NEW ARTICLE: Good News For American Workers Is Bad News For CNS
Topic: CNSNews.com
Terry Jeffrey and CNSNews.com don't believe that positive news about dropping unemployment rates and more jobs created should be reported when the president is a Democrat. Read more >>

CNS Makes A Fallacious Obamacare Assumption
Topic: CNSNews.com

Melanie Hunter writes in an April 3 CNSNews.com article, headlined "It’s a Loss in Md: 73K Lose Insurance; 60K Enroll on Exchange":

The head of the Maryland Health Insurance Exchange testified Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that only 60,000 people have signed up for Obamacare through the state’s exchange - 13,000 less than the number of individuals reported to lose their insurance due to Obamacare.

Hunter's article is based on a fallacious assumption: that there is a direct correlation between the number of people who lost their insurance and the number who signed up through the exchange. Hunter offers no evidence there is.

Further, as USA Today reports, the conservative media's claim that millions "lose their insurance" is itself in dispute. The Obama administration and insurance companies say the final number was lower than 500,000, because insurers automatically enrolled people in new plans or worked to keep their customers.

Instead of reporting that, Hunter highlights a Republican senator who insists on making that direct, fallacious correlation.

Terry Jeffrey's Transphobic Tirade
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey devotes an entire column to freaking out about the federal government is planning to treat transgender employees with respect:

When an expectant mother visits her doctor for an ultrasound, the doctor invariably asks: Do you want to know the sex of your child?
The Obama administration, however, does not believe an unborn child has a sex — even when a doctor sees indisputable physical evidence.

Obama's Office of Personnel Management has published what it calls "Guidance Regarding the Employment of Transgender Individuals in the Workplace." This document speaks of "sex" as something a person has "assigned" to them only after they make it through the birth canal.

[...]

Then there is the point in the guidance governing restrooms and locker rooms.

"For a transitioning employee, this means that, once he or she has begun living and working full-time in the gender that reflects his or her identity, agencies should allow access to restrooms and (if provided to other employees) locker room facilities consistent with his or her gender identity," say the guidelines.

According to the guidance, access to a restroom or locker room should not be conditioned on anatomy.

Jeffrey doesn't mention the fact that there have been no problems with implementation of transgender-protection laws in the states that have done it.

Jeffrey then opines that "The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has submitted well-reasoned comments on the proposed rule." These are the same folks who issue dubious reports on sexual abuse by church clergy.

But relating facts and showing respect is not the point of Jeffrey's column -- fearmongering is:

The people who now run our federal government not only deny the basic facts of life, they are trying to force the consequences of their denial on the world that all the innocent little boys and girls born today must inhabit tomorrow.

Spoken like a true fearmongerer. But then, Jeffrey's Media Research Center co-workers regularly freak out about transgenders.

CNS Unemployment Numbers Distortion Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com

It's that time again -- a new month means a new opportunity for CNSNews.com to talk down the latest unemployment numbers, no matter how positive they are.

And they are positive -- 192,000 jobs added. You wouldn't know that by reading CNS' coverage, of course. Instead, CNS serves up these cherry-picked doom-and-gloom numbers:

180,000 More Women Unemployed in March

Only 38.6% of Jobs Added Under Obama Have Gone to Women

27K More Unemployed in March--As Labor Force Participation Ticks Up

None of these articles mentioned the fact that 192,000 jobs were created. After all, it's CNS' editorial policy to never report good economic news when a Democrat is president.

CNS' Chapman Race-Baits On Apparent Illegal Immigrant's Crime
Topic: CNSNews.com

A March 28 CNSNews.com article by Michael Chapman has a weird tone:

Luis Enrique Marin Noyola, a 20-year-old Hispanic man, was arrested by Winston-Salem police officers and charged with raping a 3-year-old, and a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer has been put in place in the case.

According to the Winston-Salem Police Department, Noyola entered an apartment on Bruce Street in Winston-Salem, N.C., early on Sunday morning, Mar. 9, and raped the 3-year-old and then fled the scene. After further investigation, police arrested Noyola on Mar. 11.

