CNS Takes 'Irrelevant' Remark Out of Context Topic: CNSNews.com
Susan Jones does her best to take Obama adviser Dan Pfeifer's claim about it being "irrelevant" whether the IRS broke the law by allegedly giving extra scrutiny to the tax-exempt applications of tea-party groups out of context.
The headline of Jones' May 20 CNS article reads, "Obama's Point Man: 'The Law Is Irrelevant,'" and Jones herself wrote that Pfeifer "at one point told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, 'The law is irrelevant.'"
The full context of Pfeifer's remarks is, of course, buried farther down in the article. That context -- which Jones didn't see fit to lead with -- is that the legality of the IRS' actions are "irrelevant" because President Obama considers it to be wrong regardless.
This is yet another case in which CNS decided it would regurgitate right-wing talking points instead of report the truth.
CNS Still Unhappy Feds Are Spending Money On Gays Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com remains unusuallyconcerned that the federal government is spending money on gay people.
A May 15 article by Elizabeth Harrington states: "While the White House claims its stimulus package 'supported as many as 3.5 million jobs,' none were yielded from a $152,000 project to ready lesbians for 'adoptive parenthood.'" Harrington obviously disapproves of the expenditure, but she doesn't explain why.
CNS does have a particular disdain for LGBT folks being the beneficiary of federal largesse: Of the 20 articles currently listed on CNS' "Waste Watch" page, five of them involve LGBT issues.
CNS Now Censoring Immigration Study Co-Author's Statements on Race, IQ Topic: CNSNews.com
Earlier this week, we detailed how CNSNews.com is censoring the fact that the Heritage Foundation study on immigration it promoted is so flawed as to make it worthless, despite promoting the study itself. Now, questions have been raised about statements made by one of the study's co-authors, and CNS hasn't said a peep about that either.
Co-author Jason Richwine also wrote a 2009 doctoral dissertation titled "IQ and Immigration Policy" that "there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races," adding, "No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against."
Richwine elaborated on his race theories during a 2008 C-SPAN appearance:
Races differ in all sorts of ways, and probably the most important way is in IQ. Decades of psychometric testing has indicated that at least in America, you have Jews with the highest average IQ, usually followed by East Asians, and then you have non-Jewish whites, Hispanics, and then blacks. These are real differences. They're not going to go away tomorrow, and for that reason, we have to address them in our immigration discussions and our debates.
Does CNS not consider this to be news? Or does it realize the news value but has decided that the truth must be suppressed?
By the definition CNS' parent organization, the Media Research Center, uses to attack media outlets for not covering right-wing-friendly stories to its satisfaction, non-coverage is the same thing as censorship.Thus, CNS is censoring the truth about the Heritage study.
CNS Promotes Highly Misleading Heritage Immigration Study Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com was so enthusiastic about a new Heritage Foundation study on immigration, it posted two items on it before the study was even released:
A May 6 article by Elizabeth Harrington, posted before the report's officials release, touts the report's chief assertion that "granting amnesty to illegal immigrants would cost $6.3 trillion." She engages in some credential-puffing by sticking a "Ph.D." after the name of a report co-author for no apparent reason. Harrington also uses the word "amnesty" despite the fact that it's a biased, loaded term used only by critics of any immigration reformn (like CNS).
A May 6 blog post by Joe Schoffstall uncritically repeats Heritage president Jim DeMint puffing up the credentials of the report's co-author, Robert Rector, as "one of the nation's leading authorities on government social programs" whose "research is based on methodology also used by the National Academy of Sciences."
But the report has massive flaws that even Rector acknowledges: It not only doesn't examine the entire Senate immigration bill it purportsto be looking at, it leaves out any examination of provisions designed to help the economy.
Will Harrington and Schoffstall issue follow-up articles acknowledging the report's flaws, or will it keep pushing the report as definitive and censor any mention of the errors? Our money's on the latter.
