CNS Still Pushing Birth Control 'Abortifacient' Myth Topic: CNSNews.com
Brittany Hughes writes in an Aug. 5 CNSNews.com article:
While advocates of religious freedom and the sanctity of life have hailed last month’s Hobby Lobby decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, the ruling did not liberate health insurance companies from being required to provide coverage for abortifacient drugs in their plans.
The Supreme Court ruled that Hobby Lobby, which is a Christian family-owned company, could not be required to provide cost-free coverage for two types of IUDs and two abortifacient drugs because the owners believed doing so violated their religious beliefs.
As CNS sofrequentlydoes, it's falsely portraying birth control as abortifacients. In fact, birth control methods that prevent implantation of a fertilized egg are, by medical definition, not abortifacients.
CNS management is aware of this medical fact. In a July 2 column CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey grumbled that the conservative Supreme Court justices who wrote the majority opinion in the Hobby Lobby case pointed out the medical reality that such birth control methods are not abortifacients. He then tried to create his own reality by snarking: "OK, so do not call it an 'abortion.' Just call it a 'killing'."
So, it appears that CNS has chosen to deny reality because it conflicts with its political agenda. So much for journalism.
Neither article mentions that 227,000 jobs were created. That last article, by Ali Meyer, fails to mention one significant factor in the dropping labor participation rate: baby boomers are retiring.
CNS Promotes Levin Lawsuit, Doesn't Disclose MRC's Business Deal With Him Topic: CNSNews.com
Susan Jones writes in a July 25 CNSNews.com article:
A conservative legal group is asking a federal judge to punish the Environmental Protection Agency for destroying or failing to preserve emails and text messages requested in August 2012 under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Landmark Legal Foundation believes the requested -- but never delivered -- messages to outside groups would have revealed EPA attempts to influence the 2012 presidential election.
"The EPA is a toxic waste dump for lawlessness and disdain for the Constitution,” said Landmark Legal President Mark Levin.
CNS neglects to mention that CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, has a business relationship with Levin, in which the MRC pays Levin on his radio show and uses Levin's endorsement on its own websites.
Though CNS presents itself as a news operation presumably subject to journalistic codes of ethics, it regularly publishes stories about Levin while failing to disclose that he's a paid spokesman.
CNS' Hollingsworth Dutifully Transcribes More Right-Wing Talking Points Topic: CNSNews.com
Barbara Hollingsworth has yet another fit of lazy journalism in which she decides to serve as stenographer for a right-wing activist group in a July 22 CNSNews.com article. This time, she uncritically repeats attacks from the Institute for Energy Research that a new report warning of the dangers of climate change "is just another attempt by economic and political elites to impose a carbon tax on Americans."
Such ties and funding would seem to counter Hollingsworth's implication that IER's criticism is objective and not agenda-driven, but she doesn't want you to know about it.
CNS Claims Global Warming Has Ended Because Of Cool Weather In U.S. Topic: CNSNews.com
Can you spot the major science failure in the headline of Penny Starr's July 21 CNSNews.com article, "Global Warming? U.S. Temps Up 0.1 Degrees above 20th Century Average, 2014 Coolest Since 1993"?
That's right -- suggesting that global warming has been disproved because of a few cool months in the U.S. is utterly dishonest.
Starr herself confuses with her article:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) 2014 weather highlights show that from January to June, the temperature in the U.S. has risen by only 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit compared with the average temperature for the 20th century.
NOAA highlights also show that recorded temperatures in the U.S. for the first half of 2014 are the coldest since 1993.
Starr doesn't tell you, however, that globally, last month was the hottest June in 134 years of record-keeping. That would seem to be an important fact to note in an article about climate -- especially since it's in the same NOAA data from which she pulls her U.S. weather data -- but Starr doesn't think so.
What Starr has done is written an article that is technically accurate but so absurdly narrow in focus as to be useless for anything other than political propaganda. Just the way CNS likes it, we presume.
