Your Monthly CNS Stenography Tally Topic: CNSNews.com
It's that time again -- time for us to do our monthly tally of the stenography work CNSNews.com did for its favorite sources, covering its work in April.
WND -- Which Portrayed Obama As A Narcissistic Psychopath -- Complains When Trump's Mental Health Is Questioned Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh complains in an April 27 WorldNetDaily article:
All presidents undergo regular physicals – and sometimes their medical status is reported publicly, since the free world depends on a healthy U.S. president.
But before now, there’s been no insistence on a mental health evaluation – not while John F. Kennedy was turning the White House into the Playboy Mansion, or while Bill Clinton was carrying on with an intern in the Oval Office, or when George W. Bush was under intense stress after 9/11, or when Barack Obama tried to cancel the First Amendment religious rights of nuns around the world and demand they pay for their employees’ abortions.
Now, however, with a president who, however controversial, is indisputably growing the nation’s economy, rolling back social-agenda experiments in the U.S. military and making progress in denuclearizing North Korea, such evaluations suddenly are needed.
[...]
The “psychiatrists and psychologists” in the book boast of their “civic ‘duty to warn'” America about Trump, even if it violates ethics rules.
Lastly, there’s Michael Tansey, who though announcing he will be “not diagnosing” the president, was a contributor to Lee’s book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” and has lectured on “Trump and Delusional Disorder.” He argues that Trump exhibits much more than run-of-the-mill Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and that America’s chief executive suffers, instead, from the more “serious and dangerous Delusional Disorder.”
First: Unruh is lying when he claimed that Obama "tried to cancel the First Amendment religious rights of nuns around the world and demand they pay for their employees’ abortions." This is an apparent reference to the Little Sisters of the Poor case, in which the order is suing to prevent being associated with providing birth control, even though the Affordable Care Act provides for an accomodation allowing a third-party provider to offer such coverage -- which the Little Sisters of the Poor has refused to sign up for. In other words, the nuns aren't being forced to do anything.
(Also, since the First Amendment is an American principle, it does not apply to anyone else "around the world.")
Second: WND's writers and columnists have previously not had any problem with armchair diagnoses of a president's (or a presidential candidate's) alleged mental state. For example:
WND managing editor David Kupelian asserted that Hillary Clinton is a "malignant" narcissist who is "always phony, manipulative, calculating, blaming, deflecting – always lying," adding: "That’s Nurse Ratched. And that’s Hillary Clinton." Kupelian also claimed that Obama's "behavior as president matches perfectly the clinical symptoms of 'narcissistic personality disorder.'"
Ellis Washington claimed that Obama is "a pathological narcissist that daily creates vast, new totalitarian powers for himself."
Erik Rush declared that "Many Americans, and even a few trained in behavioral science, have identified President Obama as a deeply pathological narcissist."
Ali Sina claimed that Obama's "language, posture and demeanor suggest that he may suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD," adding that "NPD is the prime disorder experienced by all the madmen of history – from Hitler to Stalin, Mao, Kim, Pol Pot, Osama, Khomeini, Saddam and Idi Amin."
Ted Nugent called Obama a "psychopathic liar in chief."
Gina Loudon devoted way too much time to trying to demonstrate that Obama is a psychopath, citing in part his "mysterious and shady past." She added: "No one knew that Pol Pot, Hitler or Ceausescu were psychopaths until they knew. Could America be more perceptive, more insightful, more predictive of a psychopath in leadership before it is too late?"
WND also sells a book by Lyle Rossiter that makes a blanket armchair diagnosis of all liberals as mentally ill, suffering from "a massive transference of neurosis acted out in the world's political arenas, with devastating effects on the institutions of liberty."
That's justanotherflip-flop of WND's standards regarding Trump compared with its treatment of Obama.
MRC's Double Standard on 'Bitter 'Complaints About Anonymous Sources Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Kyle Drennen writes in an April 27 post that "In a statement to The Washington Post on Thursday, disgraced former Today show anchor Matt Lauer bitterly went after his sexual harassment accusers, dismissing the “many false stories” about his behavior “from anonymous or biased sources.” The comments came amid a lengthy Post report on NBC’s poor handling of such allegations, which also detailed new accusations of harassment against former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw."
