proclaimed urgent need for money now, Kupelian is also taking refuge in the idea that WND will be vindicated somewhere down the road, touting "revered economist and technology futurist" George Gilder's claim that Google "will one day come to an end" due to "a new age of decentralization, restored privacy and individual empowerment."
Kupelian then takes a stab at an emotional appeal for cash:
Only one thing is immune to Google/Facebook’s censoring, stifling, starving and shadow-banning independent, pro-American news and analysis like WND. Only one thing can counteract Amazon sucking up all the ecommerce and crippling everyone else.
That one thing that trumps all the predatory business practices, censorship and utopian fantasies of the current Internet gatekeepers is the creativity and goodness of real people acting under the inspiration of Almighty God. Arrogant, wealthy mega-companies cannot interfere with genuine virtue and generosity working through human beings committed to helping each other.
We at WND would love nothing more than to be able to continue working our hearts out doing what we’ve been doing for you for the past 21 years. If you agree, help us. It’s just as simple as that.
But, like Farah, Kupelian has done nothing to demonstrate why -- given that fake news and conspiracies have driven WND to this sorry state and its complete unwillingness to change that failed editorial model -- WND deserves to live.
If WND doesn't address the issue of its shoddy editorial content, Farah and Kupelian are doomed to keep begging for money ... if WND doesn't go out of business first.
The only reporting, as it were, that CNSNews.com did on Attorney General Jeff Sessions' speech last month to the right-wing group Turning Point USA was a blog post by Craig Bannister highlighting Sessions mocking speech codes and other alleged pampering of students purportedly designed to "create a generation of sanctimonious, sensitive, supercilious snowflakes."
In doing so, Bannister and CNS censored the actual news from Sessions' speech: his joining in a crowd chant of "lock her up" --"her," of course, meaning Hillary Clinton -- which, as it happens, came right before the student-mocking section of his speech, meaning that there was no way Bannister could not have known about it. Perhaps realizing that it's not a good look for the nation's chief law enforcement officer to endorse the imprisonment of a political opponent, Sessions was forced into some damage control afterwards, lamely declaring that "I perhaps should’ve taken a moment to advise them on the fact that people ... are presumed innocent until cases are made."
Apparently, that's not news at CNS, despite the fact that it still claims as part of its mission statement that it "endeavors to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." If it makes a Republican administraton look bad, it must not be a "legitimate" story at CNS.
WND Lamely Fearmongers Over 'Allahu Akbar' Chant At A Muslim Religious Observance Topic: WorldNetDaily
Just because Leo Hohmann is no longer a WorldNetDaily reporter doesn't mean that WND has stopped indulging in its usual fits of anti-Muslim fearmongering.
WND's Art Moore takes a crack at it in an Aug. 21 article under the intended-to-be-scary headline "Muslims chant 'Allahu akbar' at Vikings stadium." The very first part of his story is a Twitter post from Laura Loomer, the far-right, stunt-prone "journalist" who has been banned from Uber and Lyft for racist tweets. It's not a promising start. Ultimately, though, Moore just complains that a large group fo Muslims gathered in a single place to celebrate a religious holiday:
Amid chants of “Allahu Akbar,” or “Allah is the greatest,” broadcast over a loudspeaker, thousands of Muslims gathered Tuesday at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis for a massive rally in celebration of the Islamic Eid Al Adha holiday.
KMSP-TV in the Twin Cities reportedMinnesota’s various Islamic centers previously have held their own individual prayers for Eid, “but this year with more than two dozen mosques all coming together at U.S. Bank Stadium, they’re calling it Super Eid.”
US Bank Stadium was the site of the 2018 Super Bowl.
Moore, of course, is not-so-subtly suggesting that all Muslims are terrorists because they say they phrase "allahu akbar" and are even more prone to being terrorists because they are chanting it in a group, that that it was likely that "death to America" would be chanted next.
In reality, actual Muslims point out that "allahu akbar" is a phrase uttered by every Muslim and has no malicious intent whatsoever.
Moore then highlighted a call from the Council for American-Islamic Relations to increase security for the event due to "increased hostility toward the Muslim community" with the usual attacks on CAIR as "founded by Hamas" and an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a long-ago case.
So, something of a middling grade for Moore on the fearmongering stuff, far from WND's best work on the subject (that would probably be falsely and maliciously blaming Islam for a measles outbreak when the real culprit was WND's anti-vaxxer buddies).
Yes, WND's diminished financial state has left it so it can't even hate Muslims the way it used to.
