CNS Editor Uses Same Budget Argument His MRC Co-Worker Mocked Two Days Earlier Topic: CNSNews.com
In an April 23 post, the Media Research Center's Nicholas Fondacaro mocked a CBS program that pointed out that funding for agencies such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasating -- which President Trump has proposed to eliminate -- makes up "less than 2/100ths of a percent of the federal budget." Fondacaro added: "This, despite the fact that all together funding for these agencies costs taxpayers close to $1 billion."
Two days later, Terry Jeffrey, the editor in chief of CNSNews.com, the MRC's "news" division, made the exact same argument -- at tedious, editorializing length, despite the article being tagged as "news" -- to push for funding for a border wall:
President Donald Trump’s request that Congress include $1.4 billion to fund the beginning of his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border equals approximately 0.035 percent of what the federal government will spend in total this year, according to the latest estimate of fiscal year 2017 federal spending made by the Congressional Budget Office.
It also equals less than the Department of Health and Human Services spends in just twelve hours and less than the Treasury collects in taxes in four hours.
[...]
The $1.4 billion Trump wants from Congress in this fiscal year to begin the border wall project equals 0.035 percent of the $3.963 trillion the CBO estimates the federal government will spend this fiscal year.
By comparison, the Department of Health and Human Services alone will spend an estimated $1,108,457,000,000 in fiscal 2017, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement. That $1,108,457,000,000 in annual HHS spending equals approximately $126,546,187 for each of the 8,760 hours in the fiscal year.
In other words, HHS will spend approximately $126,536,187 per hour this year—assuming that it spends money 24 hours a day.
That means that HHS spends in about 11 hours an amount equal to the $1.4 billion that President Trump wants this fiscal year for the border wall project.
In half a day—12 hours—HHS spends more than Trump wants for the border wall for the entire year.
The $3,404,000,000,000 that the Treasury will collect in taxes this fiscal year, according to the CBO estimate, equals about $388,584,475 in tax collections per hour.
The $1.4 billion that Trump wants for the border wall project this year equals about 3.6 hours in federal tax collections.
In just 4 hours, the federal government collects more in taxes than President Trump wants to spend for the entire year on the border wall.
Jeffrey doesn't explain why he's making the same argument his MRC co-worker declared to be invalid just two days earlier.
The Month In CNS Obsessing Over Calls to Release Trump's Tax Returns Topic: CNSNews.com
In addition to her extensivecollection of Trump stenography, CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones has obsessedover calls for President Trump to release his tax returns. That obsession has continued through the month of April.
On April 6, Jones complained that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that Trump, as president, doesn't have a right to privacy regarding his tax returns. Jones huffed: Democrats believe they’ll find information damaging or embarrassing to the president in his tax returns. They have sought to delegitimize him, at the very least, since he was elected. Some Democrats have even raised the prospect of impeachment."
In response to Rep. Richard Neal pointing out that presidents releasing their tax returns is "custom and practice" and "settled tradition," Jones parenthetically huffed: "For the record, it is also 'custom and practice' to confirm qualified candidates for the Supreme Court, but Democrats in the Senate are now bucking that 'settled tradition.'"Funny, we don't recall Jones making that point last year when undeniably qualified candidate Merrick Garland was nominated to the Supreme Court.
The next day, Jones did another article about how Sen. Ron Wyden asked IRS commissioner John Koskinen about Trump's tax returns, grumbling, "Every year around this time, the Senate Finance Committee holds a hearing on the tax filing season. But this is the first time a committee member has asked the IRS commissioner about a president’s tax returns."
On April 18, Jones tried to play gotcha with a Democratic congressman:
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I) has co-sponsored a bill that would require U.S. presidents and vice presidents to release their tax returns, and now Whitehouse has agreed to do what he’s demanding of others -- for the very first time.
The Providence Journal, quoting a spokeswoman for Whitehouse, saidthe senator and his wife “have in the past kept their personal tax return private to protect the privacy of their children,” who are now 23 and 27.
[...]
Many congressional Democrats and other anti-Trump Americans – looking for conflicts of interest or other potentially damaging information -- have demanded that President Trump release his tax returns, which he has so far refused to do.