First, why does Chapman put Noyola's ethnicity in the first paragraph? What does that add to the story? Given that the man is in custody, identifying his race is completely irrelevant.

Second, why is CNS even doing this story? It's a local crime story. Even Noyola's status as an apparent illegal immigrant doesn't raise its news value.

It seems that Chapman, CNS' managing editor, is looking to bring an element of race-baiting to his "news" organization, a la WorldNetDaily's Colin Flaherty.

CNS' Bannister Now Doing PR For Sean Hannity
Topic: CNSNews.com

A March 27 CNSNews.com blog post by Craig Bannister is basically a press release for Sean Hannity's radio show:

"It's puzzling that Michael Savage would want to brag about his listening audience" given that the "numbers show that Savage is losing the audience that he inherited from Sean Hannity in droves," Eric Stanger, Vice President, Operations and Affiliate Marketing: "The Sean Hannity Show" with Premiere Networks said in a statement provided to MRCTV.

Savage had been boasting of beating Hannity in key markets, prompting the response from Hannity's network. "I stomped him. And, it's gratifying to me because Hannity's never had any competition," Savage told Mediaite.

"In New York on WABC-AM as well as on Dallas on WBAP-AM, in the key demo of A25-54, Savage has lost a whopping 49% of the audience that he inherited from Sean Hannity," Stanger says, citing Nielsen Audio data for the period December 2013 through February 2014.

"Meanwhile, Sean Hannity has more than doubled the total audiences where has started on new stations after leaving Cumulus in New York (+108%), Los Angeles (+172%), and Dallas (+128%)," Stanger said.

The Sean Hannity Show airs on more than 500 radio stations nationwide, with an estimated audience of over 11 million listeners, while the Savage Nation airs on around 200 stations with an estimated audience of less than 3 million, Stanger notes.

Did Hannity pay Bannister for performing this valuable PR service for him? Because he might as well have.

Overkill: CNS' Starr Has A Massive Margaret Sanger Freakout
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com's Penny Starr has long been guilty of using her so-called reporting to further her right-wing anti-abortion agenda. She has taken her political activism to absurd lengths this week.

The news that Planned Parenthood was planning to give Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi its Margaret Sanger Award prompted the expected reaction: a March 21 hatchet job headlined "Pelosi to Receive Planned Parenthood Award Honoring Eugenicist." Needless to say, Starr ignores the historical context of Sanger's views -- while eugenics is correctly considered reprehensible today, it was a mainstream view during much of Sanger's lifetime.

But for some reason, one attack on a woman who has been dead nearly 50 years was not enough for Starr. She followed that up with three additional articles cherry-picking Sanger's writings.

In a March 26 article, Starr highlights a claim that Sanger "wrote that large families would be doing what was 'most merciful' if they killed one of their infants." But Starr takes that statement out of context. As Planned Parenthood points out, "Sanger was making an ironic comment — not a prescriptive one — about the horrifying rate of infant mortality among large families of early 20th-century urban America."

Starr flip-flops in another March 26 article, suddenly portraying Sanger as a virtuous woman who opposed abortion, despite her two previous articles implying otherwise.

Starr goes back to implying Sanger supported abortion in a March 27 article, citing a statement calling some children "human weed," further implying the statement was racially motivated. In fact, as Planned Parenthood notes, Sanger never described any ethnic community as "human weeds."

It's this kind of sloppy, hate-motivated reporting -- writing four articles when no more than one was needed -- that's putting CNS on the path to WorldNetDaily-like irrelevance.

CNS' Starr Still Pushing Myth That Plan B Causes Abortions
Topic: CNSNews.com

Penny Starr writes in a March 25 CNSNews.com article:

In a conference call last week ahead of the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments on the lawsuits challenging the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that employers provide contraceptives to employees, including abortifacients, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said the owners of the corporations suing the government “wrongly believe that some birth control methods are a form of abortion.”

[...]

However, according to the packaging on Plan B “emergency contraceptive,” the information states: “This product works mainly by preventing ovulation (egg release). It may also prevent fertilization of a released egg (joining of sperm and egg) or attachment of a fertilized egg to the uterus (implantation).”

