CNS Falsely Links Border Crisis to DREAM Act Topic: CNSNews.com
A June 26 CNSNews.com article by Brittany M. Hughes, detailing her visit to an overcrowded detention facility in Texas for the influx of Central American refugees currently crossing the border, carries the misleading headline "The ‘DREAM Act’ I Saw."
But the surge in refugees has nothing whatsoever to do with the DREAM Act, which was never implemented. A separate CNS article appears to concede this, approvingly quoting a bishop pointing out that the influx is primarily caused by "the rise of violence against children, fomented by organized criminal networks, including drug cartels. They act with impunity, threatening families and coercing children and youth to join their membership or face violence or even death."
Further, even if the DREAM Act -- which would provide a path to citizenship for certain children of illegal immigrants -- had been implemented, it wouldn't apply to the current influx of refugees. The act would apply only to those who were in the U.S. before June 2007.
CNS Equates Gays With Satanists Topic: CNSNews.com
The Media Research Center has an anti-gayagenda, so why wouldn't its "news" division try to portray gays as satanists? That's exactly what CNS managing editor Michael Chapman does in a June 11 article headlined "Satanic Temple: Gay Marriage is 'a Sacrament’":
While Chapman goes on to admit that the Satanic Temple considers heterosexual marriage to be as much of a sacrament as gay marriage, much of the article is given over to "why TST focuses on gay rights." It's clear that the only reason this article exists is for Chapman to liken homosexuality to satanism.
After all, CNS is part of an organization with an anti-gay agenda, so of course Chapman would do this.
CNS' Hollingsworth Serves As Right-Wing Stenographer Yet Again Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's Barbara Hollingsworth has a disturbingtradition of simply serving as a stenographer of right-wing talking points, making no effort to seek out an alternative view. She does this again in a May 29 CNS article in which she regurgitates "eight pervasive 'myths' about the Affordable Care Act," as claimed by the right-wing National Center for Policy Analysis.
Hollingsworth simply takes the NCPA's word for their claims and makes no apparent effort to seek out any response.
The sad thing is, Hollingsworth is a senior editor at CNS. You'd think someone claiming a title of senior editor would be capable of doing more than copying right-wing talking points. That's apparently not how that works at CNS.
The U.S. economy added 217,000 jobs in May, pusing the number of jobs in the country past its pre-recession peak -- but you'll never read about that at CNSNews.com.
Following its anti-Obama agenda, CNS once again ignored good news about jobs to cherry-pick stats that make Obama look bad, as demonstrated in two articles by Ali Meyer:
The fact that Meyer could find only two statistics to cherry-pick shows that there is little bad news about the economy for her to report. That just goes to show once again that good news for America is bad news for CNS.
CNS Afghanistan Body Count Obsession Watch Topic: CNSNews.com
cns'CNSNews.com's Afghanistan body-count obsession resurfaced last month, and now Ali Meyer keeps feeding the body-count beast with a June 2 article:
Eighty-six percent of the U.S. troops who have been wounded in the war in Afghanistan incurred their injuries after January 2009, the month President Barack Obama was first inaugurated, according to the Department of Defense.
Unusual for CNS, Meyer does acknowledge the existence of war casualties before Obama became president, noting that 'From 2003 until the first quarter of 2009, the majority of the major limb amputations due to battle injuries occurred in [Operation Iraqi Freedom]." But she doesn't mention who was president from 2003 to early 2009 (hint: it wasn't Obama).
CNS Blogger Cheers Putin's Disrespect of Obama Topic: CNSNews.com
Barbara Boland devotes a May 23 CNSNews.com blog post to expressing her pleasure that Russia's Vladimir Putin dissed President Obama and got cheered for doing so:
Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to Obama's accusations that he's lied about the Ukraine with: "Who is he to judge? Who is he to judge, seriously? If he wants to judge, why doesn't he get a job in court somewhere."
Putin's answer brought cheers and clapping from the crowd at the St. Petersburg economic conference where he was interviewed.
The CNBC interviewer asked Putin: "You have said 'we are a room full of adults,' so let's have an adult conversation. President Obama has accused you of untruths, as you know, when it comes to supporting some of the separatist groups in the Ukraine..."
Putin responded through an interpreter:
"Who is he to judge? Who is he to judge, seriously?" The crowd began to laugh and clap. "If he wants to judge people, why doesn't he get a job in court somewhere?"
"I don't think he accused me," Putin added for emphasis. "It's his point of view. And I have my point of view when he comes to certain things."
Then, after a pause, "What is it that interested you about what [Obama] said?"
At that point, both the interviewer and the crowd broke out in laughter.
Boland certainly does not disapprove of Putin's insult. Perhaps she should move to Russia if she prefers him as a leader.
CNS' Starr Upset Abstinence Not Mentioned As Solution To Sexual Disease Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr -- who likes to make false, alarmist claims about how morning-after pills cause abortion -- has a freakout about someone else's supposed alarmist claim in a May 19 CNS article:
Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for external medical affairs at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, says in a video that the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is a sexually transmitted disease that everyone will contract.