Good News On Unemployment Is Bad News at CNS Topic: CNSNews.com
The decrease in unemployment to 7.5 percent -- the lowest rate in four years -- and creation of 164,000 jobs in April was good news everywhere, but you wouldn't know it by reading CNSNews.com.
A May 3 CNS article by Elizabeth Harrington insisted that "overall unemployment remained largely unchanged in April at 7.5 percent" and did not mention that it was the lowest rate in four years. Instead, the thrust of her article was that the unemployment rate for government workers dropped.
And even that's a dishonest claim -- public-sector jobs have been on a steady decline since 2008.
A separate story by Harrington focused on the claim that there were "33,000 more 'discouraged workers' in April " and made no mention whatsoever of the lowered unemployment rate or jobs created.
Such skewed reporting -- which is the sum total of CNS' take on the unemployment numbers -- appears to be part of CNS' anti-Obama agenda, in which it's forbidden to say anything positive about the Obama administration, even when there's positive news to report.
CNS Doesn't Think Government Money Should Be Used to Help Transgenders Topic: CNSNews.com
One of the messages of CNSNews.com 's obsession with documenting supposedly wasteful government spending is that money used to help the LGBT community is inherently wasteful. In March, we noted, CNS complained that government money was being spent to study lesbian health issues.
CNS is now targeting the transgendered:
An April 23 article by Elizabeth Harrington lamented that the government "is spending $152,000 to study 'voice therapy' for transgenders."
A May 1 article by Fred Lucas groused that "The federal government is spending $355,825 in taxpayer dollars to develop a “culturally relevant stigma-reducing intervention” program for the transgender population in India."
Lucas noted that one question he asked the National Institutes of Health regarding this expenditure was, "Since this study focuses on India, what is the benefit to the U.S.? Why is it worthwhile to U.S. taxpayers?" We wonder if Lucas feels the same way about the Bush administration spending billions of dollars combating AIDS in Africa, something even non-conservatives have praised him for.
DID CNS Spend Only One Day Covering Gosnell Trial In Person? Topic: CNSNews.com
We've detailed how the Media Research Center has been haranguing other media outlets to cover the trial of Kermit Gosnell while not sending its own reporter to cover the trial until weeks after it began. But it appears the one day a reporter from the MRC-operated CNSNews.com attended the trial may be the only day an MRC employee was there.
Gosnell's trial began in Philadelphia on March 18. MRC writer Matt Philbin indicated to ConWebWatch that the first day an MRC attended the trial in person was April 17, as described in an April MRC Culture & Media Center item. That day, a CNS article by Elizabeth Harrington ablout the trial carried a Philadelphia dateline, an indicator that she was there.
But Harrington had not covered the Gosnell trial before that article, and all of her subsequent articles on the trial (including twopublished on April 18) carry no datelines, which indicates that she is apparently covering the trial from the MRC's offices in Alexandria, Va., not from Phihladelphia.
Indeed, Harrington managed to find time away from her Gosnell coverage to write up an April 23 article complaining that the government "is spending $152,000 to study 'voice therapy' for transgenders." That follows in Harrington's obsession with portraying the government as wasting money to benefit gays.
You'd think that an organization with a $12 million budget could afford to send someone to drive 2 1/2 hours away, give them a laptop and put them up in a motel room to cover a trial that it has deem so important. But apparently not.
On top of being cheap, it's hypocritical. The MRC has been screaming that the Gosnell trial is so important that it demands national coverage, but it couldn't be bothered to send its own reporter to cover it in person for more day? Puh-leeze.
The MRC did not respond to a query from ConWebWatch about how many days an MRC employee covered the Gosnell trial in Philadelphia.
UPDATE: Harrington has responded, saying that she has been covering the trial from Philadelphia since April 17.
CNS Calls Floyd Corkins -- But Not Scott Roeder -- A 'Domestic Terrorist' Topic: CNSNews.com
An April 25 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas asserts that Floyd Corkins, who has pleaded guilty to shooting a security guard at the Family Research Council headquarters, is a "domestic terrorist" who "found the Family Research Council as a target because they were listed online as an 'anti-gay' group by the Southern Poverty Law Center."