MRC Lectures Liberals On The Exceedingly Narrow Limits Of Its Bogus Study Topic: Media Research Center
We've documented how the Media Research Center's potrayal of news coverage of President Trump as relentlessly negative is utterly bogus because it is so narrowly defined -- a specific set of statements on 3 news shows, as opposed to an analysis of all coverage on all news shows and channels -- that its only purpose is to provide Trump and Republicans a meaningless talking point.
The MRC's Nicholas Fondacaro inadvertently demonstrates just how meaningless that talking point is when he uses an Aug. 7 post to lash out at CNN anchor Don Lemon for purporttely misrepresenting it:
Speaking of being unable to say anything nice about someone; at the top of his show following the handoff, Lemon attacked a Media Research Center study that found 90 percent of broadcast network evening coverage of the President was negative.
“It always gets me when people say, ‘There's 90 percent. This study shows that 90 percent of the reports about this president are negative,’” he opined in a mocking voice. “But they don't talk about the things that come out of his mouth and the policies he proposes. And what he does and says to people.”
Lemon emphatically argued that reporting negatively was really the only way the media could cover the President. “How are we as media to report positively on something that’s negative,” he shouted. “If that is indeed true, then you need to counterbalance that and weight it against what comes out of this President's mouth and what he's doing.” Clearly, Lemon didn’t do his homework or else he would know exactly how we conduct our studies.
As MRC Research Director Rich Noyes explained in the study, “our analysis of ‘spin’ tracks only explicitly positive and negative statements from reporters and non-partisan sources; it excludes neutral statements as well as statements from partisans such as Trump praising himself or Democrats criticizing him.” It’s the evaluative statements from what’s supposed to be a neutral press that’s counted.
But "a narrow tracking of 'explicitly positive and negative statements' on just three TV shows that deliberately excludes the vast amount of neutral coverage" isn't how Fondacaro first described the study; he said it "found 90 percent of broadcast network evening coverage of the President was negative." It's only when a non-conservative pushes back against that bogus, overbroad talking point -- which, again, was crafted to be spread in the way Fondacaro first described it -- is he forced to concede how narrowly drawn it actually is.
And, as far as we know, nobody at the MRC has ever lectured Trump or any conservative for misleadingly extrapolating that talking point the way Fondacaro lectured Lemon. After all, Brent Bozell and Co. want that misrepresentation coming out of the mouths of conservatives -- but they don't want anyone to read the fine print.
Naturally, young black men with physical talents for music and sports are brought up and trained to support their ongoing self-destruction. Most had no fathers growing up – and the few fathers around were usually weak beta males. Black parents bring up children in the mass delusion of hate, blame and victimhood, creating ghettoes everywhere they go. Even “successful” blacks are very destructive.
Now blacks are hell-bent on destroying football. Black athletes dependent on the sport for their careers support its downfall! In anger, you can’t see what you’re doing.
[...]
And it’s true: Blacks just don’t care! Blacks today are very destructive. Black people are on earth for one purpose: to destroy, and not to build. The reason: It’s not in them to show respect to anyone – they don’t have love. They don’t have God. They’re angry at their mothers and disconnected from their fathers. They call good evil and evil good. In anger, lies look like “truth,” and darkness “light.”
Unfortunately, whites are so beaten down with false guilt, fear of facing angry people and accusations of “racism” that they won’t say anything to blacks! They’re unwilling to lose physical things for love of truth and fellowman.
The NFL owners and leadership are too cowardly and selfish to enforce discipline on out-of-control black thugs who turn their back on the flag, the country, the military. So younger generations watch this madness, and follow in the black thugs’ footsteps — with kids as young as 8 kneeling for the anthem, over a lie of “racism” and “police brutality” which don’t even exist.
Fortunately, President Trump is one white man with the courage and love to correct black people, calling them to be better, to return to respect for fellow Americans, which blacks had at one time. He suggested that NFL owners fire anyone who kneels for the anthem. He also decried the NFL’s compromise that allowed players to stay in the locker rooms – saying it’s worse than kneeling.
[...]
If more white men had the strength, character and love of truth that President Trump has, blacks would not be in the total darkness they’re in – and they would not be dragging the rest of the country down with them.
White people, and those of you who watch these games: it’s in your hands. You can continue to support your own destruction by supporting people who hate you. Or you can stop this evil nonsense, the decline, division and destruction of America. It’s time for repentance and unity of all decent people, to save our country.
