Meet CNS' Resident Mark Levin Fanboy Topic: CNSNews.com
Michael Morris is CNSNews.com's assistant editor for commentary. He's also the website's chief Mark Levin fanboy. Over the ast couple weeks, he cranked no fewer than five CNS blog posts transcribing the right-wing ranter's latest alleged pearls of wisdom:
Morris claims to have a law degree, so you'd think he'd be sensitive to issues like conflict of interest. Apparently not -- which may be why he's working as an assistant editor for a right-wing website instead of as a lawyer.
CNS Adds Scare Quotes To 'Gay Marriage' In AP Headline Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has a bad habit of rewriting headlines for Associated Press articles to conform with its right-wing ideology. It does so again in a Nov. 6 article on gay-marriage bans being upheld in four states. CNS feels the need to put "gay marriage" in scare quotes in the headline:
The last time we checked, it was not AP style to put scare quotes around "gay marriage." Indeed, even the conservative website The Blaze ran the very same AP article and did not use scare quotes.
Rather lazily, CNS' re-editing did not extend to the article itself, where references "gay marriage" and "same-sex marriage" appear without scare quotes.
CNS has not publicly explained why it feels the need to use such scare quotes, or why it feels it must alter AP copy to conform to its policy.
Shocker: CNS Actually Acknowleges Joless Situation Is Improving Topic: CNSNews.com
For monthsnow, CNSNews.com has sought to deliberately downplay good economic news under the Obama administration by cherry-picking and playing up data showing not-so-good news.
But for October, the news on the unemployment front was so good that even CNS had to acknowledge it. (Or maybe they're a little more willing to tell the truth now that their goal of a Republican-controlled Senate has been achieved.) A Nov. 7 CNS article by Ali Meyer, for the first time in recent memory, puts the good news in the opening paragraph, though it still manages to leaven it with cherry-picked bad news:
The employment situation in October improved in every way for most Americans, except for African Americans, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The number of African Americans who were employed in the United States in October dropped by 41,000; and the number of African-Americans not participating in the labor force increased by 114,000.
And because it's CNS, there's still the totally negative jobless article that completely ignores the good news. A Nov. 7 article by Penny Starr touts a "new report" claiming to have "found high rates of unemployment among minorities in many states, including 20.3 percent for Hispanics in Rhode Island and 16.8 percent for African Americans living in Nevada."
CNS Returns To Fearmongering That You Can Catch Ebola On A Bus Topic: CNSNews.com
You might remember that last month, a CNSNews reporter fearmongered that, despite what President Obama said, you can too catch Ebola on a bus -- followed by CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey mocking the Obama administration for overreacting to a sick passenger on a bus out of fear the passenger might have Ebola.
Well, the flip-flop has flipped back. From a Nov. 3 CNS article by Melanie Hunter:
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is also a medical doctor, told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that President Barack Obama's biggest mistake was saying you can't catch Ebola on a bus.
"I think the president's biggest mistake was like saying, oh, it's no big deal, you can't catch it if you're sitting on a bus with somebody," said Paul.
[...]
"Well, apparently, you can be intensive care unit gloved, gowned and masked and still get it. It's very contagious when someone is sick. So, I think it was a mistake for him to say, oh, it's not big deal. You can be riding on a bus. And we're not going to stop any travel," Paul said.
"American public sees people getting it who are fully masked and gowned and saying, my goodness, I don't think anybody should be riding on a bus or coming from Liberia to visit their aunt or uncle and when they could be contagious. So, I think a temporary stop of travel for elective travel, if you're coming to visit your relatives, couldn't that wait for a few months?" he asked.
Hunter is also overstating Paul's medical credentials. He is an non-certified ophthalmologist, which technically makes him a "medical doctor" but specializes in eye problems, not viral issues like Ebola.
