Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's coverage of the first debate between President Trump and Joe Biden tracks with its usual pro-Trump slant: Statements by Trmp were presented without comment, while statements by Biden tended to be rebutted or snarked it with added editorial comment.
First, let's look at the Biden coverage (judged by Biden's prominence in the headline):
- Patrick Goodenough -- who loves to fact-check Biden while giving Trump a pass -- complained that "Joe Biden in Tuesday’s presidential debate accused President Trump, again, of not asking China to allow U.S. health experts to visit Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak – a claim that has been debunked."
- Goodenough also wrote that Biden "seemed eager to get across during Tuesday night’s combative presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio was that he is his own man, not beholden to the left wing of the Democratic Party," adding that his campaign worked with "democratic socialist senator" Bernie Sanders on a 110-page "manifesto" that "if implemented, will make Biden the most progressive president since FDR."
- Melanie Arter wrote that Biden "said Tuesday that he does not support the Green New Deal, which President Donald Trump pointed out would cost Americans $100 trillion, and Trump said by not doing so, Biden 'just lost the radical left.'"
- Susan Jones huffed that Biden declined to "answer the simple question" of whether he "would support Democrat [sic] calls to end the Senate filibuster and add more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court."
- Another Jones article featuring Biden's "reopening plan" for the coronavirus pandemic had several paragraphs of transcript before Jones snarked that Biden "finally addressed the topic."
CNS published only two Biden-centric debate-related articles that were a relatively straight retelling of what happened:
- Biden: 'People Have to Be Aware of What Other People Feel Like, What Insults Them'
- Biden: Police Need 'A Psychologist or Psychiatrist to Keep Them From Having to Use Force'
By contrast, CNS published only three articles that keyed in on comments by Trump as indicated by the headline, and all three simply uncritically repeated what he said:
- Trump: 'I’m Not Elected for 3 Years - I’m Elected for 4 Years’
- Trump on Whether Human Pollution Contributes to Global Warming: ‘I Think to an Extent, Yes’
- Trump to Biden: You Can’t Say ‘Law Enforcement’ or You’ll Lose Your Radical Left Supporters
That's not surprising, given that both were written by chief Trump stenographer Melanie Arter.
Because Trump was not seen to have won the debate, CNS quickly issued a couple attacks on moderator and Fox News host Chris Wallace -- from its favorite right-wing radio host, Mark Levin, and in a blog post by editor Terry Jeffrey complaining that Wallace "personally engaged President Trump in a debate on 'climate change' that lasted for about 3 minutes and 45 seconds."
It was not until more than 18 hours after the end of the debate that CNS bothered to mention the big news from it: Trump's refusal to explicitly disavow white supremacists and his telling the Proud Boys hate group to "stand back and stand by." This being written by Arter, it's written blandly and plays whataboutism by also putting in the headline that Biden said Antifa is "an idea, not an organization."