Interestingly, Peterson somehow restrained himself from making "great white hope" reference. Perhaps he finally figured out that the racist origin of the phrase might be a tad offensive to the audience to which he's condescending.
CNS Gives Its Buddy Levin A Free Pass On His Falsehood Topic: CNSNews.com
Trump White House officials aren't the only people whose falsehoods and misleading claims CNSNews.com lets stand without challenge or fact-checking. Mark Levin -- whom CNS has promoted in 75 articles so far this year -- gets the non-treatment in an Aug. 10 blog post by Michael Morris:
On his nationally syndicated radio talk show Thursday, host Mark Levin said that if the Israeli government had their own Special Counsel, a Robert Mueller, they could’ve indicted then President Barack Obama and then Secretary of State John Kerry for election meddling.
“Now if the Israeli prosecutors had, or the Israeli government had, a Robert Mueller, I suppose they could’ve indicted Obama and John Kerry and a whole load of Obama officials for interfering with their election,” stated Mark Levin. “Would anybody have had a problem with that?”
Levin’s comments came in response to a report from The Washington Times detailing the Obama administrations meddling in the Israeli election.
In fact, as we documented when WorldNetDaily made the same charge, the Obama administration did not "interfere" in the 2015 Israeli presidential election. The State Department gave the Israeli group OneVoice $350,000 to promote peace efforts between Israel and Palestine; the intrastructure that money helped build was later used by the group during the election to criticize right-wing President Benjamin Netanyahu. Investigations found no wrongdoing -- no grant money was ever spent in the election, OneVoice complied with the the terms of the grant, and there was no limitation on post-grant uses of the resources. Nobody has ever proven that Obama gave the money to the group for the specific purpose of influencing the election, which is what Levin is alleging.
But, like the White House press office, Levin has a special relationship with CNS and its Media Resarch Center parent, so fact-checking his work is optional and likely discouraged.
Newsmax Columnist: Trump Endorsed A Black Candidate, So He Can't Be Racist Topic: Newsmax
John James, a West Point graduate, stormed to victory in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate [in Michigan] this week and will now face three-term incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow for the seat November 6. His stature in conservative circles has been rising for months and his victory was fueled by an endorsement by President Trump who said James is a future star in the Republican Party. In his race with businessman Sandy Pensler, James secured nearly 55 percent of the vote with well above 500,000 ballots cast for him.
Where is the racist GOP we have all been told so much about? I mean after all John James is an outspoken conservative, combat veteran, and notably he is black.
The left has been trumpeting a message for a very long time that the president is a racist and is a supporter of white nationalists. How could that be true with his enthusiastic support for John James? It is just as likely that if the president had thrown his support behind Pensler the outcome would have been different, but he didn’t. The president lined up to push James to victory in what otherwise appeared to be a toss-up.
This should sink the notion that Trump is a racist but of course it won’t and the left leaning national media outlets will simply ignore James' impressive victory.
During an obnoxious appearance on the Wednesday edition of HLN’s S.E. Cupp Unfiltered, CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta opened up and showcased his true disdain for Trump supporters after they booed and heckled him at a rally the night before.
According to Acosta, when he was surrounded by those Trump supporters in Tampa Bay, Florida, “Honestly, it felt like we weren't in America anymore. I don't know how to put it any more plainly than that.”
Americans should not be treating their fellow Americans in this way. But unfortunately what we've seen and this has been building for some time since the campaign,” he whined. The hypocrisy was breathtaking for two main reasons. First, there had been many a CNN employee that had condemned Trump supporters as racist rubes. Don Lemon is one name who fits that title.
Second, Acosta followed up by seeming to insinuate that those Trump supporters were ready to attack him like animals. “[Trump] is whipping these crowds up into a frenzy to the point where they really want to come after us,” he proclaimed. “We have these bike rack-like barriers around the press cage, as we call it, to protect us essentially from people who might take things too far. It's unfortunate.”
As someone who used to work on large stage productions in college, those barriers are primarily put up to protect the equipment.
[...]
After being teed up by host S.E. Cupp, Acosta worried that one day, one of those Trump supporters would snap and try to hurt a journalist, or worse. “I think it's been dangerous for some time. I was worried during the campaign that a journalist was going to get hurt and it has been building,” he opined. “But when you refer to members of the press as the enemy of the people, you're essentially putting targets on our backs.”
The smears against those hard-working Trump supporters weren’t just coming from Acosta. Cupp decried the pro-Trump “mob” and how a mother at the rally put an anti-CNN button on her baby. “And not even children are safe with parents using their babies as props in Trump’s war against the media,” she spat. “The fever pitch of Trump’s rhetoric and the mob-like dispositions of his supporters at these rallies has become downright scary.”