“In terms of sexually transmitted diseases, expect to have HPV once you become sexually intimate,” says Cullins, who is an obstetrician and gynecologist. “All of us get it.”
Starr's only source of rebuttal is Dr. Donna Harrison, "executive director and director of research and public policy at the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists," so you know it's biased:
Harrison said an HPV diagnosis can “change a woman’s life forever.”
Harrison said she also is sexually active as a married woman but she has not contracted the virus because she is in a monogamous relationship.
“That is the safest way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases,” Harrison said.
Neither Harrison nor Starr mention Gardasil, a vaccine that can prevent HPV infections, but Starr's fellow Media Research Center co-workers have been busy fearmongering about that. Her article, oddly, includes a picture marked as "HPV vaccine."
Starr doesn't seem to be upset that Planned Parenthood may be overstating the prevalence of HPV -- even she concedes that "79 million Americans are infected with the virus" -- but, instead, she's upset that Planned Parenthood and the Centers for Disease Control are living in the real world, not in her right-wing Christian world, and do not mention absinence as a way to avoid catching HPV.
Also, this Planned Parenthood video Starr is writing about is not a new one -- it was released in 2009. Starr does not explain why it took her five years to write about it.
Terry Jeffrey rants in a May 21 CNSNews.com column:
Two Senate committees held hearings this month on the nomination of Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell to succeed Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services, the federal agency most responsible for overseeing implementation of Obamacare.
In these two hearings, according to transcripts published by CQ Transcriptions, the senators and the nominee spoke approximately 49,000 words. Not one of these words directly addressed the contraception-sterilization-abortion-inducing drug regulation that Sebelius issued under Obamacare and that is now the target of more than 90 lawsuits.
[...]
The central question in the lawsuits filed against Sebelius is whether the federal government can force Americans into complicity with the taking of innocent human life by compelling them to buy or provide health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs.
[...]
As the enforcer, Burwell will effectively tell Americans: Under Obamacare's individual mandate, you must buy health insurance, and under our regulation, that insurance must cover abortion-inducing drugs.
As we've repeatedlydocumented, no drugs that fit the medical definition of "abortion-inducing drugs" are covered by Obamacare.
Why must Jeffrey and CNS continue to lie about this provision?
Since October 2001, when the Afghanistan war began, 1,798 children and 1,107 widows had their loved ones pass away in the conflict, according to CNSNews.com’s database of U.S. casualties.
In the more than 12 years that have passed since U.S. troops first entered Afghanistan, 2,195 service personnel have given their lives in and around Afghanistan in support of U.S. military activities in that country. Those 2,195 men and women left behind a combined 2,905 widows and children -- 2,083 of those widows and children, or 71.7%, came after President Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009.
As has happened so often in CNS' Afghanistan body count obsession, two words are missing from Meyer's article: "Bush" and "Iraq." Meyer does not identify the president who presided over more than 4,000 U.S. troop deaths in Iraq -- or 28.3 percent of the deaths in Afghanistan -- nor has CNS made an effort to count up the widows and orphans of troops killed in Iraq.
CNS Tries To Distrace From Bad News About Melting Polar Ice Topic: CNSNews.com
This week, the New York Times reported that according to scientists, a large section of the massive West Antarctica ice sheet has begun falling apart and its continued melting now appears to be unstoppable, and if the findings hold up, they suggest that the melting could destabilize neighboring parts of the ice sheet and a rise in sea level of 10 feet or more may be unavoidable in coming centuries.
But the climate deniers at CNSNews.com don't want to talk about that. They'd rather take the "Squirrel!" approach and highlight something that reinforces their political ideology.
Thus, we have a May 13 article by Barbara Hollingsworth declaring that Himalayan glaciers are mostly not melting:
Nearly 87 percent of Himalayan glaciers are currently “stable,” neither melting nor advancing, according to a new study that cast further doubt on claims that melting glacial ice will help cause a dramatic rise in sea levels this century.
Often referred to as the “Third Pole,” the Himalayans contain “one of the largest concentrations of glaciers outside the polar regions,” according to the study by a group of Indian researchers that was published in the April 2014 edition of “Current Science.”
Hollingsworth makes no mention of the melting Antarctic ice sheet.
Dishonest MRC Video Purports to Bust Myth of 'Gun Show Loophole' Topic: CNSNews.com
Matt Vespa declares in a May 7 CNSNews.com blog post that a Media Research Center video busts the myth of the "gun show loophole":
On April 25, MRCTV's Dan Joseph decided to go to the Nation's Gun Show at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Virginia. Arguably, it was probably one of the safest places to film a segment for MRCTV, especially with all the police on-site. As liberals continue to harp about expanding background checks and closing to so-called gun show loophole, Joseph asked a few vendors about the process involved when it comes to buying their merchandise.
No, this isn't a flea market. This isn't like any store where you can just put money down and leave with your goods. You have to go through background checks, and vendors will absolutely not sell to anyone with a criminal record.
Vendors say they won't even talk business with someone they think is suspicious.