But as we documented the last time Starr claimed this, preventing implantation -- which, despite the package information, has not been documented that Plan B actually does -- does not equal abortion, which is medically defined as taking place after implantation. In fact, most fertilized eggs fail to implant, which means that most women have committed abortions by Starr's definition -- perhaps even Starr herself.

CNS Promotes Catholic League, Doesn't Disclose Bozell Is On The Board
Topic: CNSNews.com

Barbara Hollingsworth devotes a March 21 CNSNews.com article to an interview with the Catholic League's William Donohue in which he promotes his boycott of Samuel Adams and Guinness beers for not sponsoring St. Patrick's Day parades in Boston and New York because parade organizers refused to let gays march.

Hollingsworth devotes all but two paragraphs of her 26-paragraph article to Donahue, waiting until the final two paragraphs to include comments from, or attempts to contact, the brewers Donohue is targeting.

What Hollingsworth fails to mention, of course, is that her boss, Brent Bozell, is on the advisory board of Donohue's group.

Failure to disclose that conflict of interest is unethical journalism. But given that Hollingsworth devotes her article to serving as a stenographer for Donohue, journalism isn't exactly the most important thing on her mind.

CNS' Charlie Daniels Distorts Obama's Comments on Constitution
Topic: CNSNews.com

Charlie Daniels writes in a March 18 CNSNews.com column:

President Obama has made the statement that the U.S. Constitution is a flawed document.

It is not a president's job to decide the merits of the Constitution but rather to enforce it as it is, or convene enough states to call for a constitutional convention and change it. It is not in his purvey or power to decide whether to enforce and defend it, it is in his oath of office and when he in any way refuses to abide by every sentence in the document, he violates his oath.

Daniels thus becomes the latest right-winger to willfully misinterpret what Obama said in a 2001 interview.

To support his claim about Obama, Daniels links to a 2008 Newsmax article quoting Obama saying that the Constitution is "a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now" but also "reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.” Newsmax adds that "Obama did not elaborate on the 'fundamental flaw' that persists."

But as we've documented, when you look at the context of the interview, the "fundamental flaw" Obama was referring to was the Constitution's tolerance of slavery.

Is Daniels saying that Obama or any president should have tolerated a Constitution that permitted slavery? Sure seems that way.

Meanwhile ...
Topic: CNSNews.com
Right Wing Watch catches CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey ranting during a radio appearance about public education, accusing President Obama of “federalizing 4-year-olds” by promoting preschool and declaring that Obama and Kathleen Sebelius favor "something akin to" the Communist Manifesto model for education.

CNS' Chapman Lectures The Pope About Catholicism
Topic: CNSNews.com

There aren't many people out there who feel so secure in their Catholicism that they think they can lecture the pope about the religion he heads. CNSNews.com managing editor Michael Chapman is one of those people.

Chapman was appalled that Pope Francis doesn't hate gays as much as he does, so he wrote a March 5 CNS article designed to put the pontiff back on the right path, complete with linked footnotes to official church teaching:

Although Pope Francis in a March 5 interview seemed to leave open the possibility of approval for same-sex civil unions, the official teaching of the Catholic Church, from the Catechism, says that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.”

[...]

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “homosexual persons are called to chastity.” (2359)  The Catechism further says, “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” (2357)

Chapman updated the article a day later with more citing of the Catechism and a fuller context of the pope's response, in which he states that he "does not endorse same-sex civil unions or heterosexual civil unions but apparently is saying the different cases would need to be evaluated." That probably didn't make Chapman sleep too much better at night.

Chapman then went on to lecture Cardinal Timothy Dolan the same way, footnotes included, in a March 13 article:

The office of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who heads the Catholic archdiocese of New York, said the archbishop is “fully supportive” of the Church’s teaching on “homosexual activity, “particularly as it is expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.”

The Catechism says that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,” are “contrary to natural law,” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.” (2357)

On Sunday, Mar. 9, NBC Meet the Press host David Gregory interviewed Cardinal Dolan and asked him about football player Michael Sam, who recently came out as an open homosexual, and who likely will be drafted by the NFL this fall. “How do you view it?” said Gregory.