Following a clip of former Fox News commentator Lt. Col. Ralph Peters ludicrously comparing Trump’s rhetoric to Soviet purges, Cupp suggested it “might not be quite that bad,yet.”
It’s generally understood that the elitists at CNN and their affiliates look down their noses at Trump supporters in the heartland, but this level of open discontent is not too uncommon. And yet they're still struggling to rack their brains with why people dislike them.
Fondacaro also huffed that "Acosta asserted that the reason those Trump supporters hated CNN was that they were essentially brainwashed by Fox News and other conservative media outlets." But since he and his employer are are among the chief instigators of anti-CNN hate, he had no further comment.
WND's Farah Asks A Question He Fails To Answer Topic: WorldNetDaily
All month long, WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah has been spouting conspiracy theories (which, of course, he has no direct evidence to support) about how the "Digital Cartel" of Google and Facebook are running WND out of business (and not, say, WND's history of publishing fake news) while also begging for money to keep WND alive. His Aug. 20 column starts off with yet another anti-Google screed:
How much does Google hate WND?
It’s hard to underestimate the vitriol.
I understand. I’ve been a long-time harsh critic. Before most of the world caught on to Google’s racket, some 11 years ago, I publicly called Google “evil,” primarily for its coziness with the tyrannical brutes in Beijing. (See video above.) A decade later, knowing that Google has a better working relationship with the totalitarians in China than they do with Republicans in the U.S., my own level of respect for the search giant has only plummeted.
Why?
Because it’s killing freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion – in the U.S.!
Even if Farah's rants about Google are true -- that it's suppressing WND content because of a double-secret policy of discriminating against right-wing content or retaliation for Farah's unhinged anti-Google rants -- he's making the anti-capitalist argument that Google shouldn't be able to run its business as it pleases. (He's already demanded that Google and Facebook be subject to effective net neutrality.) At the same time, he's suggesting that WND should suffer no consequences in the marketplace for its history of fake news and conspiracy-mongering -- that WND should continue to exist by some kind of divine right, not that it has earned that right. (We would argue that it hasn't.)
The meat, as it were, of Farah's column is based on its headline: "Guess how many hits WND gets from Google search." He takes a stab at answering his own question:
How many visitors do you suppose are referred by Google?
Take a wild guess.
Would you suspect the biggest most powerful search engine in the world might send over maybe 10 percent?
Guess again. Not even close.
Seven or eight years ago, it was not unusual for WND stories to be among the top breaking news stories in the main Google News display. In at least the last five years, I can’t recall ever seeing one WND story cited on its first page where daily, hourly, you will find the left-wing editorials of Huffington Post and Daily Beast topping the referrals, along with the New York Times, CNN and Washington Post.
You won’t see the Daily Caller or Breitbart up there, either.
In other words, it’s a systematic boycott of the independent media that is not sold out to the fake news left, the Democratic Party and the conspiracy mongers of global warming, Russian collusion and anti-Trump hysteria.
Note that Farah doesn't answer his own question -- he never actually says how much traffic Google sends WND, other than that it's somewhere less than "10 percent." Nor does Farah explain why WND deserves more traffic from Google, whose function is to serve up relevant links to its users. Does Farah think Obama birther freakouts, Seth Rich conspiracy theories, fawning pro-Trump stenography and warmed-over press releases are relevant to people seeking fair, balanced newsworthy content?
In his usual column-ending pitch for cash, Farah implies that WND somehow represents the best of America: "If the 'Speech Code Cartel' wins, America loses." We suspect America will continue to do just fine if WND doesn't survive.
CNS Still Spreading the 'Fungible' Falsehood About Federal Funding to Planned Parenthood Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented how CNSNews.com has spent the past decade promoting the bogus claim that federal funding to Planned Parenthood is "fungible" and thus, somehow, pays for abortions despite the fact that the money is earmarked to specific women's health programs that have nothing to do with abortion. CNS is certainly not about to stop spreading the lie now.
An Aug. 1 CNS article by Max Augros cheering "the Trump administration’s plan to reapply a rule first introduced by the Reagan administration to ensure that federal Title X funds go solely to family planning offices that are separate from abortion providers" uncritically quoted anti-abortion groups and the Trump White House spreading the "fungible" falsehood:
In a press release, the [Susan B. Anthony] List stated that “the abortion industry has used Title X as a slush fund,” and thanked President Trump and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar for “putting a stop to this abuse.”