CNS Buries Right-Wing Bishop's Dismissal From Vatican Job Topic: CNSNews.com
In his Oct. 30 CNSNews.com column, Terry Jeffrey makes sure we know that Cardinal Raymond Burke "is the Prefect of the Sacred Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court of the Catholic Church." Jeffrey ,of course, was featuring Burke's right-wing positions on gay marriage and attacks on Pope Francis for attempting to moderate the Catholic Church's stance on the subject. Oddly, Jeffrey feels the need to inform us how utterly softball the questions he tossed at Burke were:
I asked: "Given that it was Jesus Christ Himself who taught us what marriage is, can any priest or bishop overrule or change what Jesus declared about marriage?"
"No, absolutely not," said Cardinal Burke. "The priests and bishops are called to be faithful to the truth. Our office is to teach this truth and to assist the faithful to live it, but we can never — even under some supposed pastoral approach — either alter or deny the truth about marriage."
I asked: "Can the pope himself change the nature of marriage given what Christ said?"
"No, it's not within his power," said Cardinal Burke, "and this is very clear in the teaching of the church, that if a marriage has been validly celebrated and consummated it cannot be separated. It cannot be ended by anything except death itself."
Jeffrey followed up that day with an article containing a transcript of the interview with Burke in which he informs us again that Burke is "Prefect for the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the Supreme Court of the Catholic Church."
Just one little problem: Burke doesn't hold that position anymore. Earlier in October, Pope Francis removed Burke from his position as prefect and reassigned him to be patron of the sovereign military order of Malta.
Strangely, even though this event occurred a week before Jeffrey's interview with Burke, at no point did Jeffrey ask him about it. He was too busy serving Burke softballs that let the cardinal attack the idea of gay marriage.
Even more strangely, CNS didn't seem to think the demotion of Jeffrey's favorite cardinal was very newsworthy. The only mention of it we could find in the CNS archive was in an Oct. 22 article by Michael Chapman featuring a Catholic bishop's remarks on gays, and even then it was buried in the 11th paragraph.
You'd think a staunch Catholic like Jeffrey would want to keep his readers on top of important news like that. Apparently not.
CNS Can't Stop Obsessing Over Afghan Body Counts Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has long been obsessed with pinning U.S. casualties in Afghanistan while not doing the same for U.S. casualties in Iraq under President Bush.
This bias happens again in an Oct. 29 CNS article by Ali Meyer informing us that "CNSNews.com's database on casualties shows that 418 Marines have given their lives in the conflict and that 92% of those casualties, 385 deaths, have occurred since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009."
Meyer doesn't mention how many Marine casualties in Iraq occurred under Bush -- indeed, the words "Iraq" and "Bush" appear nowhere in her article.
CNS has never explained why its "database on casualties" omits Iraq, even though they are part of the same conflict.
CNS' Starr Misinforms, Thinks Non-Discrimination Law Is Only About Restrooms Topic: CNSNews.com
As befits a highly biased reporter who would lose her job if the Media Research Center applied the Bernard Goldberg standard =of publicly firing biased reporters it wants the "liberal media" to follow, CNSNews.com's Penny Starr sees only one side of non-discrimination ordinances: the side that opposes them.
That means she's going to describe such laws to make them look bad and creepy. Indeed, in an Oct. 23 CNS article in which she features the homophobic rantings of former WorldNetDaily columnist and Houston pastor Dave Welch, she describes the non-discrimination law only as "allow[ing] transgender individuals to use any public restroom."
As we noted when WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh did the same thing, that's a framing promulgated by opponents of such non-discrimination ordinances. In reality, the ordinance merely prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity and says nothing about restrooms.
In repeating such a deliberately misleading interpretation of the non-discrimination ordinance, Starr ignores the overwhelming evidence that there have been no sexual assaults or any other crimes in connection with this accommodation to gender identity.
But Starr is committed to this particular piece of disinformation. In an Oct. 28 CNS article featuring pastor Bill Owens -- a homophobe like Welch -- Starr again describes the Houston non-discrimination law as "a city ordinance that allows transgender people to use any public restroom."