Jones' boss, CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman, even got in on the fun in an April 19 article quoting his favorite gay-hating, Muslim-hating right-wing pastor:
Commenting on the liberal media's demand that President Donald Trump release his tax returns, evangelical leader Franklin Graham said, "No Way!" and added that it would become "a media frenzy, which is exactly what his enemies want."
"Should President Donald J. Trump release his tax returns?" asked rev. Graham in an April 19 post on Facebook. "A lot of liberals keep demanding it."
"The President hasn’t asked for my advice, but I would say—No way!" remarked Rev. Graham.
"Even if these were published, the average American -- or the average politician, including Senator Chuck Schumer, for that matter -- wouldn’t be able to understand them," said Graham. "President Trump is a billionaire with multiple businesses in multiple states, using our very complicated and corrupt tax code that Congress is responsible for writing—that should be scrapped."
"It would just be another huge distraction, and a media frenzy, which is exactly what his enemies want," said Rev. Graham.
"We don’t need distractions," he said. "We need to let President Trump focus on what America elected him to do."
"We need to get on with the business of solving the problems facing our nation," he said. "Forget the tax returns! We need a simple tax code that all Americans can understand."
Did Graham ever say that President Obama need to be protected from "distractions" about his personal life? Nope -- Graham pushed birther conspiracies. Of course, Chapmann won't tell you that.
CNS Columnist Blames Victim's 'Culture of Entitlement' In Airplane Incident Topic: CNSNews.com
WorldNetDaily columnist Sean Harshey isn't the only ConWeb writer who wants to blame that guy for choosing to be dragged off that United Airlines plane.
CNSNews.com columnist Lynn Wardle joins the victim-blaming in his April 18 column with a lot of complaining about a "culture of entitlement":
His behavior seemed to be deliberately intended to maximize the stress and trauma for everyone – including not just the United employees and airport police but also all of the other passengers on the plane.
He succeeded in doing that. Somehow he got back on the plane and had to be removed a second time.
Apparently that passenger claimed to be a doctor who had patients to see the next day. Certainly that is a relevant consideration. But is it really dispositive? Are doctors really so much more (that much more) important than other passengers?
Are doctors somehow morally superior to other passengers who are teachers, students, public employees, and business men and women who are working hard to provide for their families? Are they more important than moms and dads who are trying to get back to their families, to help their children get off to school the next morning?
The passenger was described as a 69-year-old man. Perhaps his age had something to do with his behavior. Older people sometimes can be grumpy and difficult. (I say that sheepishly as an older person myself.)
[...]
Perhaps other factors contributed to his disturbing behavior. The incident exemplified what could be called a “culture of entitlement.” While it can be found in many (probably all) nations and cultures, it seems to be in abundant supply in the United States today.
It is a “pound-your-fist-on-the-table-and-stand-on-your-rights” mentality. It says: “I paid for this service so I am entitled to have it without any disruptions or inconveniences.”
Sadly, this incident contributes to a public perception that doctors consider themselves to be better than other people. It fosters the perception that doctors are arrogant, superior, and think that they are above the common inconveniences of life that other people have to experience from time to time.
Wardle does aver that "it also could be argued that the United employees and the airport police displayed a “culture of entitlement” in the way they dealt with the situation." But much of his ire is directed at the doctor, and he's weirdly oblivious to the fact that, yes, there is something of an entitlement to paying for an airline ticket and going through all of the hoops necessary to actually get seated on the plane -- one has paid for a service and one does not expect to be randomly kicked off the plane after one has been seated on it, for no reason other than the airline wanted to put its own employees on instead.
Wardle claims to be a law professor, and he doesn't seem to know about any of the legal ramifications of any of all this, which go beyond questions of "entitlement"?
CNS Now Shilling for the Pizza Industry Topic: CNSNews.com
The fossil-fuel industry is not the only conservative-leaning business lobby for which CNSNews.com will serve as a loyalstenographer. Craig Bannister writes in an April 17 CNS blog post:
Food chains like pizza retailers are warning that an Obamacare regulation set to kick in on May 5 will overwhelm customers, raise prices and bankrupt businesses.
