Topic: CNSNews.com
We know CNSNews.com is not the place to go for fair and balanced reporting, especially under managing editor Michael W. Chapman. We've found even more examples of misleading reporting.
It was clear from the start that a July 1 CNS article by Lauretta Brown would not be a fair take on high school health clinics that offer contraception, what with the headline blaring, "Seattle 6th Graders Can’t Get a Coke at School, But Can Get an IUD." In the third paragraph of her article, Brown makes this declaration about long-acting reversible contraception such as IUDs:
LARCs are associated with serious side effects, such as uterine perforation and infection. IUDs, specifically, can also act as abortifacients by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg.
Brown is falsely potraying IUDs as being unsafe by highlighting only the "serious side effects." In fact, a 2013 study found that less than 1 percent of users developed complications or serious side effects, and even the fact sheet Brown uses to fearmonger about IUDs admits that "Serious complications from use of an IUD are rare."
Brown's claim that IUDs are an abortifacient because it can "prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg" is a false reading of medical science. The medical definition of an abortion is removal of an implanted egg from the uterus; therefore, if it's not implanted, it's not an abortion.
Further, 50 percent of a woman's fertilized eggs never naturally implant into the uterus, so it seems that under Brown's definition, nature (or God, if you will) is the biggest abortionist of all.
Oh, and Brown never establishes in her article that any sixth-grader in Seattle has ever asked for an IUD -- only that it's theoretically possible -- so that further shoots down her biased attack.
Barbara Hollingsworth serves up her own chunk of bad reporting in a July 7 article:
Obamacare is exhibiting early signs of a “death spiral” as hundreds of insurance plans listed on the federally-run exchanges in 37 states and the District of Columbia request double-digit premium increases for 2016, says David Hogberg, a health care analyst and senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR).
A “death spiral” – which is the insurance pool equivalent of a bankruptcy - occurs when rising premiums force younger, healthier people to drop their insurance coverage due to the increased cost. But their exodus leaves the remaining “risk pool” older, sicker and more expensive to insure than before, necessitating further rate hikes.Thirteen percent of the people who signed up for Obamacare in 2015 have already been dropped from coverage because many of them failed to pay their share of the subsidized premiums, The New York Times reported.
And that's before the premiums on many policies are due to skyrocket next year.
Hollingsworth fails to mention, as she usually does, that the NCPPR is a right-wing organization that has long attacked Obamacare, so its analysis can't exactly be trusted. At no point does Hollingsworth make an effort to seek anyone to counter NCPPR's "death spiral" fearmongering, making her article completely unbalanced.
Because of that, readers will never know that anti-Obamacare forces like the NCPPR have been howling about a "death spiral" for years, only to be consistently proven wrong.
Further, large rate increase requests mean nothing, let alone a "death spiral." As Mother Jones' Kevin Drum notes, insurance companies always request large rate increases, and they will in the end be more reasonable. Further, Drum notes, more people are likely to continue paying their subsidized premiums in the future because the penalty for not having insurance will increase this year.
But Hollingsworth doesn't bother to tell you that either. That's the standard of reporting CNS has these days.