As long as Starr feels secure in her job, she will continue to misinform her readers.
UPDATE: Starr's Oct. 29 CNS article also claimed the non-discrimination ordinance was about "allow[ing] transgender people to use any public bathroom regardless of gender."
Why Should Anyone Care What Tony LoBianco Thinks About Opera? Topic: CNSNews.com
An Oct. 29 CNSNews.com article by Lauretta Brown is devoted to recounting an interview CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey conducted with actor Tony Lo Bianco about the controversial opera "The Death of Klinghoffer."
Lo Bianco has no demonstrated expertise about opera or Middle Eastern issues, so it's unclear why Jeffrey chose to interview him at length about this. Jeffrey never explains why Lo Bianco's opinion is so important.
Lo Bianco also gave no indication that he has ever viewed the opera in question, so he probably doesn't know what he's talking about.
Jeffrey, on the other hand, did admit he has never seen the opera, which didn't keep him from misrepresenting its contents, asserting that the opera is "glorifying" the Palestinian terrorists' killing of Klinghoffer, or from complaining that he can't comprehend how a work of art can allow a bad guy to justify his motives.
In fact, motivation is a driving force of literature and theatrical works, including opera, and villains can have motives just as protagonists do. And experts who, unlike Jeffrey and LoBianco, have actually seen the opera agree that it does not romanticize terror. To claim that giving voice to a villain's motives equals a creator's approval of those motives is just another form of the Depiction-Equals-Approval Fallacy.
The MRC has devoted a lot of time recently to bashing this opera that they have never -- and will never -- see for themselves.
CNS' Starr Gives Platform To Homophobic Minister Topic: CNSNews.com
Penny Starr writes in an Oct. 24 CNSNews.com article:
Rev. David Welch, one of five pastors who were subpoenaed by the City of Houston to turn over all sermons and other documents and communications related to homosexuality and gender identity, said Wednesday that the move represents a much broader agenda of the city’s lesbian mayor and other gay rights activists.
“This is the result of our allowing these critical institutions to fall into the hands of those who are of an opposite world view who are intentionally and systematically deconstructing God’s created order,” said Welch, executive director of the Texas Pastor Council.
“The ungodly abuse of power and, frankly, just evil abuse of that … steals the freedom and ultimately the moral framework of the culture and ultimately attacks the minds and hearts of our children,” Welch said during a conference call set up by the Family Research Council to encourage pastors across the country to take part in the “I Stand Sunday” rally on Nov. 2 in Houston in support of the Texas clergy, who are fighting the subpoena and an ordinance passed by the city to allow transgender individuals to use any public restroom.
As we've documented, Welch -- a former WorldNetDaily columnist -- is a rabid homophobe who portrayed the elecion of Houston Mayor Annise Parker, a lesbian, as a moral failing of the citizenry, criticized pastor Joel Osteen for offering up a prayer at Parker's inauguration, and has likened the existence of gays to a controlled demolition of church buildings. After complaining that one pastor "made no formal endorsement of either side" on an anti-discrimination ordinance, Welch added: "It sounds like his gender identity may be up for question. If that sounds harsh, so be it."
Yet Starr apparently thinks Welch is a reasonable person to interview.
Incidentially, Starr quotes nobody in her article who supports Houston's non-discrimination ordinance, a seeming violation of CNS' mission statement that it "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story."
CNS Bashes Obama For Doing Too Much -- And Too Little -- About Ebola Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey used his Oct. 22 column to mock President Obama for allegedly overreacting to a suspected case of Ebola:
So here we have the opening scene in this drama of Obama Era health care: An American vomits in a parking lot. Pentagon police close in. Someone alleges this American indicated she had visited West Africa. The parking lot is sealed. Traffic stopped. A Hazmat team arrives. A bus the American had boarded before vomiting is quarantined in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol with a contingent of Marines on board. An ambulance brings the American to one of the nation’s finest hospitals—and she is turned away.
After all, she had vomited near the Pentagon.
[...]
