CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman loves to use his post to indulge in gay-bashing. He does so again in a May 11 article in which he viewed with horror that major league baseball teams have LGBT nights.

"Sadly, 23 of the 30 Major League Baseball (MLB) teams are promoting homosexuality through "LGBT Pride" nights this year, reported Outsports.com," Chapman intoned, hadding with pride that "only two MLB teams -- New York Yankees and Los Angeles Angels -- have never held such 'pride' nights."

Chapman then described in a similar horror-stricken tone what happens on such nights:

At MLB's "LGBT Pride" nights, the gay rainbow flags are often unfurled, there is "raibow-themed baseball merchandise," the promotion of LGBT organizations, and homosexuals or transgenders are often invited to throw the cermonial first pitch, reported LifeSiteNews. 

The stadiums, despite the presence of children, also often use the "kiss cams" to project gays kissing onto a large screen.

Oh, the horror.

Chapman also quoted MLB official Billy Bean, "an openly homosexual former player," calling the pride nights as being "in the spirit of Jackie Robinson," which caused Chapman to huff: "There is no equivalency between race and sex and it is not known whether Robinson ever supported homosexuality."

For all of this simmering outrage, Chapman never mentions that many MLB teams also offer "faith and family nights" in which players and fans get to play up their Christian faith. 

Posted by Terry K. at 10:27 AM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

I am going to make an analogy, and I want to preface it with an iron bound disclaimer: I am in no way and am absolutely not intending to compare the people in my analogy, only the situation. In other words, I would absolutely never compare Donald Trump or any other human ever born with Jesus Christ, but the basic situations that happened two thousand years apart are, in a secular frame of thought, very similar.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were the absolute authorities on interpreting the written word of the prophets and had the power to excommunicate anyone they wished, in a body known as the Sanhedrin. They held power over doctrine and custom and relished their exalted place in religious society.

They loved being deferred to, given the best seats in the synagogue, the highest places of honor at social functions and being shown signs of respect on the streets and in the market places.

They kept the Jewish laws and commandments to the Nth degree, tithing even the herbs in their gardens, but they figured out a way to game the system.

If the law didn’t specifically state that you should not evict widows and orphans from their homes or some other evil, profit-making scheme, they did it all under the veil of being the most righteous men in the nation.

When Jesus came along, healing the sick and raising the dead and preaching a salvation of laws written on the conscience instead of laws written on parchment, which could be circumvented, He threatened their high standing, their lives of luxury and power.

They even made the statement that if something wasn’t done about this charismatic young Galilean, they could lose their place.

Jesus was an outsider, a Jew, but the bearer of a New Covenant, exposing lies and fallacies and shining a light in the dark places of corruption and deceit.

Now, put aside the deity and do not accuse me of the blasphemy of comparing a sinful human with the sinless Son of the Living God, because that is NOT my intention. But for a minute, stop and think of the establishment politicians as Pharisees, who, regardless of what party is in power – and they are nearly interchangeable, by the way – have had their way in this country for a century or more.

All of a sudden, as unexpectedly as a July snow, a brash outsider, who minces no words, takes no prisoners and calls ’em like he sees ’em, status be damned, is elected to the highest office in the free world, and he releases a swarm of flies into their ointment, disrespecting their traditions, and calls not only theirs, but the media’s bluff, without fear of retaliation.

-- Charlie Daniels, May 8 CNSNews.com column

Posted by Terry K. at 12:48 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

CNSNews.com reporter Melanie Arter was helping her favorite stenography client, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, out of another Trump-instigated mess -- his tweet that perhaps the government should "take away credentials" of journalists that write things he doesn't like -- in May 9 article. Arter regurgitated Sander's insistence that the White House believes in afree press, and then pretty much stay in stenography mode later in the article:

The press secretary said it’s the media’s responsibility to report accurate information and pointed to a New York Times report accusing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo of being AWOL when he was really securing the release of the three Americans from North Korea. She also pointed to a Washington Post report, which accused first lady Melania Trump of not living in the White House.

“At the same time, the press has a responsibility to put out accurate information. Just yesterday, the New York Times accused the Secretary of State for being AWOL -- AWOL -- when he was flying across the globe to bring three Americans home. That is an outrageous claim,” Sanders said.

“Just earlier this week, The Washington Post accused the first lady of not living in the White House. That outrageous claim was then repeated again in this room,” she added.

If Arter had bothered to fact-check Sanders -- something she's loath to do -- she would have found that  Sanders' claims were, shall we say, less than truthful.