A costly and burdensome 400-page regulation in the Affordable Care Act (Section 4205) is set to go into effect on May 5 requiring any “restaurant” with 20 or more locations to post in-store menu boards with separate nutrition information for every food item and combination served.
Bannister regurgitates talking points from industry lobbying groups the American Pizza Community, "which represents pizza companies like Pizza Hut, Papa John’s and Dominos," and the Food Marketing Institute, "whose members operate 37,000 supermarkets." Bannister helpfully and editorializes -- something the "mainstream media" Bannister loves to criticize would never do -- by putting in underlined bold type key PR phrases "locally-produced products will be dropped" and "estimates the first-year cost of compliance at more than $1 billion."
Bannister fails to report, however, that the rules have been in the works for years, takeout-oriented chains like Domino's don't have to post calorie counts in-store, temporary items are exempt from disclosure, and other restaurant chains already comply with the standards.
Further, Bannister misstates the compliance costs. He uncritically repeats the FMI's claim that "the first-year cost of compliance at more than $1 billion"; in fact, as Media Matters notes, the Food and Drug Administration found that the $1 billion cost would actually be spread out over a 20-year period.
Bannister quotes nobody in support of the calorie disclosure rules, so slavishly is his devotion to being a stenographer to food industry interests.
CNS Reporter Jones' Trump Stenography, By The Numbers Topic: CNSNews.com
We've repeatedly highlighted CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones' eagerness to serve as a stenographer for the Trump campaign and, later, his administration. Here's another number to back that up.
One of the laziest things a reporter can do is write a single-source story that simply repeats what someone said. If all you're doing is writing down what one person said and making that the entirety of your story, it's stenography, not reporting.
ConWebWatch examined all 281 articles Jones wrote during the first three months of Trump's presidency, from Jan. 20 through April 20. We counted the number of her articles that quoted only President Trump, a member of his administration or the military, versus the number of articles that quoted only a Democratic member of Congress.
By our count, Jones wrote a whopping 64 articles in which Trump or a member of the administration was the sole source, versus just 20 in which a Democratic member of Congress was the sole source (since Democrats do not control the executive branch or the military).
Further, while Jones focused her Trump articles on a wide variety of figures, a majority of the Democratic articles quoted just two people, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. That appears to be because Pelosi and Schumer are CNS' designated Democratic punching bags; for example, one of these articles serves as a way to mock Pelosi for tripping Jones' obsession with people who want Trump to release his tax returns like every other modern-era presidential candidate.
Jones has long been a biased reporter, but putting a number to it demonstrates the extent of her bias. It also demonstrates that CNS cannot be taken seriously as a news outlet.
Methodology: Count included articles based on interviews that paraphrased statements from the questioner or quoted the questioner without naming him or her, but excluded articles that quote the questioner by name.
CNS Says Goodbye to O'Reilly By Touting His Legacy, Downplaying Harassment Charges Topic: CNSNews.com
At CNSNews.com, the only original coverage of the departure of Bill O'Reilly from Fox News over mounting claims of sexual harassment had little to do with that -- it was about his legacy.
An April 20 article by Susan Jones is headlined "CNN Anchor: ‘Many Think That If There Was No Bill O’Reilly, There Would Be No President Donald Trump’," and leads by insisting that some of the harassment claims against O'Reilly were "very old and legally settled," followed by a statement from O'Reilly that 'It is tremendously disheartening we part ways due to unfounded claims. That is the reality many of us in the public eye must live with today."
The rest of the article touts O'Reilly's political legacy, paraticularly regarding Donald Trump. Jones doesn't mention that Trump has been accused of sexual harassment and even worse behavior toward women.
Jones sneered that CNN's Brian Stelter "covered the O’Reilly controversy diligently" -- unlike her and the rest of CNN, but Jones didn't mention that. She concluded her article quoting O'Reilly's lawyer complaining about "character assassination" and and ranting about alleged "evidence that the smear campaign is being orchestrated by far-left organizations bent on destroying O’Reilly for political and financial reasons."
Of course, Jones knows a thing or two about engaging in character assassination for political and financial reasons.