The American who had vomited near the Pentagon did not have Ebola, after all. She did not even need to be tested for it.
But before the government and its health-care system discovered that she did not need to be tested for Ebola, she did need to be approached by a HazMat team, turned away by one of the nation’s top hospitals, and perceived as a reasonable cause for U.S. Marines to be quarantined on Capitol Hill.
[...]
In the Washington suburbs last week, we did not see the government dealing with an isolated case of Ebola. We saw it dealing with an American who did not have Ebola.
If that makes you want to vomit, steer clear of the Pentagon.
Jefrey's mockery might make more sense if the website he runs hadn't played up the Pentagon incident.
Two days earlier, CNS published an article by Brittany Hughes headlined "Obama Repeats: You Can’t Get Ebola on a Bus—Day After Bus Quarantined in D.C.,"in which Obama was mocked for allegedly downplaying the risk of Ebola:
On Saturday--one day after a bus that had departed from the Pentagon was quarantined on Capitol Hill in an Ebola false alarm--President Barack Obama issued a video message to Americans telling them that "you cannot get it [Ebola] from just riding on a plane or a bus."
“Ebola is actually a difficult disease to catch. It's not transmitted through the air like the flu," Obama said in his weekly video message. "You cannot get it from just riding on a plane or a bus."
But on Friday, a bus was quarantined on Virginia Avenue, SE, in the Capitol Hill area of Washington, D.C.--in what turned out to be an Ebola false alarm.
Jeffrey can't have it both ways by simultaneously bashing Obama for overreacting and underreacting to Ebola. But since the goal of his logical contradictions is to bash Obama, he will pretend he can anyway.
CNS Pushes Zombie Lie Of 'Failed' Stimulus Topic: CNSNews.com
Craig Bannister writes in an Oct. 20 CNSNews.com blog post:
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest is selling the idea that Rob Klain will make a good Ebola Czar - even without any Ebola expertise - because of his work on the $830 billion failed Stimulus.
[...]
But, at more than $200,000 spent per job created/saved - $2 million per job in some cases - the $830 billion Stimulus was anything but a success.
Bannister's insistence that the stimulus "failed" is at odds with reality. PolitiFact states that such simplistic per-job calculations -- Bannister's backup for his claim of "more than $200,000 spent per job created/saved" is a 2011 CNS article simply dividing the amount spent on the stimulus by the number of jobs created -- are misleading because the stimulus money went toward a range of projects and programs including tax breaks, not just for salaries.
Futher, the Associated Press points out that Bannister's simplistic calculation ignores the value of the work produced -- "Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for material, supplies and that worker's output - a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid" -- and also counts only jobs created to date, not those created over the life of the stimulus-funded contract.
Bannister's repeating of a discredited right-wing myth proves that promoting zombie lies isn't just the purpose of WorldNetDaily.
NEW ARTICLE: The Unbalanced Barbara Hollingsworth Topic: CNSNews.com
The CNS senior editor isn't big on reporting both sides of the story or disclosing the right-wing nature of her sources. She also let a Scientology-linked attack on psychiatric drugs stand unchallenged. Read more >>
Penny Starr uncritically writes in an Oct. 10 CNSNews.com article:
Representative Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday that despite his and other congressmens’ efforts to hold Communist China accountable for its one-child, forced abortion policy, President Barack Obama and his administration are not only ignoring the policy but are advancing the “brutal program.”
“I respectfully submit that not only is the Obama administration turning a blind eye to the atrocities being committed under the one-child policy, but it is even contributing financial support--contrary to U.S. law--to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA),” Smith said in a keynote address at the event.
“Under Presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush, Mr. Obama, unlike them, has thus far provided $227 million in tax payer funds--grant money--to the UNFPA, an organization that supports, plans, implements, defends--and maybe for international audiences this is most important--whitewashes the Chinese government’s brutal program.”
Smith, who is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and chairs its subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organization, was referring to his and other Republicans’ 1984 legislation that became law as a part of a foreign aid bill that prohibits funding organizations like UNFPA that support China’s one-child and forced abortion policy.