The word "AWOL" appears nowhere in the New York Times article Sanders is bashing. The article accurately points out that former secretary of state Rex Tillerson was "thousands of miles away" when Trump announced his intention to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and that current secretary of state Mike Pompeo, was "again thousands of miles away, this time on an unannounced visit to Pyongyang" when Trump announced "what could be the most significant diplomatic announcement of his presidency — that he would exit the Iran nuclear agreement." The Times alsoreported that such absences "left perplexed European diplomats privately complaining that they were having trouble getting answers from Washington, and created an uncertainty about what was next that spanned the Atlantic Ocean." While it was later revealed that Pompeo was trying to secure the release of three Americans imrpisoned in North Korea, that was not a done deal at the time the article first appeared.

Sanders got the Post article she attacked completely wrong. It never claimed that Melania Trump doesn't livein the White House; toward the end of the lengthy article -- which focuses on her daily routine and her unusual distance from her husband as a presidential spouse -- it notes that Melania not living in the White House has been a "persistent rumor," then immediately quotes Melania's spokeswoman and the White House social secretary denying it.

And not questioning anything Sanders says, even when it's misleading or even false, is a big part of Arter helping her do cleanup.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:13 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee released the transcript of Donald Trump Jr.'s testimony about a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer and others in June 2016, in which the Trump campaign was reportedly offered Russian-linked intelligence damaging to Hillary Clinton.

CNSNews.com -- ever mindful of its role as a pro-Trump stenographer -- didn't want to report on that. So, instead, its first story on the transcript release focused on a side issue.

"Fusion GPS’ Glenn Simpson Dined With Russian Lawyer Before & After Her Meeting at Trump Tower" read the headline on the article by Susan Jones, and it did indeed focus on how "Transcripts released Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee say that Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, had dinner with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya both the day before and the day after she met with Donald Trump, Jr. at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016."

How desperate is Jones to deflect from Trump Jr.'s actions? Jones admits that "Sen. Dianne Feinstein released the Simpson transcript earlier this year" -- in other words, the main part of her article was based on something that was released months ago, not the newly released transcripts.

The next day, Jones apparently figured out a way to put a positive spin on the transcripts by portraying the meeting as ultimately useless:

Both sides came out of the June 9, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower feeling misled and disappointed, transcripts show. So why did it happen and who benefited?

Certainly, that now-famous meeting has been the main exhibit among those politicians and media outlets fanning the Russian "collusion" theory.

Donald Trump Jr. told congressional investigators he agreed to meet with a Russian lawyer, someone unknown to him, when an acquaintance (a British-born producer for a Russian musician) told him "someone had official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary Clinton and her dealings with Russia and that the information would be very useful to the campaign."

[...]

Based on transcripts released Wednesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee, both Trump and two of the Russians attending that June 9 Trump Tower meeting later agreed that they were talking past each other.

"All else being equal," Trump Jr. said, "I wouldn't have wanted to waste 20 minutes hearing about something that I wasn't supposed to be meeting about." Asked if he took the meeting to try to get dirt on Clinton, Trump said, "I took the meeting to listen."

Of course, the point of the meeting -- if not ultimately fruitful -- was the Trump Jr. was clearly willing to collude with Russians. Jones didn't report that.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:14 AM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

CNSNews.com is never so slavishly pro-Trump as when it's clearly following orders from on high -- Terry Jeffrey? Brent Bozell? Sarah Huckabee Sanders? -- to push the Trump White House talking point du jour. For example, we caught them last month in one blatant example, in which it generated two entire agenda-driven articles about a single question during the Mike Pompeo confirmation hearing.

It does the same double-team talking-point drilling again. A May 9 article on Gina Haspel's confirmation hearing for CIA director dutifully repeats a conservative Republican senator's talking point:

During CIA nominee Gina Haspel’s confirmation hearing Wednesday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) took issue with Sen. Mark Warner’s (D-Va.) assertion that the attorney general’s legal approval of the CIA’s interrogation program was a “get out of jail free card” for Haspel.

Cotton also wondered how many votes Haspel would receive if she were nominated by former President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton if she had won the election.

“In fact, if you had been nominated by President Obama or if Hillary Clinton had won and nominated you to be CIA director, how many votes do you think you would have gotten to be confirmed as CIA director? You don’t have to answer,” Cotton said.

The next day, Susan Jones penned an article that pushed the same basic talking point from another angle, under the headline "Republican Senator: Democrats Hate Haspel Because Trump Nominated Her":

Sen. Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican, was asked by CNN if he could understand Democrats' concerns about interrogation methods used in the past that are now illegal:

"Well, sure," Risch said. "They hate anything that Donald Trump does in this town."