That's a change of pace from how CNS treated another domestic terrorist -- Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion zealot who murdered abortion doctor George Tiller during a Sunday church service in 2009.
As we noted at the time, CNS labored intensely to disassociate Roeder from the "mainstream" anti-abortion movement. CNS also played down Roeder's ties to the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, which were much stronger than those of Corkins to the SPLC. (The father of Brent Bozell, leader of CNS parent Media Research Center, led an early anti-abortion crusade of the kind that Operation Rescue would become known for.)
CNS' Penny Starr insisted in 2010 that Roeder is "a mentally unstable man" despite the fact that Roeder did not mount an insanity defense at his trial and a psychologist hired by the defense found Roeder competent to stand trial.
So why won't CNS portray Roeder as the domestic terrorist that he is? Perhaps because he was doing what Brent Bozell and Co. secretly wanted to do to Tiller.
CNS Expands Its Word-Counting Fetish to Clinton Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has something of a fetish for bashing President Obama for specific words he says or doesn't say, i.e. paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence without mentioning "the Creator."
That obsession has expanded to other politicians CNS despises. Hence, an April 22 article by Penny Starr:
In accepting the “Advocate of Change” award at the GLAAD Media Awards on Sunday, former Democratic President Bill Clinton invoked the Declaration of Independence as confirming support for homosexuals as being “endowed with certain rights” but omitted the words “their Creator” as the source of those rights.
The Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Yes, Starr really thinks this is worthy of a "news" article, which demonstrates that she (and the rest of CNS) puts right-wing ideology before journalistic intent.
CNS' Starr Unhappy That Gays Might Be Considered 'Extraordinary' Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr is ratherprone to anti-gay freakouts. She has another one in an April 17 article over the thought that gays might be considered "extraordinary":
The White House announced it is expanding its “Champions of Change” contest, which “spotlights ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” to include gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals.
The announcement posted on the White House website cites President Barack Obama posthumously awarding Harvey Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Milk, a gay man who was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and later shot to death by a rival politician, served as the inspiration for the expanded contest.
Starr seems to think that gays have never done anything extraordinary ever. That that fits right in with her employer's anti-gay agenda.
CNS' Starr Tries To Link Boston Bombings to Immigration Topic: CNSNews.com
Right-wingers have been trying to suggest that immigration is somehow to blame for the Boston Marathon bombings.
CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr joins that little parade, declaring in an April 19 tweet, "As terror attack in Boston unfolds -- on the day Napolitano testifies -- "Our borders are more secure than ever."
Given that the suspects are reportedly brothers from Chechnya who came to America several years ago as refugees, border security has nothing whatsoever to do with this.
Starr has apparently decided that her personal (and her employer's) right-wing agenda is more important than the facts.
NEW ARTICLE: Biased, Smothered and Covered Topic: CNSNews.com
As CNS' Matt Cover moves on to a new right-wing website, let's review his atrocious record of questionable and false reporting. Read more >>
CNS Publishes Press Release For Keystone XL Pipeline Topic: CNSNews.com
An April 11 CNSNews.com article by Susan Jones might as well have had the TransCanada letterhead at the top -- it's nothing more than a regurgitation of the company's talking points in favor of approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
Jones uncritically forwarded TransCanada's wildly inflated figures of the number of jobs the pipeline would generate, despite the fact that independent analysts have found that the job-creation figure is much lower.
Jones also engaged in some factually deficient editorializing about the Obama administration's role in rejecting the initial application for the pipeline:
President Obama -- apparently not wanting to anger his environmentalist supporters before the election -- denied the permit last year. Seizing on a deadline imposed by Republicans, the Obama administration said it needed more time to determine if the project was in the national interest.
Jones offers no evidence to back up the mind-reading claim. She also fails to seek out anyone to respond to TransCanada's claims.
But that, presumably, is what Jones is being paid to do -- CNS is very much in bed with fossil-fuel interests.