If Starr had bothered to fact-check Smith's statements, she would have found plenty of doube about his claim that UNFPA supported "forced abortion" in China. As UNFPA itself points out:
The State Department team investigated UNFPA-supported projects in China and submitted a report in May stating, based on what we heard, saw, and read, we find no evidence that UNFPA has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization in the PRC [People's Republic of China]. Indeed, UNFPA has registered its strong opposition to such practices.
NARAL Pro-Choice America notes that Smith's claim is "misinformation" spread by "anti-choice lawmakers" seeking to deny funding for family-planning programs.
This information is easily found with a simple Google search. Either Starr couldn't be bothered to do that search, or she decided to suppress that information because it conflicted with her and her employer's anti-abortion crusade.
That makes Starr either dumb or dishonest. Either way, she's a lousy reporter.
Only one of these articles noted the drop in the unemployment rate (and even then not until the sixth paragraph), and none mentioned the fact that 248,000 jobs were added. All three articles were written by Ali Meyer
That first story, by the way, is a lazy rewrite of an article from last month by Meyer, which carried the suspiciously similar headline "Record 92,269,000 Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Matches 36-Year Low." That's a demonstration of how CNS reports an agenda instead of reporting the news.
CNS' Hollingsworth Provides An Uncritical Platform For Factually Challenged Climate Denier Topic: CNSNews.com
Aswe'vedocumented, CNSNews.com's Barbara Hollingsworth is way into serving as a stenographer for right-wing causes but not so much into fact-checking or talking to more than one source for a story. She performs her stenography services once again in a Sept. 24 CNS article:
According to the datasets used last year, October 1st will mark the 18th year of “no significant warming trend in surface average temperature," says Patrick Michaels, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for the Study of Science. And even if the current 18-year trend were to end, it would still take nearly 25 years for average global temperature figures to reflect the change, said Michaels, who has a Ph.D. in ecological climatology and spent three decades as a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia.
Sooner or later, even Al Gore and the numerous scientists, academics and politicians who agree with him that “Earth has a fever” will have to admit that their climate models predicting catastrophic global warming were off by a long shot, said Michaels, who was also a contributing editor to the United Nations’ second Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
“It has to be admitted eventually that too much warming was forecast too fast. That just has to happen. You can’t go on and on and on,” he told CNSNews.com.
“If the surface temperature resumed the warming rate that we observed from, say 1977 through 1998, we would still go close to a quarter of a century without significant net warming because there’s such a long flat period built into the record now. “
Hollingsworth, of course, can't be bothered to seek anyone out who might counter Michaels' assertions, even though he has a history of getting things wrong. But because they are apparently of one mind in being climate change deniers, Hollingsworth gives Michaels the benefit of the doubt and treats his claims as undisputed fact.
Indeed, Michaels' central claim, that there has been no global warming for 18 years, is misleading. As we've documented, Michael's claim relies on cherry-picked data and choosing an arbitrary starting point; meanwhile, the long-term trend demonstrates continued global warming.
Hollingsworth also gullibly swallows Michaels' assertion of Arctic ice: “And if you take a close look at the Arctic data, it appears the decline stopped somewhere around 2005/2006, which means we’ve almost had ten years without any net loss in Arctic ice." In fact, Arctic ice remains near record lows.
Hollingsworth has a history of mindlessly repeating the claims of climate deniers.
Michael Morris is CNSNews.com's assistant editor for commentary. He's also the website's chief Mark Levin fanboy. Over the ast couple weeks, he cranked no fewer than five CNS blog posts transcribing the right-wing ranter's latest alleged pearls of wisdom: 
For 
You might remember that last month, a CNSNews reporter 
In his Oct. 30 CNSNews.com 
As befits a highly biased reporter who would 
An Oct. 29 CNSNews.com 
Craig Bannister writes in an Oct. 20 CNSNews.com 
As