[...]
The Protect Life Rule “would ensure compliance with the [Title X] program’s existing statutory prohibition on funding programs in which abortion is a method of family planning,” the White House said in a statement.
“The new proposed rule would not cut funds from the Title X program,” reads the statement. “Instead, it would ensure that taxpayers do not indirectly fund abortions. Contrary to recent media reports, HHS’s proposal does not include the so-called ‘gag rule’ on counseling about abortion that was part of the Reagan Administration’s Title X rule.”
[...]
“The American people have repeatedly and clearly voiced their opposition to taxpayer funding of abortion, but for years, their will – expressed in the statute itself – has been ignored,” the SBA List said in a joint comment with theLife Issues Institute.
“We wholly support the Protect Life Rule, which draws a bright line between abortion and family planning in the Title X program,” the press release stated.
And for good measure, Augros furthered the falsehood by stating that Planned Parenthood's "latest annual report (2016-17) shows that it received $543.7 million in federal government reimbursements and grants, and performed 321,384 abortions that year" -- as if juxtaposing those numbers prove that the money directly pays for those abortions.
The next day, in an article complaining that Planned Parenthood has received Title X funding, managing editor Michael W. Chapman stated the falsehood more directly: "However, money is fungible and grants for one purpose can free-up funds for another purpose. As House Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) has said, 'Today, hundreds of abortion clinics are co-located at Title X family planning facilities. For example, 266 of Planned Parenthood’s abortion clinics are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers in the Title X program to the tune of about $56 million each year.'"
Just because a Republican congressman said it doesn't mean it's true. Chapman offered no evidence to back up the claim, nor did Smith in the Catholic News Agency commentary to which Chapman linked.
WND Promotes A Fawning Huckabee TV Interview, Calls It An 'Exclusive' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Because of its diminished state as a result of its money woes, WorldNetDaily publishes a lot less original content generated by its own writers; there's now a greater proportion of rewritten press releases and barely disguised promotions masquerading as "news." A sad example of the latter is an anonymously written Aug. 18 article presented as a "WND Exclusive":
WASHINGTON – Sarah Sanders got grilled tonight – but not by Jim Acosta of CNN.
It was her adoring father Mike Huckabee in a long-format interview on his TBN show.
After an big welcome from the studio audience, Huckabee remarked, “Well, obviously you’re not in the Red Hen Restaurant in West Virginia, right now.”
If you missed the first segment, here it is.
But, just so you know, she’s not finished…
There’s more tonight on “Huckabee.”
That's the entirety of the article.
Did Huckabee or TBN pay WND for this fawning promo about a fawning interview? WND certainly needs the money, and it certainly reads like a paid ad.
In other words, this article is lazy at best and unethical at worst. And it doesn't exactly help make the case that WND deserves to live.
NEW ARTICLE: Tom Blumer Gets NewsBusted Topic: NewsBusters
The blogger was fired from the Media Research Center-operated NewsBusters after white nationalist links were discovered in his posts. But what about the MRC editors who let those links go through in the first place? Read more >>
The Media Research Center's Tim Graham huffed in a July 28 post: 
We're previously written about the 
So many LGBT freakouts at the Media Research Center, so little time.
Joseph Farah isn't the only WorldNetDaily bigwig who was begging for money last month. Manging editor David Kupelian took a shot at in in an Aug. 9 
The only reporting, as it were, that CNSNews.com did on Attorney General Jeff Sessions' speech last month to the right-wing group Turning Point USA was a 
Just because 
We've 
It's been a while since we've seen WorldNetDaily columnist Jesse Lee Peterson 
Trump White House officials aren't the only people whose falsehoods and misleading claims CNSNews.com 
John James, a West Point graduate, stormed to victory in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate [in Michigan] this week and will now face three-term incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow for the seat November 6. His stature in conservative circles has been rising for months and his victory was fueled by an endorsement by President Trump who said James is a future star in the Republican Party. In his race with businessman Sandy Pensler, James secured nearly 55 percent of the vote with well above 500,000 ballots cast for him.
The two main agenda items for the Media Research Center over the past year are 
All month long, WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah has been 
We've 
Because of its diminished state as a result of its money woes, WorldNetDaily publishes a lot less original content generated by its own writers; there's now a greater proportion of rewritten press releases and barely disguised promotions masquerading as "news." A sad example of the latter is an anonymously written Aug. 18 