CNS Lends Its Stenography Skills to Judicial Watch Topic: CNSNews.com
The Trump administration is not the only group for which CNSNews.com serves as a committed and loyal stenographer. Right-wing legal group Judicial Watch also benefits from CNS' stenography services to the point where CNS is effectively Judicial WAtch's PR shop.
In the past few months, CNS has churned out these press releases -- er, "news" articles for Judicial Watch's benefit:
All of these articles quote only Judicial Watch officials or things taken from Judicial Watch press releases. No attempt is made to obtain reaction to Judicial Watch's actions.
As if that wasn't enough -- and it apparently wasn't -- CNS also gave Judicial Watch chief Tom Fitton his own column in which the tone is little different from the "news" articles about most of the same things. Fitton has written these for CNS since the beginning of the year:
Fitton hardly needs to write columns for CNS, since its "news" articles are pretty much the same thing.
Of course, such stenography work will eventually dry up for CNS because Judicial Watch has little interest in holding the Trump administration accountable in the same way it went after the Obama administration.
At CNS, Trump's Flip-Flop on NATO Is Just A 'Policy Shift' Topic: CNSNews.com
When President Trump declared that NATO is "no longer obsolete" -- a complete reversal from a position he had articulated just three months earlier -- most news organizations pointed it out as the flip-flop it was.
And then there's the loyal Trump stenographers at CNSNews.com, who would never be so gauche as to report that their dear leader was caught in a flip-flop.
Melanie Arter's April 12 article on his NATO remarks doesn't even mention the reversal; instead, like a loyal stenographer, she simply repeats Trump's statement that "I said it was obsolete; it's no longer obsolete" and made the lead of her story about Trump calling on NATO "to work together to resolve the disaster currently taking place in Syria."
Two days later, Arter wrote a follow-up article that spins Trump's numerous flip-flops as "policy shifts" by, yes, uncritically quoting Trump press secretary Sean Spicer:
When asked to explain some of President Donald Trump’s recent policy shifts, the White House said Thursday that in some cases - NATO, for example - the issue is evolving towards the position that the president articulated.
“I think you can look at what you're referring to as a shift in a lot of ways,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in response to a question about what the American people should make of the policy shifts the president has made on issues such as labeling China as a currency manipulator and asking Congress to do away with the Export-Import Bank.
“By that I mean I saw a couple instances with respect to NATO being one of those shifts yesterday, and if you look at what’s happened, those entities, or individuals in some cases, are issues evolving towards the president’s position. And NATO, in particular, he talked about the need of countries to pay their fair share, to live up to their commitments of 2 percent of GDP. He talked about the need for NATO to focus more on terrorism. NATO has done just that,” Spicer said.
“And it's something that he pointed out in the debate -- the first debate in September of last year. He talked about the fact that NATO is moving towards what he has been calling for, and I think in some cases, the issues evolve -- that it's not just a clear and fast statement that this is -- the entity itself is moving towards his -- or the issue is evolving towards the position that he articulated,” Spicer said.
But as Politico pointed out, NATO has been focusing on terrorism for decades, which means any "evolution" Trump claims happened always exists.
Again, a Trump stenographer like Arter simply wouldn't be so gauche as to commit journalism by noting that.
CNS Editor Admits Iraq War Was A Failure Topic: CNSNews.com
How much does CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey not want President Trump not to get involved militarily in Iraq -- thus splitting CNS from the rest of the rah-rah bombers at the Media Research Center? He admits what few conservatives do: admit that the Iraq War was a mistake.
When President George W. Bush decided he wanted to remove and replace Saddam Hussein, he made a bad decision to go to war in Iraq but a good one to seek congressional authorization first.
Large bipartisan majorities in both houses approved the resolution authorizing Bush to use force.
In the House, it won 296 to 133. Rep. Adam Schiff, now the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, voted for it.
In the Senate, it won 77 to 23. Future Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry and Hillary Clinton joined future Republican presidential candidate John McCain in supporting it. So, too, did Harry Reid, the future Democratic majority leader.
Most of Washington's elected elite joined in making perhaps the most imprudent foreign policy decision of this century.
