CNS Puts Pro-Trump Spin on Disastrous TV Interview With WH Adviser Topic: CNSNews.com
It was almost universally agreed that White House adviser Stephen Miller's Jan. 7 interview with CNN's Jake Tapper was a disaster for Miller, who refused to answer questions Tapper had asked him and instead serving up glowing tributes to President Trump as a "political genius."
But Trump tweeted that Miller "destroyed" the "flunky" Tapper in the interview. Thus, CNS' Melanie Arter had her marching orders to spin things in Miller's favor, and that's exactly what she does in her article on the interview. It was headlined "WH Adviser Stephen Miller Takes CNN to Task for Negative Trump News Coverage," and it only got more spin-tastic from there:
In an interview Sunday with CNN’s “State of the Union with Jake Tapper,” White House Senior Policy Adviser Stephen Miller took Tapper to task for his network’s negative coverage of President Donald Trump.
When asked to address Trump’s tweets Saturday defending himself against claims that he is not mentally fit to be president prompted by author Michael Wolff’s unflattering book, “Fire and Fury,” Miller said the president’s tweets help his cause in demonstrating that he is stable enough for the job.
Then Miller criticized CNN, saying it has “a real crisis of legitimacy.”
[...]
When Miller tried to steer the conversation back to the president’s experiences, Tapper ended the interview.
“Okay, you’re not answering the questions,” Tapper said.
“You have 24 hours a day of anti-Trump material. You’re not going to give three minutes for the American people to hear the real experience of Donald Trump,” Miller said.
“There’s one viewer that you care about right now, and you’re being obsequious,” Tapper said.
Oddly, Arter didn't include what Tapper said after the "obsequious" remark: "You’re being a factotum in order to please him." Perhaps she would have to explain to CNS' readers what "factotum" means.
Arter did, however, make sure to add that "Miller’s exchange with Tapper comes one day before the president planned to hold what he called 'the most dishonest and corrupt media awards of the year.'"
CNS' Year of Judicial Watch Stenography Topic: CNSNews.com
We'vedocumented how, through much of 2017, CNSNews.com has served as a public-relations agent for the right-wing legal group Judicial Watch, rewriting their press releases as "news" articles. CNS closed out 2017 in the same mode. Here's the Judicial Watch stenography CNS published -- mostly written by CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman -- through the end of 2017:
For the record, that's at least 31 articles uncritically forwarding Judicial Watch talking points CNS published in 2017, plus three columns by Judical Watch chief Tom Fitton. Chapman made no attempt to talk to anyone else for their reaction to Judicial Watch's politically motivated campaign, nor does he ask why Judicial Watch is so strangely uninterested in Russian interference in U.S. elections.
CNS appears to be ramping up the stenography for 2018. Here's what it's published so far already since Jan. 1:
CNS (Mostly) Follows WH Marching Orders To Blame Shutdown on Dems Topic: CNSNews.com
A Jan. 17 CNSNews.com article by Melanie Arter provided the marching orders: "The White House on Wednesday said President Donald Trump does not want a government shutdown, and if the government does shut down on Friday because Congress can’t agree on a budget deal, the Democrats are to blame."
Like a good pro-Trump stenographer, CNS knew it had a script to follow, and it gleefully did so. Let the Dem-blaming stenography begin:
CNS did go off script with one article, though (albeit banished to a blog post), in which Michael Morris gave Ben Shapiro space to rant that Trump tweeting that it was a bad idea to put CHIP funding in the continuing resolution undermined the entire Republican strategy to blame the shutdown on the Dems.
Interestingly, that is not the take CNS' "news" side. In her article referencing it, Susan Jones merely said Trump's tweet caused "confusion" and credulously quoted Paul Ryan trying to spin it:
Ryan said he spoke with President Trump this morning, and "he fully supports passing what we're bringing to the floor."
Earlier, there was some confusion about that, when Trump tweeted on Thursday morning that the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) "should be part of a long-term solution, not a 30 Day, or short term, extension!"
Republicans added a six-year CHIP reauthorization to the CR in hopes of attracting enough Democrat votes to pass the short-term funding bill.
"Yeah, the president does understand CHIP," Ryan told a reporter who asked if Trump did understand it.
Once again, we see that CNS' purported "news" reporters are too busy being stenographers to do any actual reporting.