Terry Jeffrey's Immigration Metaphor Misfire Topic: CNSNews.com
Terry Jeffrey writes in his July 16 CNSNews.com column:
Sam, the wealthiest man in his neighborhood, lives in a big beautiful house with a massive backyard punctuated by a large, deep swimming pool.
While Sam is personally not very fond of children — he supports abortion on demand and believes the government should force all employers to offer female workers free sterilizations — he nonetheless lives in a neighborhood that teems with little ones.
The children are particularly attracted to Sam's beautiful pool — and, on those rare occasions when Sam is actually in his backyard, he frequently finds himself shooing these children away.
Worried relatives have repeatedly warned Sam that he ought to build a fence around his yard — or at least around his pool — to guard against the awful possibility that a neighborhood child might otherwise drown.
But Sam does not want a fence. He objects that it would mar the aesthetics of his yard, and that if some kid really wanted to get into the pool he could climb over the fence.
So, should Sam build one? If he went out one morning and found a boy had drowned in his pool, would he have some culpability for that child's unnecessary death?
The answers are yes and yes.
And, although it is not a perfect analogy, Sam's pool is a little like Uncle Sam's territory near our border with Mexico.
There is no doubt people are tempted to enter U.S. property without the permission of the U.S. government. There is also no doubt this can be a dangerous, even deadly, thing to do.
No, Mr. Jeffrey, your analogy isn't perfect -- heck, it's not even remotely analogous. The act of crossing the border isn't deadly, and America is not an "attractive nuisance" like an unfenced pool where something could go wrong simply by being in the presence of it.
Jeffrey goes on to cite the example of a teenager from Guatemala whose body was found in Texas. But the United States didn't kill him; the trip from Guatemala likely played a factor.
If Jeffrey wants a more perfect analogy, he should have that unfenced pool surrounded by miles of barbed wire, thorns and a few land mines thrown in for good measure.
If Jeffrey thinks America is an unfenced pool in need of a double-layer fence with armed border guards, he clearly doesn't understand anything about immigration. But given his previous attempt at analogy, we already knew that.
CNS Parses Diplomatic Deaths Under Bush To Keep Benghazi Alive Topic: CNSNews.com
Patrick Goodenough didn't like Bill Clinton's highlighting how Republican members of Congress failed to criticize deaths of embassy personnel during attacks occurring under the Bush administration the way they are freaking out over Benghazi, and he devoted a June 30 CNSNews.com article to parse how Clinton's criticism is purportedly meaningless:
Unstated by the former president, however, was the fact that those U.S. diplomatic personnel who were killed during the George W. Bush administration died in circumstances other than an attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission:
[...]
U.S. diplomatic missions around the world did come under attack a number of times during the Bush years, but those attacks killed foreigners, and in some cases American civilians – not serving U.S. diplomatic personnel:
Gotta love how Goodenough insists those deaths under the Bush administraiton don't count because they don't fit the exact circumstances of Benghazi.
Is CNS really this desperate to keep Benghazi alive that it must portray other deaths as insignificant by comparision?
CNS' Jeffrey Is Obsessively Counting Obama's Words Again Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey really did devote an entire July 11 article to this piece of worthless trivia:
Not counting instances when he quoted a letter from a citizen or cited dialogue from a movie, President Barack Obama used the first person singular--including the pronouns "I" and "me" and the adjective "my"--199 times in a speech he delivered Thursday vowing to use unilateral executive action to achieve his policy goals that Congress would not enact through the normal, constitutional legislative process.
Jeffrey is bizarrely upset that Obama's speech does not favorably compare to the Gettysburg address:
The White House presented Obama’s speech, which the president delivered at Austin’s Paramount Theatre, as “Remarks by the President on the Economy.” The remarks, the White House reports, ran 40 minutes, and the full transcript (including annotations for “laughter” and “applause”) is more than 5,500 words.
By contrast, President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettyburg Address was only 272 words--and did not include any form of the first person singular.
In President Obama’s speech, he used a first person singular, on average, every 12 seconds. At that rate, had Obama spoken for just 15 more minutes, he would have used the first person singular more than 272 times in one speech—exceeding all the words in the Gettysburg Address.
In one 68-word passage--in which he vowed to act unilaterally if Congress did not enact legislation he liked--Obama used the first person singular five more times than the zero times Lincoln used it in his 272 words at Gettysburg.
Jeffrey and CNS have a weird fixation on the words Obama uses -- Jeffrey even devoted a column to Obama's supposedly excessive use of the first person back in 2009. This ignores the fact that one analysis found “Obama has distinguished himself as the lowest I-word user of any of the modern presidents.”
CNS' Jeffrey Touts Pat Buchanan's Whitewashing Of Southern Strategy Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey spends his July 9 column slobbering over Pat Buchanan's new book on his work for the Nixon presidential campaign:
Wherever Nixon's merits and demerits place him among American presidents, Buchanan's first-person chronicle of how Nixon climbed back from a humiliating defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial election to win the presidency in 1968 is not just a unique and enduring look at one of this nation's most interesting political campaigns but at a decade that changed America forever.
[...]
Buchanan's book is a great story told by a great storyteller. Along the way are first-person anecdotes that not only reveal how Buchanan's boss plotted and executed what may indeed have been the greatest comeback in American political history, but also how he prepared himself to use the presidency he won to deal with great international problems, including the Vietnam War and U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and China.
Jeffrey goes on to highlight one piece of Buchanan's work:
Buchanan anchored the right flank of Nixon's immediate staff, and part of his job was to help keep the conservative movement — which had backed Goldwater in 1964 — in Nixon's camp for 1968.
Beyond that was a longer-term political vision. "The crucial elements of the new majority I had in mind," writes Buchanan, "were the solid centrist GOP base that had stood by Nixon in 1960, the rising conservative movement, to which I belonged, the 'northern Catholic ethnics' of German, Irish, Italian, Polish and other East European descent, and the Southern Protestants, who saw themselves as abandoned by a Democratic Party moving leftward."
Jeffrey won't tell you, but Buchanan's plan is better known as the Southern Strategy -- which in large part sought to recruit racist whites unnerved by blacks' voting rights being protected.That was one of several racially divisive strategies Buchanan sought to implement on Nixon's behalf.
But Jeffrey doesn't want you to know that. After all, CNS also published Buchanan's column touting his whitewash.
CNS Still Considers Spending On LGBT Issues To Be A Waste of Money Topic: CNSNews.com
Last year, we documented how CNSNews.com's "Waste Watch" list disproportionately portrayed LGBT-related issues as evidence of wasteful federal spending. It's still doing it.
The latest "Waste Watch" item appears as a July 1 article by Melanie Hunter:
The National Institutes of Health has awarded $357,783 to the Fenway Community Health Center in Boston, Mass., to reduce health disparities in LGBTQ youth of color.
The purpose of the grant is described as “to establish a sustainable community-based participatory research process to reduce health disparities among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth of color.”
According to the grant, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) youth of color abuse alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, engage in risky sexual behaviors, and attempt suicide “in high rates that are disproportionate to those of both white LGBTQ youth and heterosexual youth of color.”
Hunter didn't explain why she considers improving the health of gay youth to be a waste of money.
The latest employment numbers were very good news, with 288,000 new jobs created and the unemployment rate falling to 6.1 percent. But what's good news for the economy under a Democratic president is bad news for CNSNews.com, so it had a mission: Bury that good news under a pile of cherry-picked numbers.
And CNS did just that with an onslaught of articles:
None of these articles mentioned the fact that 288,000 jobs were created in June.
Additionally, an article by Penny Starr quoted an officials with the right-wing group Generation Opportunity -- described by Starr only as "a Millinneal think tank" with no mention of its ideological slant -- claiming that “My generation needs more jobs." That article, too, failed to mention that 288,000 jobs were created in June.
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.
Brittany Hughes writes in an Aug. 5 CNSNews.com article:
Susan Jones writes in a July 25 CNSNews.com 
Barbara Hollingsworth has 
Terry Jeffrey writes in his July 16 CNSNews.com 
Last year, we 
The U.S. economy 