Cardinal Dolan said, “Good for him. I would have no sense of judgment on him. God bless you. I don’t think – look, the same Bible that tells us, that teaches us well about the virtue of chastity and the virtue of fidelity and marriage, also tells us not to judge people. So, I would say bravo.”

[...]

In an e-mail to Cardinal Dolan’s office, CNSNews.com quoted from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2357) that says “’homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

CNSNews.com asked the Cardinal, 1) “Do you agree with the Catechism (2357) that says “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved”?” and 2) “Do you believe that Michael Sam, an openly homosexual football player and public figure, is a good role model for young men or is Sam's open homosexuality scandalous?”

If Chapman is such an uber-Catholic, why isn't he working for the clergy instead of a right-wing website? Then again, CNS is almost a Catholic website.

CNS Regresses, Botches Bozell-Graham Byline
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNS had it right, but they screwed it up again.

It took nearly a month to figure out how to correctly give Tim Graham credit for writing Brent Bozell's column, which it did for their March 12 column.

For their March 14 column, however, Bozell and Graham were given separate bylines instead of the shared one on the previous column. That means not only that the column appears on CNS' front page with only Bozell's byline, it appears on CNS' commentary page twice, once for Bozell and once for Graham.

Putting a byline on someone's work should be the easiest thing in the world as far as content management goes, but CNS has continually found a way to mess it up.

Stenography, CNS Style
Topic: CNSNews.com

Melanie Hunter writes a press release for Republican Sen. James Inhofe that's posing as a March 10 CNSNews.com article:

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday at a hearing on the Defense Department’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget that President Barack Obama has wasted $120 billion on global warming over the past five years – money that would be better spent on the military.

“I've been working on this for quite some time ... In the last five years, between 2009 and 2014, the president has spent $120 billion on the environmental agenda, mostly global warming, climate and that type of thing,” said Inhofe. “And in that respect, if you'll just take the amount that was not authorized by Congress -- and I'm talking about the environmental agenda, you could actually buy 1,400 F-35s.”

Hunter provided no evidence that Inhofe backed up his claim that all spending on the "environmental agenda" is a waste. Nor did Inhofe provide any evidence that the U.S. needs 1,400 F-35 fighter planes. Hunter simply dutifully copied Inhofe's words.

That's stenography, not journalism.

CNS Columnist Dishonestly Attacks Proposed Calif. Rape Law
Topic: CNSNews.com

Hans Bader writes in a March 10 CNSNews.com column:

How does classifying most consensual sex as rape help rape victims?  As a lawyer who has handled rape and sexual harassment cases, I have no idea, but this radical result is what some want to happen in California.  In endorsing a bill in the California legislature that would require "affirmative consent" before sex can occur on campus, the editorial boards of the Sacramento and Fresno Bee, and the Daily Californian advocated that sex be treated as "sexual assault" unless the participants discuss it "out loud" before sex, and "demonstrate they obtained verbal 'affirmative consent' before engaging in sexual activity."

Bader is dishonestly portraying the proposed law, which specifically states that consent doesn’t necessarily have to be verbal -- it can be through “clear, unambiguous actions.” Bader concedes this later in his column, but then insists again that the bill is "Requiring people to have verbal discussions before sex" and that "Since most couples have engaged in sex without 'verbal' consent, supporters of the bill are effectively redefining most people, and most happily-married couples, as rapists."

Despite the fact that the proposed law doesn't cover marital sex, Bader goes on to tell us way too much about his sex life:

I and my wife have been happily married for more than a decade, and like 99.9% of married couples, we do not engage in verbal discussion before engaging in each and every form of sexual activity.  Indeed, in the first year of our daughter's life, when she was a very light sleeper (she would wake up if you merely walked into her bedroom and stepped on a creaky part of the bedroom floor), it would have been unthinkable for us to engage in any kind of "out loud" discussion in our bedroom, which is right next to hers (the walls in our house are very thin, and you can hear sounds from one room in the next room). We certainly did not verbally discuss then whether to have sex.  Having sex quietly when you are a parent is a sign that you are considerate of sleeping family members, and have a healthy marriage, not of sexual abuse.

Thanks for sharing, Hans. It's completely irrelevant.