CNS Publishes Dishonest Attack on Obama White House Salaries Topic: CNSNews.com
Fred Lucas declared in an April 8 CNSNews.com article:
President Barack Obama designated April 9 as National Equal Pay Day, even though 70 percent of White House staffers in the top-salary bracket were men, and male White House staffers earn on average 13 percent more than female staffers.
[...]
CNSNews.com reported on March 15 that 70 percent of White House staffers earning the maximum salary of $172,200 last year were men and 30 percent were women, according to the White House numbers posted on staff compensation. Further, men on the White House staff are paid $86,260.89 on average. Women on the White House staff are paid an average of $76,162.65. So men on the White House staff are paid about 13.26 percent more than women. Put another way, women earn 88.29 percent of what men earn.
But Lucas is making a lazy, bogus comparison. As PolitiFact details, the problem with a simple salary division by gender is that it doesn't take into account the types of jobs being done and the much more important question of whether women are making the same as men for the same job. PolitiFact did what Lucas wouldn't, and found much different results:
When women do the same job as men, the pay gap narrows quite a bit. And in fact, this is exactly what happens when you look deeper into the White House data. Even when you just control for one factor -- people who have the same job title -- the gap narrows significantly.
We found 36 titles for full employees held by more than one person, including at least one man and woman. Of these 36 job categories, there was no difference in pay between men and women in 22 job categories, affecting 121 employees. In another six categories affecting 29 employees, the highest earner in the category was a woman who out-earned at least one man.
In only eight cases affecting 22 employees -- in other words, a small fraction of all employees -- was the highest earner a man who out-earned at least one woman. In a large majority of job categories, there was no salary edge for men. And even in the cases where men did have an edge, it was a small edge -- the lowest-paid women mostly earned between 92 percent and 98 percent of what the top-paid men did.
And don’t forget that we’re only adjusting the data using one factor -- job title. There are other factors that could explain different salaries for people who hold the same job title, such as prior work experience, specific skill sets and the number of years they have spent in the job.
This is just another lazy smear job by CNS, which seems to be allitdoeslately.
CNS' Jeffrey Complains That Media Didn't Cover Lanza Story CNS Also Didn't Cover Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editotr in chief Terry Jeffrey thinks it's significant that Newtown shooter Adam Lanza "refused to identify himself by a gender when registering at college." So much so, in fact, that Jeffrey devoted a chunk of his April 8 article on the subject to documenting how few media outlets have covered it:
In the week that has passed since CBS News first reported that Lanza had refused to identify his gender, this particular fact has attracted almost no notice elsewhere in the U.S. media. A Lexis-Nexis search of all English language news--with the terms "Lanza" and "I choose not to answer"--brings up only four citations.
Two of those citations are transcripts of the April 1 edition of CBS Evening News. A third citation is for the April 2 edition of CBS Morning News, where the information about Lanza was reported again. The fourth citation is a story in the Daily Mail, a British paper that cited the CBS report on April 2.
A Google search of "Lanza" and "I choose not to answer" shows that the New York Daily News on April 2 mentioned that Lanza had declined to specify his gender to Western Connecticut and that USA Today also did so on April 5.
Also missing from that list of media that allegedly failed to cover this: CNS. A search of "Lanza" and "I choose not to answer" in the CNS database uncovered no results.
That's right -- Jeffrey is complaining about lack of coverage of a story that he himself couldn't be bothered to cover until he devised the hook of other media not covering it.
But now that Jeffrey has finally covered it, CNS is desperately trying to turn it into a thing:
An April 9 CNS article by Fred Lucas stated that "Vice President Joe Biden Tuesday highlighted gender among other characteristics a gun purchaser must fill out on a background check form after reports that the Newtown, Conn. school shooter refused to identify his gender on a college form."
In another April 9 article, Patrick Burke asked Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, “Should refusing to disclose gender be a disqualifier for seeking a firearm."
None of this, of course, has anythng to do with anything important. CNS is trying to manufacture a controversy over something CNS itself ignored until it figured out how to use it as a cudgel.