So, if you want to buy a gun at a gun show, or from federally licensed firearms dealer (FFL), here's the typical process.
But there's false extrapolation here. Neither Vespa nor Joseph offer any evidence that the standards at this particular gun show -- which is operated by a national company that holds the sale several times a year -- are applied at all gun shows in Virginia. Indeed, one reporter was able to buy firearms at a Virginia gun show from private sellers without any paperwork.
Virginia law requires background checks for gun sales from federally licensed dealers, but not for firearms transferred privately, which is the "gun show loophole." While all vendors at the gun show Joseph attended may be required to be federally licensed dealers, that's clearly not the case for all gun shows, or even all gun shows in Virginia.And that may not even be true for this particular gun show: in 2013, a Virginia lawmaker reported he was able to buy a revolver at this gun show without a background check.
You might remember Joseph embarrassing himself by lamely pretending to be transgender in order to mock anti-discrimination laws.
In April, the unemployment rate dropped from 6.7 percent to 6.3 percent, and 288,000 jobs were created. CNS clearly had to spin that away: A May 2 article by Michael Chapman grumbled that "The national unemployment rate was 6.3% in April, which is the same unemployment rate America experienced halfway through the last recession, in the fall of 2008." At no point in his article did he mention that the rate declined 4/10 of a percent.
Another article by Chapman claimed that the "total unemployed" rate was 12.3 percent. Chapman then discredits himself by admitting that rate counts "have looked for full-time employment but have had to settle for a part-time job," which means they aren't "unemployed."
CNS cranked out three more articles designed to blot out the good news:
CNS' Jeffrey Manipulates Numbers To Downplay Issue Of Minimum-Wage Workers Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com loves to play fast and loose with economic numbers. Editor in chief Terry Jeffrey demonstrates again how it's done in an April 30 article:
A majority of the Americans who worked for the minimum wage or less in 2013 were 24 years old or younger, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and only 0.8 percent of American workers were 29 or older and worked for the minimum wage or less.
[...]
In total in 2013, according to the BLS, 143,929,000 people were employed in some kind of job in the United States. Of these, a total of 3,300,000—or about 2.3 percent—earned the minimum wage or less. Of those earning the minimum wage or less, 1,663,000 were between 16 and 24 years old. That equaled about 50.4 percent of the people earning the minimum wage or less.
Another 436,000 earning the minimum wage or less were from 25 to 29 year of age.
That leave 1,201,000—or 0.8 percent of American workers—who earned the minimum wage or less and were older than 29.
What Jeffrey fails to spell out: These numbers mean that 36% of people making minimum wage were older than 29.
But for some reason he's rather compare it to the much larger pool of all workers -- making the number deceptively insignificant. Wonder why that is...
Terry Jeffrey writes in an April 23 CNSNews.com article:
The acreage the federal Bureau of Land Management currently owns in the state of Nevada is more than all the land in all of the states of New England combined, according to data published by the Congressional Research Service.
By contrast, the BLM does not own a single acre of land in any New England state.
Meanwhile, as of this writing, CNS has published no original coverage of Cliven Bundy's racist remarks, and it has refused to place wirearticles about the remarks on its front page so that readers are aware of them.
No, CNS, 'The Ten Commandments' Did Not 'Win Nielsen Ratings' Topic: CNSNews.com
An April 22 CNSNews.com article by Michael Chapman declares, "'Ten Commandments'--Made in 1956--Wins Nielsen Ratings." But that's not quite what happened, which is clear once you start reading Chapman's story:
“The Ten Commandments,” a movie made 58 years ago starring the conservative Charlton Heston as “Moses,” and which is broadcast by ABC every year at Easter, won the Nielsen ratings for adult viewers ages 18-49 and for total viewers on Saturday, April 19, pulling in 5.87 million viewers and beating NBC, FOX and CBS.
[...]
In 2013, “The Ten Commandments” on ABC drew 5.9 million viewers, and in 2012 it garnered 6.9 million viewers. This year, with an audience of 5.87 million, the movie easily beat NBC’s Dateline Saturday Mystery (4.49 million viewers), FOX’s UFC: Werdum vs. Browne (1.99 million watchers), and CBS’s Mike & Molly show (2.2 million).
As the evening continued, “The Ten Commandments” still garnered the largest total audience, beating out CBS’s Criminal Minds (2.86 million viewers), CBS’s 48 Hours (5.49 million), and NBC’s Saturday Night Live (2.79 million).
So, no, "The Ten Commandments did not "win" the "Nielsen ratings" -- it won its time slot. As USA Today reports, the film was not even among the top 20 programs of the week, it drew only about one-third the viewers of the top-rated program, "NCIS," and it drew fewer viewers than the latest episode of "Game of Thrones," which does not even air on broadcast TV.
Nevertheless, Chapman goes on to promote how "Ten Commandments" star Charlton Heston "was a liberal early in his career but became more conservative in the 1980s." He doesn't explain the obvious -- that Heston was a liberal at the time "The Ten Commandments" was released in 1956.
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