"The people in this town, many of them hate Trump so bad that no matter who he nominates, they're going to raise anything they can. You just hit the nail on the head, and that is that the interrogation had nothing to do with her. They're trying to get her to answer for this one. She was not involved in that," Risch said.

Well done, ladies. You have done the Trump White House a great service. The cause of journalism, however? Not so much.

Posted by Terry K. at 6:37 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

A May 7 blog post by CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman is a massive tirade against filmmaker Michael Moore for marking the 200th birthday of Karl Marx. Chapman starts out this way:

Documentary filmmaker and left-wing activist Michael Moore, who has an estimated net worth of $50 million, effusively praised Karl Marx, the intellectual founder of Marxist Communism, a brutal idology that killed an estimated 100 million people worldwide in the 20th century, and whose Soviet leaders -- Lenin and Stalin -- inspired the German National Socialist Adolf Hitler.  

May 5 was the 200th birthday of Karl Marx (1818-1883), a constantly debt-ridden economist and revolutionary who is best known for his pamphlet, the Communist Manifesto. 

On May 5, Michael Moore tweeted, "Happy 200th Birthday Karl Marx! You believed that everyone should have a seat at the table & that the greed of the rich would eventually bring us all down."

"You believed that everyone deserves a slice of the pie," said Moore. "You knew that the super wealthy were out to grab whatever they could."

That same day, Moore also tweeted, "Though the rich have sought to distort him or even use him, time has shown that, in the end, Marx was actually mostly right & that the aristocrats, the slave owners, the bankers and Goldman Sachs were wrong... 'Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!"

Given Marx's teaching, clearly explained in the Communist Manifesto, and his legacy, Moore might as well have sent birthday wishes to Hitler, or Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot. 

Chapman never actually gets around to responding to what Moore wrote about Marx -- or anything Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto, for that matter.He did, however, cling to his less-than-historical claim that communism and Nazism were one in the same because, um, Hitler and Stalin signed a nonagression pact:

Their allegiance to Marxist ideology was proven when Stalin allied with Hitler in 1939 and invaded Poland -- the leftist intellectuals had no complaints. During the 1930s, the Soviets graciously allowed Nazi troops to drill and practice war games on Soviet land. 

Chapman conveniently ignores the fact that Hitler was an anti-communist who expelled communists and Marxists from the German government when he gained power in 1933, having portrayed the Nazi Party as the only hope against a communist takeover of Germany. Chapman also forgets that Germany broke the alliance in 1941 by invading the Soviet-held portion of Poland and other areas under Soviet control under the pact.

But Chapman is mostly interested in right-wing, self-righteous  ranting against Moore for noting that Marx had a point:

It's not surprising that the multi-millionaire leftist Michael Moore supports Karl Marx, a man whose ideas led to the slaughter of 100 million people. In the 19th century and most of the 20th century it was the so-called "intellectuals" and leftist "artists" in the West who promoted Marx.

[...]

Like the Communist apologists of the past, Michael Moore is nothing more than a propagadist for Karl Marx, a man whose violent ideas sowed the fields of China, Russia, and Eastern Europe with blood. 

Moore's sentiments are repulsive and dangerous. He should be condemned for praising a man who is the moral and ideological equivalent of Adolf Hitler.

Mmore repulsive and dangerous than Chapman's disregard of facts in spewing his rabid case of Michael Moore Derangement Syndrome?

Posted by Terry K. at 2:08 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

If you were a news outlet writing a story on someone, wouldn't you mention the thing for which that person is most famous?

If you were a real news outlet, yes. But we're taking about CNSNews.com here, which is in thrall to right-wing ideology and associated activist groups like the National Rifle Association.

Thus, the May 7 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman on Oliver North being named NRA president describes him as a "decorated veteran, best selling author, and former National Security Council member" and gushing quotes from NRA official Wayne LaPierre -- but no mention whatsoever of the one thingthat catapulted him to fame -- his involvement in the Iran-contra scandal.

Chapman shoved down the memory hole the fact that North is only technically not a convicted felon, with his convictions on destroying documents, obstructing Congress and taking a bribe dismissed only because of having been granted immunity for his congressional testimony.

A follow-up story by Susan Jones the next day touted a North appearance on "Fox & Friends" (of course) in which he said various pro-NRA things. Jones similarly failed to mention North's role in the Iran-contra scandal.

Again, this is CNS, where it's all about the ideology, not about the journalism.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:58 AM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

CNSNews.com had a spasm of public school-bashing at the start of the month.