CNS Still Violating MRC's Standards On How A 'News' Outlet Should Behave Topic: CNSNews.com
Last April, we caught CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey making the argument that President Trump's proposed multibillion-dollar border wall cost only "0.035 percent of what the federal government will spend in total this year" -- despite Jeffrey's co-workers at the Media Research Center attacking liberals for making the same comparative-spending argument to preserve funding for arts, humanities and public broadcasting.
Jeffrey trotted out that same argument again in a Jan. 9 CNS article:
President Donald Trump’s current border wall proposal would cost $18 billion over the next ten years, according to an estimate U.S. Customs and Border Protection sent to members of Congress last week.
“The Trump administration is asking Congress for nearly $18 billion to construct more than 700 miles of new and replacement barriers along the Southwest border, its most detailed description yet of the president’s vision of a wall separating the U.S. from Mexico,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
That $18 billion would equal just 0.0338 percent of the $53.128 trillion the Congressional Budget Office currently estimates the federal government will spend over that same 10-year period.
It also equals only 2.7 percent of the money the federal government will spend on the food stamp program (the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program”), which will eat up $679 billion in the ten fiscal years from 2018 through 2027, according to CBO’s estimate.
The $679 billion the CBO estimates the federal government will spend on food stamps during that ten years is 37.7 times as much as the $18 billion it would spend on President Trump’s proposed border wall.
At the same time, the $18 billion required for the border wall would equal a mere 0.34 percent of the $5.232 trillion CBO estimates that the federal government will spend on Medicaid over the next ten years.
While the nation is preparing to spend a total of $6.838 trillion on national defense over the next ten years, according to CBO, the $18 billion that President Trump would like to see dedicated to defending the U.S.-Mexico border with a wall would equal only 0.26 percent of that.
Again, we see that the MRC has very different standards for the "news" operation it runs than for the "liberal media" it's constantly dictating to. If CNS actually followed its parent's standards, the MRC might have a little more credibility.
CNSNews.com has been unafraid to politicize American military casualties in the past -- remember that it repeatedly credited President George W. Bush for falling casualities (from a surge that he ordered) while blaming President Obama for increasing casualties in Afghanistan (made necessary because Bush largely ignored Afghanistan to focus on Iraq).
Which brings us to a Jan. 2 CNS article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman headlined "2017: Chicago Homicides Outnumber U.S. Military Casualties 18 to 1." Yes, it's a stupid point, but Chapman is fully committed:
There were 664 homicides in Chicago in 2017 and, for comparison, 37 casualties in the U.S. military in its myriad operations around the globe. That's according to data from the Chicago Tribune and from the Department of Defense's press office.
The Chicago deaths are for the period Jan. 1, 2017 through Dec. 31, 2017; the military deaths are from Jan. 1, 2017 through Dec. 22, 2017, which is the latest update on casualties by the DoD posted so far. (There may have been a few more military casualties in December.)
From the data available, it shows that Chicago suffered 17.9 times more homicides than the U.S. military worldwide -- combat and non-combat related deaths -- last year.
Of course, the U.S. military is not engaged in any major combat operations anywhere in the world. But that won't keep Chapman from pressing his dume analogy -- after all, his allegiance is to political ideology, not to journalism.
CNS Follows White House Marching Orders on Steve Bannon Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com these days is mostly about being faithful to the dictates of the Trump White House. And when Steve Bannon was quoted in Michael Wolff's book criticizing the Trump administration and its related scandals, CNS was there to eagerly help the White House make sure that Bannon is persona non grata.
CNS' Melanie Arter dutifully transcribed official White House reaction in twoarticles on Jan. 3, the day book exerpts were released. The headline of the second article, though, sums up just how much being sucked up to means for this adminstration and inadvertently reveals the game CNS is currently playing: "White House on Steve Bannon: Going After President’s Son ‘Not the Best Way to Curry Favor’."
The next day, Susan Jones wrote an flashback article on Bannon -- which was CNS' lead story for part of that day -- insisting last September that the current investigation into Trump's connections with Russia was a "farce,"the goal of which is to try and discredit Bannon's assertion in the Wolff book that there is something to the investigation. She followed that with an article touting how Trump tweeted that Bannon was "Sloppy Steve."
On Jan. 7, CNS published an unusual weekend column by Tim Donner attacking Bannon and declaring, "Let's not mince words here. Bannon is toast." Donner added that Trump supporters with stick with their "game-changing president" over "a guy who rode the wave into the White House before imploding and turning on the man who put him there."
CNS couldn't have followed the Trump agenda any closer if they had been told by the Trump White House what to publish -- which, for all we know, may have actually happened.
CNS Editor Perpetuates Misinformation About Planned Parenthood Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has a long, sadhistory of perpetuating a falsehood: that federal money to Planned Parenthood pays for abortions. CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey -- who has done this before -- is all too eager to perpetuate that misinformation. He writes in a Jan. 2 CNS article:
Planned Parenthood says its affiliates did 321,384 abortions in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2016, according to its newly released 2016-2017 annual report.
In the same report, Planned Parenthood says its affiliates received $543.7 million in payments from government—“Government Health Services Reimbursements & Grants,” the report calls them—in the year that ended on June 30, 2017.
Jeffrey does not report, however, that money from Title X and Medicaid -- which is where the federal funding to Planned Parenthood comes from -- by law cannot pay for abortions.
Then, in his Jan. 3 column, Jeffrey repeated his dishonesty:
Planned Parenthood has now released its 2016-2017 annual report. It says its affiliates performed 321,384 abortions in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2016.
It also says Planned Parenthood received $543.7 million in government money in the year that ended on June 30, 2017 — which included the first five months of the Trump administration.
Planned Parenthood takes money from federal taxpayers primarily through Medicaid and the Title X Family Planning Program. In 2012, according to a Government Accountability Office analysis cited by the Congressional Research Service in a May 2017 report, Planned Parenthood affiliates received "$400.56 million in Medicaid reimbursements (including both federal and state dollars)" and "$64.35 million in Title X funding."
[...]
But the Mexico City Policy does not stop federal Medicaid and Title X money from going to domestic Planned Parenthood affiliates — the affiliates that aborted 321,384 babies in the United States in fiscal 2016.
Again, Jeffrey failed to report the inconvenient fact that Medicaid and Title X money does not and cannot pay for abortion. Instead, he rants that Republican spending bills "have permitted federal funding of Planned Parenthood to continue -- again, despite the fact that none of that federal funding pays for abortion.
CNS Gives Operation Rescue (But Not The SPLC) A Pass On Violence Linked To It Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman devoted a Jan. 3 article to telling us how "One of the leading pro-life organizations in the United States, Operation Rescue, has named President Donald Trump its person of the year and awarded him its 2017 Pro-Life Person of the Year Malachi Award." Chapman later writes, "Operation Rescue was founded in 1986 and is based in Wichita, Kansas. It counts as one of its greatest successes the reduction of the number of abortionists in San Diego County."
Chapman, needless to say, was never going to mention Operation Rescue's link to anti-abortion violence. As we'vedocumented, Scott Roeder, murderer of abortion doctor George Tiller, had a sticky note with the phone number for Operation Rescue's Cheryl Sullenger in his car at the time he was arrested, and Roeder has claimed that Operation Rescue chief Troy Newman once told him that it “wouldnʼt upset” him if Tiller were murdered. Further, Sullenger was sentenced to three years in prison in 1988 for plotting to bomb an abortion clinic.
CNS has not been so reticient to repeat tangental links to violence when they involve non-conservative groups. An August 2017 article referencing the Southern Poverty Law Center took care to extensively note this:
In 2013, left-wing domestic terrorist Floyd Corkins attempted to commit mass murder at the [Family Research Council's] headquarters and arrived in the building’s lobby with a bag full of ammunition and 15 Chick-fil-a sandwiches, which he intended to place on the people he killed.
A security guard was shot by Corkins, but managed to apprehend him before law enforcement arrived.
When the FBI asked Corkins how he had heard about the organization, he told them the SPLC had labeled the group an “anti-gay” organization on their website’s “hate map.”
If CNS is blaming the SPLC for the FRC shooting -- despite the fact that, unlike with Roeder and Operation Rescue, Corkins never had any contact with any SPLC employee and merely looked at its website -- there's no reason it shouldn't also hang Tiller's murder on Operation Rescue. Fair's fair, right?
Well, it would be if CNS wasn't so outrageously biased.
CNSNews.com's coverage of December's unemployment numbers was a blitz of pro-Trump rah-rah -- the complete opposite of CNS' coverage of the December 2016 numbers.
On November 20, President Trump tweeted: "Under President Trump unemployment rate will drop below 4%. Analysts predict economic boom for 2018!"
On Friday, the nation's unemployment rate remained at a 17-year low of 4.1 percent for the third straight month, and the number of employed people increased by 103,000 to 154,021,000, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
Since December 2016, 1,788,000 people have been added to the nation's employment roster, and the number of employed people has set six records since February, most recently in September.
The article is illustrated with a picture of a Trump "Make America Great Again" hat, just to hammerh ome the point that Jones is doing Trump's bidding here.