So you're "bitter" if you complain about anonymously sourced reporting? In that case, the MRC is very bitter.
Tim Graham and Brent Bozell complained in a Martch 2017 column that "It’s beyond irony that the press that champions transparency also advocates relying on completely opaque sources on a daily basis," adding, "wouldn’t it help to know if these liberal newspapers are relying on Obama holdovers and granting them all the benefits of anonymity?" They also grumbled: "But we never know the donation records of 'senior U.S. officials' placed anonymously on the front page, do we? The liberal media merely insist 'Trust us.'"
Graham and Bozell bashed anonymous sources again in a May 2017 column attacking the Washington Post: "How many times must we attend the same movie? As we've seen so many times since Trump became president, these are anonymous leaks coming from nameless, faceless people whose motives might be pure, or could be poisonous." They added:
Earth to the Post: your new motto is “Democracy dies in darkness,” but anonymous sourcing is darkness. Every source who hides behind a wall as he tries to ruin other people’s careers is a self-serving coward with a personal or political axe to grind. Without knowing an identity, the public has no way of telling... anything. It’s idiotic for the press to demand transparency in government at the exact same time it rewards government officials who refuse to be transparent themselves.
Journalists pat themselves on the back that they would never be “stenographers to power,” but they’re worse than that now. In their zeal to destroy Trump, they've become stenographers to anonymous power.
Graham reinforced his bitter argument in a TV appearance that same month (on Fox News, natch), grousing that "the news media today gets to use these anonymous sources, and the anonymous sources can say all sorts of terrible things about Trump" and repeating the "stenographers to anonymous power" talking point.
This bitterness is doubly hypocritical, given that just before the 2016 election, the MRC expended lots of time and energy promoting an anonymously sourced Fox News story suggesting that Hillary Clinton's indictment was imminent. But Fox News later had to retract that story -- something the MRC never told its readers about.
So it seems the MRC is bitter about anonymous sources only when they fail to advance its right-wing agenda.
WND Columnist Is Sad God Won't Help Him Hate Gays Topic: WorldNetDaily
Gays picketed churches and religious organizations. Opponents of Prop 8 posted the names of supporters and their addresses on websites. Companies who supported the amendment were boycotted. People lost their jobs or resigned for supporting Prop 8. Bitter ads were placed in newspapers and so forth.
Prop 8 opponents then filed federal lawsuits against the state of California, citing the new law was illegal according to the U.S. Constitution under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection and due process clause.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown refused to defend Prop 8 in the various court cases. Outside legal groups were forced to take up the fight against the opponents of Prop 8. But in the end, the decision by Schwarzenegger and Brown not to back Prop 8 ended up being the law’s downfall. The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 the proponents of Prop 8 had no legal standing in its courtroom.
Thus, same-sex marriage became a reality in California.
Did the same Christians who cheered and clapped for joy on election night in 2008 fall to their knees and weep after Prop 8 was struck down, realizing God had not backed their efforts after all? Most of us didn’t, but we should have done that.
Why didn’t God back the proponents of Prop 8?
In fact, why has God failed to back most of the Christian efforts against the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender forces over the last five or six years? LGBT groups are now entrenched in the California K-12 public school systems through books used in school curriculum, teacher indoctrinations, special days commemorating LGBT accomplishments and heroes, sex education classes and more. It’s been victory after victory for them.
And now, Assembly Bill AB 2943, could be the first step toward banning Bible sales in the state of California because of LGBT concerns.
Why is God failing to back Christians in this all-out struggle against the kingdom of darkness?
“Blow the trumpet in Zion …”(Joel 2:1)
[...]
There is no doubt Satan and evil men possess major influence in the state of California, but they are not California’s biggest problem right now. God is our primary problem. Our only hope is to repent of our apathy, lethargy, compromise and to wholeheartedly return to God, following the instructions written in the book of Joel.
It’s my belief that my home state of California will either go one way or another in our battle with God. We will either be an example of God’s great mercy or His fearsome judgment to the rest of America.
-- Larry Nevenhoven, April 27 WorldNetDaily column
CNS' Jeffrey Toadies to Trump On GOP Russia Report Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is rather desperate to keep a pro-Trump bias at the website he operates. In service of that, CNS loves to pushtheidea that no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, even investigations into it have not been completed.
So when the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report echoing that same talking point, Jeffrey pounced on it:
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence published a redacted version of its final report on its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, concluding that there is no evidence the Trump campaign “colluded, coordinated, or conspired with the Russian government.”
In the course of its investigation, the committee says, it “interviewed 73 witnesses, conducted 9 hearings and briefings, reviewed approximately 307,900 documents, and issued 20 subpoenas.”
Among the committee’s findings:
--“When asked directly, none of the interviewed witnesses provided evidence of collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.”
--“The committee found no evidence that President Trump’s pre-campaign business dealings formed the basis for collusion during the campaign.”
--“There is no evidence that Trump associates were involved in the theft or publication of Clinton campaign-related emails, although Trump associates had numerous ill-advised contact with Wikileaks.”
--“Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort attended a June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower where they expected to receive—but did not ultimately obtain—derogatory information on candidate Clinton from Russian sources.”
--“The committee found no evidence that meetings between Trump associates—including Jeff Sessions—and official representatives of the Russian government—including Ambassador Kislyak—reflected collusion, coordination, or conspiracy with the Russian government.”
The committee said it investigated “Trump’s business dealings,” “the campaign’s policy positions and personnel,” “involvement in or knowledge about the publication of stolen emails,” and “meetings with Russians,” but did not discover evidence of “collusion, conspiracy or coordination.”
Jeffrey did not tell his readers that this report came from the Republican side of the committee, which has a vested interest in protecting Trump by downplaying accusations of collusion. He also did not mention that the committee's Democrats issued a separate report, which claimed that Republicans ended the committee's work prematurely.
That was accompanied by another article from Jeffrey highlighting how "When former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper met with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on July 17, 2017 as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Clappers aid he had no evidence of collusion between the Russian and the Trump campaign." Jeffrey didn't mention that Clapper ceased being DNI at the end of President Obama's term, and therefore he would likely have no knowledge of findings of government investigations launched in the six months between his departure as DNI and his committee testimony or from any probes launched before he left.
These article appear to be more about Jeffrey sucking up to Trump than they are about reporting useful, balanced information to CNS readers.
WND Claims Christian School Was 'Banned By City' (It Wasn't) Topic: WorldNetDaily
Under the screaming headline "Christian school banned by city and Supremes let it happen," WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh huffs:
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case in which a Michigan township changed its zoning laws to prevent a Christian school from entering the community.
“This is a deeply disappointing decision, not only because of what it means for our clients, but because it will embolden other cities and towns across the country to keep religious organizations from contributing to their community,” said Hiram Sasser, general counsel to First Liberty, which represents Livingston Christian Schoolin the case against Genoa Charter Township.
“We are extremely disappointed the Supreme Court will allow this terrible precedent to stand.”
[...]
The case developed in 2016 when Livingston found a new location on the property of Brighton Church of the Nazarene.
The local planning commission approved the plan, the community supported it and even experts summoned by the township were in favor.
Then the town council rejected the application.
First Liberty said at the time the township “threatened the survival of the school as a religious institution because, as the record demonstrates, the school has no viable alternative location.”
Sasser said the city refused to let the Christian school move to the church “or, for that matter, anywhere else in town” despite the fact “federal law expressly prohibits the government using zoning laws to keep religious institutions out of their town.”
Unruh doesn't explain to his readers that First Liberty's argument is effectively bogus. As we explained when WND first pushed this case, the school was never "banned" from the city; it had other options for a location, and it had been utilizing them while this bogus case wound through the court system.
Indeed, the entire lawsuit is actualy completely moot -- another thing Unruh failed to report -- because the school submitted an amended plan for the Nazarene site last fall and the township approved it. So it has its site after all, and school and its right-wing legal team wasted taxpayer time and money -- $100,000 of township money, by one estimate -- trying to falsely turn a zoning dispute into a religious freedom case, presumably in an attempt to raise money for First Liberty.
And because Unruh and WND care nothing about the journalistic principle of telling both sides of the story, they have effectively published a press release for First Liberty. Which means the fake news at WND hasn't stopped.
