Topic: CNSNews.com
When we wrote a couple weeks ago about how CNSNews.com reporter Patrick Goodenough appeared to be promoting Iranian propaganda to further right-wing attacks against President Obama, Goodenough objected, tweeting, "Don't be ridiculous. I report on Iran's propaganda to inform readers about the regime's nature, not to 'make Obama look bad.'"
But he didn't stop doing so.
A Jan. 31 article highlights how "More than two weeks after Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel detained 10 U.S. Navy sailors overnight in the Persian Gulf supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday awarded medals to the men involved."
On Feb. 2, Goodenough wrote that "The head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy said Monday that if the U.S. seeks to humiliate Iran, the IRGC would release footage of ten U.S. sailors detained last month that is much more embarrassing than images released earlier."
And the following day, Goodenough touted how "An Iranian state-run television network is highlighting social media postings that mock the U.S. military, juxtaposing images of the Hollywood action character Rambo with one of U.S. Navy sailors kneeling at gunpoint after being apprehended last month by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps."
With the earlier stories, that's a total of five articles Goodenough wrote repeating Iranian propaganda regarding the detention of the sailors.
In the full context of CNS' general anti-Obama agenda and, specifically, its uncritical reproduction of right-wing attacks on the Obama administration for quickly negotiating a release of those sailors -- indeed, Goodenough wrote one of those pieces, headlined "GOP Senators: Iranians Humiliated Our Sailors; We Thanked Them" -- Goodenough's reproduction of Iranian propaganda can only be seen as an attempt to, yes, make Obama look bad.
Which is too bad, because Goodenough is a better reporter than that. We actually praised him some years back for running CNS like a real news organization when he served as interim editor between the death of David Thibault and the hiring of Terry Jeffrey and Michael W. Chapman. Under the latter two, CNS is a bastion of right-wing bias, and it seems clear that Goodenough has to play along.
How ironic -- the Media Research Center purports to hate media bias, but it apparently won't let one of the few people on its staff actually capable of writing unbiased news actually do that.