By contrast, as we've documented, Jones' main article on the December 2016 unemployment rate led with the number of people not in the labor force, didn't mention the December unemployment rate until the seventh paragraph and waited until the 13th paragraph to concede that 14.8 million people found jobs during Obama's presidency.
By contrast, CNS sidebars related to the December 2016 unemployment rate referenced high black unemployment (despite the fact it has always been higher than white unemployment), the decline in manufacturing jobs (which have been declining for 30 years) and the purportedly "real" unemplyment rate (a metric CNS has curiously not referenced during Trump's presidency).
CNS primed this pro-Trump barrage with a Dec. 18 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman cheering how "the unemployment rate for black Americans is the lowest it has been since the year 2000, 17 years ago." Needless to say, Chapman doesn't mention that this is simply the continuation of a trend that began under President Obama.
We've documented how CNSNews.com is following the right-wing media playbook in trying to discredit the Robert Mueller investigation into President Trump's links to Russia and related issues. There's another article to add to the list: a Dec. 26 blog post by CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman lovingly documenting a Fox Business TV appearance by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan. The level of mendaciousness Chapman exhibits in this article is surprising for someone who runs a purported "news" organization.
Chapman kicks things off by referencing "the salacious and false dossier about Donald Trump, paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee." In fact, several parts of the dossier have been verified and corroborated. Nevertheless, Chapman uncritically quoted Jordan dismissing the dossier as "a bunch of lies. ... It's a bunch of National Enquirer garbage and fake news in this thing."
Chapman then writes: "It has been reported that former Trump campaign officials Carter Page and Paul Manafort were spied on in 2016 by U.S. intelligence agencies after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) granted warrants to do so." But the links Chapman uses to back up those claims show that monitoring of Page and Manafort had begun before their affiliation with the Trump campaign.
Chapman then writes:
On Dec. 23 it was reported that Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe will resign in March or April 2018, which is when his full pension and benefits would kick in. McCabe's wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, received a little more than $700,000 in payments from two Democratic PACs in 2015, one headed by Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe. (Jill McCabe, a left-wing Democrat, ran for a state senate seat that year.)
In early 2016, Andrew McCabe helped to oversee the Hillary Clinton email investigation, a scandal for which she was exonerated by then-FBI Director James Comey in July 2016. (McCabe did not recuse himself from the Clinton case until one week before the 2016 presidential election.)
As we've previously documented, there's a timeline issue that shoots down Chapman's conspiracy theory: The donation from McAuliffe's PAC to Jill McCabe's campaign were made several months before Andrew McCabe was named to the Hillary email investigation, and Andrew McCabe wasn't assigned to the investigation until three months after Jill McCabe lost her election. This makes it highly unlikely, if not impossible, there was a quid pro quo.
Also, Chapman doesn't back up his assertion that Jill McCabe was a "left-wing" Democrat, unless he's operating on a knee-jerk assumption that all Democrats are "left-wing."
This is lazy partisan stenography on Chapman's part, proving yet again that CNS under Chapman and Terry Jeffrey care next to nothing about journalism.
CNS Follows Right-Wing Playbook In Attacking Trump-Russia Investigation Topic: CNSNews.com
We've previously noted the Media Research Center's huffiness when it's pointed out how its bretheren in the right-wing media ahve launched a full-scale attack on Robert Mueller's investigation into collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign as well as related issues. One likely reason it was huffy was that the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com -- like the good pro-Trump stenographers they are -- was a part of the right-wing attack on Mueller.
Here are some of the articles CNS published over the past couple months attacking the investigation, the FBI and related issues such as the notorious Trump dossier:
NEW ARTICLE: Susan Jones' Year of Trump Stenography Topic: CNSNews.com
The CNSNews.com reporter is so dedicated to making President Trump look good that she's penning pro-Trump opinion pieces that are presented as "news." Read more >>
CNS Stenography By the Numbers: Mark Levin and Franklin Graham Edition Topic: CNSNews.com
If CNSNews.com has been known for anything in 2017, it was servile stenography. Mostly that was of the Trump administration, but it also covers the various rantings of CNS' favorite commentators. Two of those commentators who regularly get CNS love are right-wing radio host Mark Levin -- with whom CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, has had (and may still have) a cross-promotion deal -- and increasingly right-wing pastor Franklin Graham, whose anti-gay and anti-Obama rants WND managing editor Michael W. Chapman has given much love (and stenographic promotion) in the past.
We've looked through the CNS archives, and here's a tally by month of the articles CNS devoted to Levin and Graham in 2017.
Mark Levin
Jan: 10
Feb: 6 (plus 1 on Levin guest)
March: 6 (plus 1 on Levin guest)
April: 5
May: 7 (plus 2 on Levin guest)
June: 14 (plus 2 on Levin guest)
July: 10
Aug: 16
Sept. 7 (plus 1 on Levin guest)
Oct: 9
Nov: 8 (plus 1 on Levin guest)
Dec: 4
Total: 102 (plus 8 on Levin guests)
Franklin Graham
Jan: 2
Feb: 6 (plus one on Anne Graham Lotz, Franklin's sister)
March: 5
April: 7
May: 7
June: 4
July: 3
Aug: 3
Sept: 6
Oct: 3
Nov: 4
Dec: 4
Total: 54
The pace for Graham is a little slower in the past -- we've noted that Chapman devoted 46 articles to Graham's rantings in one previous six-month period -- but it's still a lot for someone who's known mostly for hating gays and loving President Trump.
CNS' promotion for Levin, meanwhile, didn't stop with serving as a transcription service. It promoted Levin's "new best-seller" book in a July interview with CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey, and a November post by Michael Morris was basically a lightly rewritten press release on Levin's new show on Fox News -- so lightly rewritten that Morris simply copied-and-pasted the last three paragraphs of the press release to fill out his article.
The fact that CNS has outsourced such a singificant part of its content to right-wing ideologues is a big indicator of how much of a non-factor it's becoming.
CNS Doesn't Disclose Its Link To Group Run By Bozell's Son Topic: CNSNews.com
Craig Bannister dutifully types in a Dec. 19 CNSNews.com blog post:
On Tuesday, in anticipation of final passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, ForAmerica President David Bozell issued a statement touting the tax reform plan’s benefits.
“The American people should be pleased to see the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cross the finish line. Congratulations to the Trump Administration and Congress on their accomplishment,” Bozell said.
Bozell declared the bill “a home run for the middle class,” as well as for small businesses:
[...]
ForAmerica is an award-winning, national grassroots organization whose mission is to use social media to reinvigorate the public with the principles of American exceptionalism: freedom, prosperity and virtue, be it in its educational efforts, the support of legislation or the support of public policy.
Despite writing for what purports to be a "news" operation, Bannister breaks a basic rule of journalism by failing to disclose a major conflict of interest. As we've noted, David Bozell is the son of Brent Bozell, CNS publisher and head of the Media Research Center, which owns CNS. Brent Bozell also founded ForAmerica, and the group shares a building with the MRC.
Further, a look at the ForAmerica website reveals it's filled mostly with posts copied from various MRC divisions, including CNS and NewsBusters.
So, yeah, it's pretty integrated with the MRC. Bannister should've told his readers that -- but journalistic ethics isn't a big deal these days for the Trump stenographers at CNS.
CNS Reporter Keeps Up Stenography for WH Press Secretary Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented how CNSNews.com reporter Melanie Arter devoted a whopping 26 articles in September and October to whatever White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had to say. Well, it's time for another count.
In November and December, Arter added another 10 articles to that total:
The lower count can be blamed on more holidays during the month, plus the fact that Arter as been off work since Dec. 15 -- menaing that the total is actually for just a month and a half.
It also means a stenographical story from Arter every three days or so. Which is not really journalism at all.
It was almost universally agreed that White House adviser Stephen Miller's Jan. 7 interview with CNN's Jake Tapper was a disaster for Miller, who refused to answer questions Tapper had asked him and instead serving up glowing tributes to President Trump as a "political genius."
We've
A Jan. 17 CNSNews.com 
Last April, 
CNSNews.com has been unafraid to politicize American military casualties in the past -- remember that it 
CNSNews.com these days is mostly about being 
CNSNews.com has a 
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman devoted a Jan. 3 
CNSNews.com's coverage of December's unemployment numbers was a blitz of pro-Trump rah-rah -- the complete opposite of CNS' coverage of the December 2016 numbers. 
We've previously 
If CNSNews.com has been known for anything in 2017, it was servile stenography. Mostly that was of the Trump administration, but it also covers the various rantings of CNS' favorite commentators. Two of those commentators who regularly get CNS love are right-wing radio host Mark Levin -- with whom CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, 
Craig Bannister dutifully types in a Dec. 19 CNSNews.com 
We've documented how CNSNews.com reporter Melanie Arter devoted 