A chart-filled May 1 article by editor in chief Terry Jeffrey played up a claim that "Sixty-five percent of the eighth graders in American public schools in 2017 were not proficient in reading and 67 percent were not proficient in mathematics." That was followed a few hours later by an article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman touting how "A fifth-grade teacher who has worked in the San Diego Unified School District for 21 years was recently charged with distribution of child pornography, including videos involving a toodler girl with an adult male and another video involving a seven-year-old girl engaged in rough sex with an adult male."

The next day, Jeffrey wrote a column bashing public schools -- and touting Catholic schools -- further based on those numbers: First: Public schools are doing a bad job teaching their students these two basic subjects. Second: Catholic schools are doing a better job."

Jeffrey then complains that public schools don't incocxtrinate their students in "Catholic values," then demands that parents be given school vouchers:

Then there is the second contest in which the Catholic schools beat the public schools: Teaching values.

Public schools generally teach secular left-wing values — that, in some instances, cannot be reconciled with the laws of nature and nature's God, whom the Founders invoked when they created this republic.

Catholic schools teach Catholic values, which are wholly consistent with the natural law, which must ultimately form the foundation of every American law.

[...]

But many parents who sent their children to public schools also got a bad deal — because their child got a bad education.

States should take every penny they now spend on the public schools and give it to parents in the form of a voucher that carries just one requirement: Educate your child where you see fit.

Jeffrey doesn't explain how destroying public schools  helps anyone other than right-wing ideologues like himself.

Posted by Terry K. at 6:02 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman is no stranger to the CNS culture of stenography. Thus, he kicks off an April 27 article -- headlined "Liberty Counsel: CA Bill Against Gay Conversion Could Ban Christian Books, Speech" -- with some dedicated stenography:

The California House recently passed legislation (AB 2943) that says "advertising, offering to engage in, or engaging in sexual orientation change efforts with an individual" is a fraudulaent business practice, and if it passes in the Senate and becomes law, it could result in certain books, speakers, and conferences being banned, including the Bible, said Mat Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel. 

The bill "is so broad that it bans books, printed materials and advertisements that provide information that a person facing unwanted same-sex attractions or gender confusion can change," said Staver. "[It] is a dramatic infringement on First Amendment rights and is a classic viewpoint discrimination. It declares certain kinds of speech as consumer fraud."

Interestingly, Chapman actually includes alternative views that shoot down Liberty Counsel's alarmism; several paragraphs later, he quotes the head of the group Save California as saying that it is "not likely" that the bill would ban the Bible. Yet the fact that the article contains differing views is not reflected in the headline.

Chapman never bothers to seek out the sponsor of the bill, Evan Low, who has specifically stated that the bill does not ban book sales, let alone that of the Bible.

Interestingly, while Chapman labels a California assemblyman who supports the bill as a "liberal Democrat" and the Human Rights Campaign, which also supports the bill, as "a pro-homosexuality advocacy group," he does not provide any ideological labels for Liberty Counsel and Save California -- both of which are right-wing anti-LGBT groups.

Chapman did go on to try and rebut the HRC:

The HRC also claimed that there is no "credible evidence" that conversion therapy can help a person turn away from same-sex attraction. However, some doctors have shown how homosexuality can be prevented and explained how reparative therapy can repair people.

Chapman provides as an example of "some doctors" a link to the biography of Joseph Nicolosi, a psychologist and a founder of the notoriously anti-gay group NARTH who championed conversion therapy. And the link on "reparative therapy" goes to a YouTube video of a 1974 TV appearance by fellow anti-gay psychiatrist and NARTH co-founder Charles Socarides, whose son is gay. Chapman doesn't seem to understand that critical thinking about homosexuality has evolved over the past 40 years.

And that's the closest Chapman ever comes to providing any evidence to back up the view of himself and his right-wing anti-gay buddies that conversion therapy works.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:47 AM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

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.

Judicial Watch: 6

• Judicial Watch: Obama Admin Spent $9 Million Colluding With Soros Groups in Albania
• Judicial Watch: Trump 'Should Order the Firing of Mueller ... He's Out of Control'
• Judicial Watch Sues FBI For Comey Book Documents
• Judicial Watch: 'Wheels of Justice Finally Caught Up' With Ex-FBI Deputy Dir. McCabe
• Judicial Watch: 'Yes,' Comey Broke the Law, He Was 'Stealing Govt Records' and Leaked Them
• Judicial Watch Sues For Records on Obama Admin. Role in Placing Russian Ambassador at RNC

Mark Levin: 8

• Levin: ‘If the Israelis Listened to Bernie Sanders, They Would Cease to Exist’
• Levin: In US, ‘We Have Exactly What the Framers Feared’ – A ‘Permanent, Massive Bureaucracy’
• Levin: We Can’t Trade Freely with China; They’re ‘at War with Us’
• Levin: Ryan Retiring Because Spending Bill ‘Was Disastrous for the Country’
• Levin: Let’s Apply ‘Sean Hannity Standard’ to Entire Media
• Levin: Gorsuch ‘Absolutely Wrong’ on SCOTUS Immigration Decision
• Levin: US Senate Has No Purpose Since Adoption of 17th Amendment
• Levin: You’re Now Viewing ‘Judicial Tyranny’ in This Country

(Plus an article touting how Levin has been nominated for the National Radio Hall of Fame.)