Reminder: MRC's Tally of Trump's 'Negative' Media Coverage Is Bogus Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center is at it again, as Rich Noyes writes:
The liberal media’s war against President Trump was as fierce as ever during the first four months of 2018, but the onslaught appears to be for naught: In the face of massive and hostile coverage from ABC, CBS and NBC, Trump’s overall job approval rating actually rose, from 37 percent in mid-December to roughly 43 percent at the end of April.
The Media Research Center studied all broadcast evening news coverage of the President from January 1 through April 30, and found 90 percent of the evaluative comments about Trump were negative — precisely the same hostile tone we documented in 2017.
But unlike last year, when the RealClearPolitics average depicted a slow but steady erosion in the President’s job approval numbers, the public has apparently warmed to Trump in 2018, even as the networks are as frosty as ever.
But as we've pointed out everytime the MRC promotes this so-called study, it's utterly bogus and meaningless, and here's why:
It focuses only on a tiny sliver of news -- the evening newscasts on the three networks -- and suggests it's indicative of all media.
It pretends there was never any neutral coverage of Trump. Indeed, the study explicitly rejects neutral coverage -- even though that's arguable the bulk of news coverage -- dishonestly counting "only explicitly evaluative statements."
It fails to take into account the stories themselves and whether negative coverage is deserved or admit that negative coverage is the most accurate way to cover a given story.
It again fails to provide the raw data or the actual statements it evaluated so its work could be evaluated by others. If the MRC's work was genuine and rigorous, wouldn't it be happy to provide the data to back it up?
Noyes even manages to mislead about Trump's poll numbers. As FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver points out, the 43 percent approval that Noyes cites is close to Trump's ceiling; his approval rating has never ventured out of the range of 36 percent to 44 percent -- the narrowest range in the first 500 days of a presidency in the history of modern polling.
But then, providing an accurate record of media coverage of Trump is not the MRC's goal -- promoting a pro-Trump, anti-media agenda is. Which means that MRC chief Brent Bozell couldn't be prouder that Trump referenced his bogus "research" in a tweet.
WND Columnist Seems To Think Only Americans Should Be Allowed To Play Baseball Topic: WorldNetDaily
Yes, Andy Schlafly really does complain there are too many foreigners playing baseball in his May 1 WorldNetDaily column:
Baseball has been in a slow slide in fan attendance, and the dismal attendance last year was the lowest in 15 years. But the particularly poor start this year should spark some soul-searching about what has happened to our national pastime.
The rules of baseball have not significantly changed over the past century, but the players certainly have. Today baseball has become a sport for foreigners playing on workers’ “P-1” visas, which are every bit as objectionable as the “H-1B” visas Phyllis Schlafly and other Trump supporters have complained about for years.
Roughly a quarter of Major League Baseball consists today of foreign-born players, and an even higher percentage of foreigners have flooded the minor leagues. Today, some minor league rosters look more like a World Cup soccer team than a baseball squad.
Owners have figured out that they can sign foreign players to smaller bonuses, and have greater strings attached, rather than give nice contracts to American youngsters. The foreigners do not play baseball any better than Americans, and few of the foreign players are genuine Hall of Fame candidates.
In sharp contrast with a quarter-century ago, every baseball team today has a high-paid foreign player. Free traders brag about this as a model that Americans should imitate in other industries, but the reality is that fans prefer rooting for hometown heroes like Lou Gehrig, who grew up in New York City, played baseball for Columbia University and then became the “Pride of the Yankees.”
[...]
Jackie Robinson, and Willie Mays and Hank Aaron after him, inspired a generation of young African-Americans to become baseball stars like them. That motivation is gone today with the deluge of foreign players on P-1 visas, and without enough black baseball stars hardly any young African-Americans play the sport anymore.
While major league teams have an oversupply of foreign players, and even more in the minor leagues, nearly one-third today have only one black player on their roster. Last year there were fewer black players in Major League Baseball than 1958, shortly after Jackie Robinson retired.
[...]
Baseball was a fabulous way to inspire multiple generations of boys to play a healthy game that emphasizes the virtues of teamwork, patience, discipline and following rules. But something is lost in the translation, and the motivation is lost, when the visa program is abused to reward foreigners rather than American youth.
Actually, Major League Baseball is a meritocracy in which the best players play no matter where they're from.