The House passed the authorization on Oct. 10, 2002; the Senate, the next day. Fifteen years later, the battle for Iraq continues. But the adversary is no longer the secular dictator Saddam Hussein — whom U.S. forces captured less than 11 months after entering Iraq — it is the Islamic State.
Jeffrey making other members of Congress complicit in passage of Bush's use-of-force resolution omits the fact that it wasn't sold as a means to go to war. As Hillary Clinton's speech in support of the resolution details, she expected Bush to exhaust all diplomatic avenues first, adding:
I take the president at his word that he will try hard to pass a United Nations resolution and seek to avoid war, if possible. Because bipartisan support for this resolution makes success in the United Nations more likely and war less likely—and because a good faith effort by the United States, even if it fails, will bring more allies and legitimacy to our cause—I have concluded, after careful and serious consideration, that a vote for the resolution best serves the security of our nation. If we were to defeat this resolution or pass it with only a few Democrats, I am concerned that those who want to pretend this problem will go away with delay will oppose any United Nations resolution calling for unrestricted inspections.
Nevertheless, Jeffrey touts Bush's seeking authorization; otherwise, "if he had not, his action would not only have been unwise, it would have been unconstitutional." He goes on to surprisingly huff given that CNS has been a slavish Trump stenographer:
When President Donald Trump ordered military action against the Assad regime last week, he had no more constitutional authority than President Washington had in 1793 to order military action against the Chickamaggas.
Washington did not act unilaterally. Trump did. Which one was the constitutional originalist?
[...]
Having acted unconstitutionally in using force against the Assad regime without prior congressional authorization, the question now is whether Trump will act unwisely in seeking to remove Assad's regime without weighing the long-term consequences.
Will Trump, like Bush, unleash a greater threat than the one he seeks to destroy?
This is, by the way, something of a flip-flop on Jeffrey's part. In a 2006 appearance on CNN, Jeffrey argued that pulling out of Iraq was a bad idea because the U.S. needs to "use our military in such a way as we optimize the outcome in terms of our own security interests and also what happens on the ground."
CNS Editor Discloses (One) Conflict of Interest In Pushing Malkin's Crusade Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey devoted an April 6 blog post to rehashing a crusade his website and and its Media Research Center parent have been pushing recently:
CRTV’s “Michelle Malkin Investigates” and ABC’s “20/20” have both produced reports on the criminal investigation and conviction of former Oklahoma City Policeman Daniel Holtzclaw. But Malkin’s report brought to light some facts and questions that “20/20” did not.
Creators Syndicate Chairman Rick Newcombe, having viewed both reports, wrote a column that CNSNews.com published on March 27, pointing to the serious questions Malkin’s report raised.
Surprisingly, Jeffrey did include a bit of disclosure at the end of his post: "Disclosure: Creators Syndicate publishes Terence P. Jeffrey’s column."
That's the least of the disclosures Jeffrey should have made, and not just because we (and you) weren't aware until now that Creators syndicated Jeffrey's column. As we pointed out, Creators also syndicates the column ostensibly written by his boss, Brent Bozell, and Newcombe rushed to Bozell's defense when the truth slipped out that Bozell's column was actually written by his lieutenant, Tim Graham. Malkin's weekly column is also published twice by the MRC, at CNS and at NewsBusters.
In other words: It still looks a bit like some kind of quid pro quo is going on here, and Jeffrey and Bozell should fully disclose their business relationship with Malkin and Creators before writing about this story any further.
As she did last month, CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones' lead story on the new unemployment numbers touts the record number of people in the workforce. By contrast, Jones' unemployment reports under a Democratic president focused on how many people were not in the workforce.
Another thing Jones is doing under Trump that she largely failed to do under President Obama: explain why the workforce participation rate is so low.
This is all to cover up the fact that only 98,000 jobs were created in March, which she didn't get around to mentioning until the fourth paragraph of her article and which even she had to concede was a disappointing number.
Jones also grumbled that "The Democrat Party [sic] is giving Donald Trump no credit for the good news in Friday’s jobs report," sneering that "The DNC is offended that Trump, a successful job-creator himself, has taken credit for tens of thousands of jobs saved or created on his watch." Jones doesn't mention that Trump played no role in creating most of those jobs.
The only sidebar, again, is CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey touting the creation of more manufacturing jobs while bemoaning that more government jobs were created as well. Unike his articles in the Obama era, though, the number of government jobs didn't make the headline.
AWOL again is CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman, whose job during the Obama era was to tell us the "real" unemployment rate and highlight the number of unemployed blacks.
In case you missed in our full-length article last week on CNSNews.com's continued fawning coverage of fossil-fuel interests, CNS reporter Penny Starr -- the site's leading fossil-fuel stenographer -- has flown the coop, leaving in March to take a new job at Breitbart.
Indeed, a skim through her archive shows that Starr is doing pretty much the same thing at Breitbart she did at CNS, though for a larger audience and (presumably) a bigger salary -- heavy on single-source items designed to promote a right-wing, pro-Trump agenda.
Of course, as a Breitbart employee, she's now a part of the "state-owned media" of the kind her former employer, the Media Research Center, loved to rail against when the president was a Democrat.
More Pro-Trump Spin: CNS Touts How 'GOP Protects Trump’s Tax-Return Privacy' Topic: CNSNews.com
We've noted how CNS' chief Trump stenographer, Susan Jones, has obsessed over (and defended against) calls for Donald Trump to release his taxes ... but was curiously silent when MSNBC's Rachel Maddow actually did release details of one year's return.
Well, she's at it again, in a March 29 article under the spin-heavy headline "GOP Protects Trump’s Tax-Return Privacy: ‘No Single Individual Has Ever Been Targeted in Such a Manner’." In it, Jones simply blockquotes one Trump defender while his critics get the normal "news" treatment, and she once again makes sure to point out that "there is no law requiring" Trump to release his taxes.
CNS' Top Tebow-Touter Takes Another Swing Topic: CNSNews.com
We'vedocumented how CNSNews.com writer Michael Morris was lavishing praise on Tim Tebow's nascent baseball career while ignoring the fact that he's not exactly major-league material at this point.
Morris takes another swing at it in a March 20 blog post, touting New York Mets manager Terry Collins' noncommittal assessment that Tebow is "getting better."
Morris did make a passing reference to "minor league spring training," but he ignored one notable bit of news that occurred the same day his article was published: Tebow was sent to play for a Mets affiliate in Class A ball, the lowest rung of Major League Baseball.
Morris hasn't written about Tebow since. Of course, minor-league baseball isn't that exciting, even when Tebow is playing it.
CNS' Jones Declares Obamacare To Be 'Failing' Topic: CNSNews.com
Chief Trump stenographer at CNSNews.com Susan Jones is stenographying again -- and going beyond established facts as well.
In a March 14 article mostly devoted to lengthy block-quotes of President Trump opining on how great the Republican health insurance plan was, Jones adds: "Trump was meeting at the White House with people who have suffered under the failing Obamacare law."
Except, well, it's not, according to people who have actually researched it and not just planted an unsubstantiated opinion in a "news" article.
NBC, for example, reports that while there are issues with the Affordable Care Act, they're not serious in and of themselves to create the "death spiral" conservatives claim is happening. NPR adds that "The law has its problems — but it is far from 'exploding,' using any reasonable definition of the word."
And Vox points out that even the Congressional Budget Office does not see the ACA as failing, and that the recent wave of premium hikes and insurers dropping out of state markets will likely fix itself if Trump does nothing.
So, no, Obamacare is not "failing." Jones is just doing more stenography.
In addition to her 
WorldNetDaily columnist 
The fossil-fuel industry is not the only conservative-leaning business lobby for which CNSNews.com will serve as a 
At CNSNews.com, the only original coverage of the departure of Bill O'Reilly from Fox News over mounting claims of sexual harassment had little to do with that -- it was about his legacy.
The Trump administration is not the only group for which CNSNews.com serves as a committed and loyal stenographer. Right-wing legal group Judicial Watch also benefits from CNS' stenography services to the point where CNS is effectively Judicial WAtch's PR shop.
When President Trump declared that NATO is "no longer obsolete" -- a complete reversal from a position he had articulated just 
How much does CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey not want President Trump not to get involved militarily in Iraq -- thus 
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