Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has had a relapse in the sham-balance department, printing attacks without giving the targets of those attacks a real opportunity to respond.
A Jan. 8 article by Penny Starr quoted four "pro-life experts" asserting that Barack Obama's "pro-abortion stance make him a danger to the black community." At the end is the tag, "Calls to Sen. Obama's campaign and to the Rainbow Push Coalition for comment on this story were not returned by press time." It's not clear from the article why Starr felt that the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition could speak for Obama, other than Starr's search for a token liberal black group. (Starr also gets the name of a New Jersey city wrong; it's Montclair, not "Mt. Clair.")
Similarly, a Jan. 8 article by Pete Winn cited "two conservative pro-life leaders, both based in Michigan" to criticize Republican Mitt Romney's "near-universal health insurance plan" in Massachusetts created while he was governor, insisting that it covers, in the word of one "pro-life leader," "elective abortions -- that is, abortion on demand." While Winn quotes a "Massachusetts pro-life leader" saying that the state was ordered to pay for some abortions and that "normally many of these people would have their abortions provided for on the public welfare system by Medicaid," Winn allows another Michigan "pro-life leader" to contradict her. Winn does not explain why two people in Michigan are more knowledgable about laws in Massachusetts than the Massachusetts person he quotes.
At the end of the article is the tag, "Calls to the Romney campaign were not returned by press time."
As we've detailed, CNS has a tendency to "balance" lengthy attacks only by noting an attempt to contact the other side and never bothering to actually get that other side. Further, per CNS style, the term "pro-life" is used instead of "anti-abortion," and Obama is described as "pro-abortion" and not "pro-choice."