One gets the impression that 50 years ago, Schlafly would be complaining there were too many black players in baseball.
As it did last month, CNSNews.com's coverage of April's job numbers downplays the number of new jobs created -- a sign it doesn't consider that number impressive enough -- in favor of cherry-picked stats that make President Trump look better.
Instead, Susan Jones' main story touts how "Not since May 2001, 17 years ago, has the number of unemployed Americans been this low." It's not until the ninth paragraph that Jones mentions that there has been no real change in the labor force participation rate under Trump -- a number it heavily emphasized when Barack Obama was president when it was similarly stagnant. The jobs-created number didn't get mentioned until the 10th paragraph.
This story joined by the usual Trump-era sidebars by Terry Jeffrey on government employment and manufacturing jobs. The latter attacks Obama for "a one-month decline of 289,000" in manufacturing jobs the month he took office but doesn't mention that the economy was in the midst of cratering into a major recession at the time; Jeffrey also credits Trump for 304,000 manufacturing jobs since he took office but not the hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs created under Obama since the end of the recession -- a fact illustrated by the chart accompanying his article.
An article by Michael W. Chapman touts how "The national unemployment rate for blacks in April 2018 was 6.6%, the lowest it has been since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) started compiling such data in 1972, some 46 years ago," but he fails to mention that the rate decline is merely the continuation of a trend begun under Obama.
Tellingly, Jones waited three days to do an article offering a closer look at the labor force participation rate and how it hasn't really changed under Trump -- something she would never have waited to do under Trump. The article's headline is quick to hype that the stagnant participation rate is driven largely by baby boomers retiring -- also a fact CNS was reluctant to admit during the Obmaa years.
WND Columnists Still Trying to Defend Bill Cosby Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's columnists have a soft spot for Bill Cosby, even after allegations of sexual assault surfaced -- for example, Jesse Lee Peterson insisted the charges were part of a liberal conspiracy against him.
Now that Cosby has actually been convicted on a sexual assault charge, WND columnists are still trying to defend him. Carl Jackson took a Peterson-esque conspiracy route, claiming Cosby was targeted because he made speeches critical of the black community and lamenting that nondisclosure agreements are coming back to bite him:
Initially, they were hard to believe, hard to fathom, but as witnesses came forward in larger numbers, the accusations became impossible to dismiss. Having said all of that, Bill Cosby’s conviction at his retrial would not have been possible if two things hadn’t occurred:
If the New York Times had not obtained and released Cosby’s deposition transcript from his 2005 testimony regarding Andrea Constand’s civil suit against him. Ultimately, Constand was rewarded $3.4 million after signing a confidentiality agreement that banned both parties from releasing the documents. Apparently, the transcript itself was never sealed despite the agreement.
Secondly, Cosby’s conviction in the retrial wouldn’t have been possible if Judge O’Neill, who presided over the first trial that resulted in a hung jury, hadn’t allowed testimony of five accusers with unfounded claims to tip the scale in favor of the prosecution. According to the New York Post, criminal defense attorney Stuart Slotnick, who has followed the trial for two years, believes there are “strong grounds for appeal,” since it was clear the prosecution couldn’t convict Cosby based on Andrea Constand’s testimony alone. In addition to her testimony, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele used testimony from other accusers – who, again, offered no proof or evidence – to establish a pattern of behavior from Cosby. This could be problematic for the prosecution because Bill Cosby was never charged in any case regarding the accusers that testified against him. Judge O’Neill never explained why he allowed their testimony.
In a court of law, it shouldn’t matter what you think about Cosby; what should matter is what you can prove. Like it or not, that’s our system. Furthermore, let’s be honest, had Cosby not began advocating for family values in the black community, none of this would’ve ever been exposed. In the end, it isn’t my goal to defend Cosby’s despicable acts, if his accusers are telling the whole truth. If they are being totally truthful, Cosby has no one to blame but himself for his legal problems. However, it’s clear to me that nondisclosure agreements mean nothing in the era of the #MeToo movement, and unproven testimony from witnesses is enough to put you away for life. The latter especially should disturb us all.
Barry Farber, meanwihle, wants President Trump to pardon Cosby and insrtead be sentenced to provide uplifting messages to people:
Why not admit it? I want President Trump to pardon Bill Cosby.
And, yes, I’m aware of all the rapacious evil I’m abetting and the glorious victory over those forces I’m seeking to annul. And I still want Trump to pardon Cosby.
[...]
Bill Cosby’s entire life up to these criminal adventures with women is one huge mitigating circumstance. Bill Cosby’s contribution to the betterment of America is unique. Please don’t tumble into that common error of calling somebody or something “rather unique” or “kind of unique.” “Unique” is an absolute, and calling Cosby unique means there’s no one like him, past or present. Cosby mobilized the healing power of television to deflect rising tension between the two major races, and his life and work gave rise, oddly enough, to good solid moral messages whose penetrating power dwarfs those of any sermon in any church, synagogue or ashram.
Bill Cosby’s uniqueness in his contribution to us calls for unique treatment from us. But should we therefore annul his conviction and apologize to him? Certainly not!
In return for no jail time, Cosby will agree to speaking engagements before appropriate audiences of young people. He will reach those audiences with a strong message on building a life that’s praiseworthy and stays praiseworthy lest it all come crashing down on them as it did on him!
Farber doesn't seem to understand that Cosby's "praiseworthy" public life was revealed as a sham through his private behavior, making any uplifting message he might offer now moot and hypocritical.
Not A Good Sign: Ed Klein Endorses Corsi's Trump Book Topic: Newsmax
In promoting Jerome Corsi's new pro-Trump conspiracy book fearmongering about the "Deep State," Newsmax has to sidestep the elephant in the room: Corsi's utter lack of crediblity as a diehard Obama birther who worked for WorldNetDaily and currently works for the whacked-out Alex Jones operation Infowars. So it apparently has to take endorsement for Corsi where it can.
Which brings us to this anonymously written April 30 Newsmax article:
Edward Klein once worked for one of the most liberal media organizations in America, The New York Times.
He was not just a reporter, but served as an editor of the powerful New York Times magazine.
His establishment credentials were incredible: Senior editor at Newsweek. Contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
He was the darling of the media world — until he told the truth.
When his two runaway New York Times best-sellers hit exposing Barack Obama, he was immediately shunned by the media establishment.
They turned on him because he wrote two books on Obama — "The Amateur" and "Blood Feud" — considered among the biggest exposés of the Obama years.
Now Ed Klein is endorsing a new book about President Donald Trump and the "Deep State" war against him.
It's Jerome Corsi's new "Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump."
Here is what truth-teller Edward Klein says:
"'Killing the Deep State' is an explosive must-read that not only exposes the insidious nature and goals of the shadow government, but also provides a road map to ensuring that the will of the people — through President Trump — succeeds."
The problem here is that Klein is not a truth-teller. He was not "shunned" by the "media establishment" because he told the truth about Obama; he was shunned because he couldn't back any of it up with on-the-record evidence and frequently uses anonymous, unverifiable sources for his most salacious claims.Oh, and one of the reasons he lost his job as an editor of the New York Times magazine is because it published a fabricated story under his watch.
Nevertheless, Newsmax keeps trying to make a silk purse out of this sow's ear:
Klein knows the consequences of telling the truth.
Now Jerome Corsi knows it, too.
He's been virtually banned by all the major TV networks — CNN, MSNBC, and even Fox News refuses to put him on air or discuss his book.
MRC Gushes Over Bret Baier (Who Fed The MRC Fake News) Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck did some serious fanboying over Fosx News' Bret Baier in an April 26 post:
Former FBI Director and new author James Comey has spent the past 12 days on his book tour promoting A Higher Loyalty, the supposed greatness of Comey himself and the lack thereof on the part of President Trump.
However, no prior interview compared to his Thursday hit on the Fox News Channel’s Special Report as host Bret Baier offered a masterfully tough tour de force akin to interviews of yesteryear by the late Tim Russert.
[...]
Comey denied that despite having written a memo exonerating her and emphasized that it’s crucial for investigators to have an idea of where a probe that ended up lasting almost a year.
It was soon after that Baier showed his mettle, telling Comey that “you already knew that she had been telling, whatever you want to say, lies, mistruths about this investigation of what — and how she handled those emails” and played a clip of Comey stating just that in congressional testimony in July 2016.
[...]
What made Baier’s interview successful but damaging for Comey was his short but pointed questions that didn’t come across as attitudinal or snarky. One such moment was when Baier broached the subject of the Steele dossier.
[...]
Baier then held Comey’s feet to the fire over the leak of the Trump Tower meeting between Comey and Trump over the dossier. The FNC host ran through the gambit of possible leakers and Comey denied all of them. Comey added that he made no attempt to find out who did it because the dossier was an “unclassified, public document.”
Without a doubt, the most devastating exchange focused on Comey’s leaking of his memos to friend, former FBI employee, and law professor Daniel Richman. The FNC host marvelously exposed Comey’s refusal to inform lawmakers that Richman was anything but a private citizen and instead a former “FBI special government employee.”
[...]
This was far from the first instance in which Baier grilled high-profile figures in the news. In March and August 2016, he grilled Hillary Clinton during the height of the campaign in ways that put his competitors to shame. He also hammered then-Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon on Mary 25, 2016 in a similar fashion that you can read about here.
That's some serious gushing. Note that Houck doesn't cite any examples of Baier asking tough questions of a Republican or conservative.
Houck also doesn't mention that Baier is also responsible for a fake-news story the MRC heavily promoted just before the 2016 election -- the anonymously sourced claim that Hillary Clinton was facing imminent indictment. The MRC ranted that media outlets who didn't report the story in a manner to its liking were engaging in a "cover-up," and MRC chief Brent Bozell declared that "We will report developments on this continuing cover-up every hour from here on out."
None of those hours, however, were devoted to the fact that the story turned out to be false, and Baier retracted it. The MRC never told its readers the story was bogus.
But then, Houck and the MRC never holds conservatives to the same journalistic and ethical standards it holds reporters who aren't conservative -- and Houck will never praise a "liberal media" reporter for asking tough questions of a conservative the way he gushed over the Baier-Comey interview.
No, Joseph Farah, Calif. Bill Would Not Ban the Bible Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah freaks out in his April 22 column:
Ideas have consequences – and so do laws.
In its zeal to ensure that no transgender person in California is ever confronted by any expression that might not entirely affirm that person’s feeling, the state is set to ban all psychological or spiritual counseling contrary to a person’s claimed sexual orientation as well as the sale of any merchandise – presumably including books – that might offer a different point of view.
Obviously, that could very well include the Bible, which does not recognize more than two sexual identities – male and female.
Is it a stretch to say that AB 2943 could result in a ban of the Bibles and books that do not affirm transgenderism?
Not at all.
The bill explicitly prohibits the sale of printed materials that do just that.
Meanwhile, religion blogger Warren Throckmorton did what Farah couldn't be bothered to do -- contact the sponsor of AB 2943, Assemblyman Evan Low:
I wrote Assemblyman Evan Low to ask if AB 2943 prohibited the sale of books or videos promoting conversion therapy by therapists. I also asked if the amended law would prohibit the sale of religious books or videos which advocate that gays should change their sexual orientation by religious means. Finally, I asked if AB 2943 prohibited the sale of books or videos promoting celibate behavior for gays as a way to adhere to religious beliefs.
Low’s Communications Director Maya Polon wrote back to answer all three questions negatively. According to the sponsor, the bill doesn’t relate to books or speech. I followed up by asking if any of the unlawful business practices has ever led to the banning of any books or speech. She wrote back to say that she wasn’t aware of any instance where books about any those practices have been banned.
[...]
A few days ago Evan Low responded to this issue via Twitter:
A church or individual may still practice conversion therapy if they do so without charging for this fraudulent service. It does not ban bibles nor does it ban the basic sales of books as some would have you believe.
Throckmorton concluded: "What makes me think this could be a reasonable response to the harm reparative therapy can do is that there is nothing in the bill that stops a person from trying to make personal changes outside of a professional context. Furthermore, I don’t see how the bill prohibits counselors from helping clients who pursue celibacy. However, it does remove the stamp of approval of the mental health professions for change therapy."
The rest of Farah's column is simply regurgitating the bogus alarmism about AB 2943 from anti-gay groups like Liberty Counsel and Save California. Not exactly the journalism WND needs to regain its lost credibility and income.
CNS Demonstrates How To Mislead With A Chart Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey writes in an April 25 article:
The federal government paid a “bed rate” of $127.82 per day to house each illegal alien detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in fiscal 2016, according to ICE data published in a new report by the Government Accountability Office.
Even if you do not count the extra day in that leap year, that works out to $46,654.30 for each detention bed occupied by an illegal alien for 365 days.
The approximately $46,654 it cost to house a detained illegal alien for 365 days in fiscal 2016 was approximately $104 more than the average income for Americans 15 and older that year—which, according to Census Bureau Table PINC-01, was $46,550.
So how did that $104 difference look in the chart that originally accompanied Jeffrey's article? Like this:
That's one visually misleading chart -- it covers only a $200 range to make the $104 difference look much bigger than it is.
No wonder it now appears to have been deleted from Jeffrey's article. Apparently CNS does have at least a little sense of shame after all when it comes to misleading journalism.
WND Givves Diamond & Silk A Pass On Their False Claim Of Being 'Censored' By Facebook Topic: WorldNetDaily
WND was in full stenography mode for pro-Trump duo Diamond & Silk in an anonymously written April 26 article:
Social media stars Diamond and Silk, the hilarious duo that support the president, testified before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday on allegations of bias against conservatives by Facebook – and their impassioned statements frequently elicited smiles from spectators.
The two, whose real names are Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, said if Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been censoring the speech of anyone on the left, “Democrats would be in the streets right now, marching and calling him all types of racist.”
Some Democrats criticized the decision to hold the hearing, and Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., even called it “stupid and ridiculous.”
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., suggested that the two women were making a great deal of money off the social media network.
“You ladies are very impressive to me,” Johnson said. “You have taken something and moved forward with it, exercising your First Amendment rights, and you’ve made a ton of money off Facebook, is that correct?”
“Absolutely not,” Hardaway shot back. “Facebook censored us for six months.”
But Johnson continued, “The point I’m trying to make is you all have been bashing Facebook and you’ve been making a ton of money, isn’t that correct?”
Hardaway replied: “We didn’t bash Facebook. We brought the light on how Facebook has been censoring conservative voices like ours. … They won’t let us monetize on Facebook. They stopped it for six months, 29 days. They limited our page.”
Richardson added, “And YouTube did also by demonetizing 95 percent of our videos for no reason at all, deeming it as hate speech.”
Johnson kept pressing the women, noting that they “still sell merchandise.”
“Even if we sell merchandise that don’t have anything to do with Facebook,” Hardaway responded. “Facebook censored our free speech, and shame on the ones that don’t even see that we have been censored.”
Just one problem: Diamond & Silk were never "censored" on Facebook. As ThinkProgress documents, the duo's Facebook page shows that total interactions have remained steady over the past year, which inclues the six-month period of time that they claim they were "censored."
WND also takes Diamond & Silk at their word when they claim their payment from the Trump campaign, designated in campaign records as "field consulting," was actually reimbursement for travel expenses. The Trump campaign now claims it was a travel reimbursement.
It's that time again -- time for us to do our monthly tally of the stenography work CNSNews.com did for its favorite sources, covering its work in April.
Bob Unruh complains in an April 27 WorldNetDaily 
The Media Research Center's Kyle Drennen writes in an April 27 
Gays picketed churches and religious organizations. Opponents of Prop 8 posted the names of supporters and their addresses on websites. Companies who supported the amendment were boycotted. People lost their jobs or resigned for supporting Prop 8. Bitter ads were placed in newspapers and so forth.
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey is rather desperate to keep a pro-Trump bias at the website he operates. In service of that, CNS loves to 
Under the screaming headline "Christian school banned by city and Supremes let it happen," WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh 
The Media Research Center is at it again, as Rich Noyes 
Yes, Andy Schlafly really does complain there are too many foreigners playing baseball in his May 1 WorldNetDaily 
As it did 
WorldNetDaily's columnists have a soft spot for Bill Cosby, even after allegations of sexual assault surfaced -- for example, Jesse Lee Peterson 
In 
The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck did some serious fanboying over Fosx News' Bret Baier in an April 26 
WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah freaks out in his April 22 
WND was in full stenography mode for pro-Trump duo Diamond & Silk in an anonymously written April 26 