Franklin Graham: 2

• Rev. Graham: University of Tennessee's 'Sex Week' 'Simply Promoting Sin'
• Rev. Graham to Trump: Please Help Army Chaplain Being Persecuted by LGBT Enforcers

White House press secretary, by Melanie Arter: 9

• WH on New Chinese Tariffs: ‘This Is Something That China Has Created’ and ‘Trump Is Trying to Fix It’
• WH: ‘Outrageous to Say' Trump Greenlit Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria
• WH Defends Its Approach on Russia: ‘I’m Confused on Which Way You Want to Have It’
• WH: 'We Want to See Concrete Actions from China’
• WH: All Options Are on the Table on Syria
• WH: One of Trump’s ‘Greatest Achievements Will Go Down as Firing’ Comey
• WH on N.Korea: We Want to See Concrete Action to Denuclearize
• WH: ‘Breeding’ in Trump Tweet Means Sanctuary City Problem Growing
• WH: DACA Ruling ‘Good News’ for Smugglers, ‘Creates Incentive’ for More Illegal Minors to Come to U.S.

Our year-to-date tally so far:

• Judicial Watch: 25
  
• Levin: 33
  
• Graham: 11
  
• WH press secretary: 52

Well, stenography is easier than reporting.

Posted by Terry K. at 7:51 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

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 push the idea 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.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:16 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

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.

Posted by Terry K. at 3:08 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

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.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:21 PM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman has been pushing a war on Pope Francis by right-wing Catholics who think he's a little too liberal and unclear on certain issues. Another recent example is an April 10 blog post in which Chapman criticized "the ever-growing confusion and scandal in the Catholic Church created by Pope Francis's ambiguous teachings on divorce, remarriage, and adultery" and touted a "final declaration" by other church clergy and activists "that reaffirms the 2,000-year-old teaching of the church on these matters."

This was followed by an April 17 column that is an excerpt from the anti-Francis book "The Dictator Pope," from the right-wing publishing house Regnery. So the above activists weren't dictating things? Isn't the job of the leader of the Catholic Church to dictate things to a certain extent? The excerpt doesn't get into that, but there was confusion from the start. The book's author is listed on the cover as Marcantonio Colonna, but the CNS byline on the excerpt is Henry Sire, who's listed in his CNS bio as the author of the book. As it turns out, Colonna is Sire's pen name -- and he's such a reactionary that he doesn't believe that the church's Vatican II reforms of the 1960s were legitimate.

The excerpt itself gets off to a misguided start that reflects the author's bias:

The phenomenon of widespread homosexuality among clergy and bishops had been public knowledge since at least 2001, when the Boston Globe began a series of exposés on the clergy sex abuse scandals. The John Jay Report, an investigation commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, published in 2004, found that more than 80 percent of the victims of clergy sexual abuse had been adolescent males.  Reports from dioceses around the world—including national bishops’ conferences in Australia, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, the Philippines, India, and most of Europe—found similar results.

The John Jay Report covered the period from 1950 to 2002 and found the complaints had peaked at a period coinciding with the vogue for ignoring or re-writing seminary admission guidelines to allow homosexuals to study and be ordained as priests—the 1960s to the 1980s—a period that can be likened to the Catholic Church’s own internal Sexual Revolution.

As we've pointed out when Bill Donohue of the right-wing Catholic League makes this same basic claim, this is a deliberate misreading of the John Jay report. The researchers stated that no connection was found between homosexual identity and an increased likelihood of sexual abuse and argued that the idea of sexual identity should be separated from the problem of sexual abuse, since one does not have to have a homosexual identity to commit homosexual acts. The John Jay researchers also stated that the reason more than 80 percent of the victims of clergy sexual abuse were adolescent males is because that's who the priests were around a lot of the time, making this in no small part a crime of opportunity rather than one of sexual orientation.

The rest of the excerpt mostly complains that Pope Benedict -- a conservative pope more to the liking of Chapman and Sire/Colonna -- was being blamed in part for the church's slow response to the sexual abuse scandals.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:43 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, May 1, 2018 8:56 AM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink