CNS Managing Editor Is Weirdly Obsessed With Promoting Franklin Graham Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman is quite the fanboy of right-wing evangelist Franklin Graham.
How much so? Since Jan. 1, Chapman has devoted a whopping 25 CNS articles and blog posts to Graham's musings, particularly has anti-Muslim and anti-Obama rantings. That's greater sycophancy that CNS devotes to Mark Levin, and CNS (along with its parent, the Media Research Center) has a business deal with Levin to promote each other that at least somewhat justifies the logrolling.
It also accounts for more than one-third of the 69 total articles Chapman has written since Jan. 1.
Here are how Chapman's fawning stenography of Graham stacks up:
You'd think the managing editor of a website would have better things to do than obsessively clipping a right-wing evangelist -- and a Protestant one at that, presumably much to the chagrin of his uber-Catholic bosses such as Brent Bozell and Terry Jeffrey -- but apparently his job doesn't keep him busy enough.
Meet Aryeh Spero, The Jewish Bradlee Dean Topic: CNSNews.com
Rabbi Aryeh Spero is apparently the Jewish Bradlee Dean -- a liar with a severe case of Obama derangement.
That's the impression we get from Spero's March 30 CNSNews.com column, which begins with this load of derangement:
Much has been said about the strange behavior of Barack Obama, who can’t let a day go without maligning Israel and Mr. Netanyahu. In contrast, he displays friendship to a thug and anti-Semite like Erdogan of Turkey, palled around with the deceased communist Hugo Chavez and keeps standing-up for the Iranian mullahs who want to kill us all or make us slaves to Islam.
Spero then rants:
This last week, Barack Obama published classified information showing the world photographs of Israel’s hidden nuclear site, and its inner workings. It was his gift to Iran, Hamas and ISIS. This puts Israel and her citizens, not just Mr. Netanyahu, at great risk.
Actually, as we've detailed, the document in question was not "published" by Obama but, rather, released as part of a Freedom of Information Act request only after a longfight by the Defense Department and only after clearing it with Israel first.
Spero then advances to out-and-out lying:
During a meeting at the White House in 2009, Obama stated early-on that “it’s time to put day-light between Israel and America.” This was done before Obama had even met Benjamin Netanyahu.
We couldn't find any news report where Obama is directly quoted as saying, "it’s time to put day-light between Israel and America," which means Spero made it up. It's apparently based on a statement Obama reportedly made:
"Look at the past eight years," he said, referring to the George W. Bush administration's relationship with Israel. "During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states."
An Obama aide said that "The case he was trying to make was that the United States will be a better partner to Israel if it has more credibility with the Arab states, that we will be a better, more useful friend to Israel if we have more friends in the Arab world."
Spero claims that Obama "had his young underlings call Israel a “racist” state," but he offers no example of this. Spero apparently missed Netanyahu's racist appeal to his supporters in the recent election by warning that Arabs were "voting in droves."
Spero also claims that Obama "has taken Hezbollah and Iran off our list of terror organizations," which, again, never happened.
Spero tells another lie: "He prohibited flights to Israel for almost two days during her recent defensive war against Hamas missiles being shot from Gaza. He has not done this in other war zones." In fact, at the time of that prohibition -- made by the Federal Aviation Administration, not Obama -- U.S. aircraft were prohibited from flying over six other areas in the world.
Then, it was time for more Obama derangement:
Obama’s inner identity is tied to Islam. We all identify with the ethos of our formative years. His father and step-father were Islamic, as is his family back in Kenya and Indonesia. His brothers are active Islamists. He was raised on the Koran in Islamic countries, he attended Islamic madrassa, and he grew up with its attitudes, sights and sounds, aspirations and narrative, likes and dislikes. As I grew-up to favor Israel, he grew-up to dislike it. Simple as that. Most of my Christian friends, Bible believers, were also raised with the biblical narrative, which admires Israel’s place in our theology and in the cosmos.
The Marxism Obama was fed, from very early-on, made him viscerally dislike successful western countries, such as America, Israel, and Britain. He was taught they were colonizers and imperialist. Yet, he finds nothing imperialistic or colonizing about Islam’s takeover, throughout the centuries, of northern and central Africa, Lebanon, Babylon and Persian, the Balkans, the Mediterranean areas, Malaysia, Indonesia and other parts of Asia, vast tracks of what was India, and countless Christian and Hindu neighborhoods and cities. Not to see colonialism and imperialism in these conquests, tells us a lot about Obama’s perspective. Love is blind. We don’t see flaws in that and those we love. But, we sure see them, always, in that which we dislike. Obama’s dislike for a strong, independent, proud Jewish renaissance in the Holy Land predates Netanyahu. As with America, the next two years will be difficult, for Obama has set his antagonistic sights on America and Israel … as well as its citizens. Obama has spent the last 50 years waiting for these next two.
Apparently, CNS does not fact-check what its columnists write; otherwise, this would have never been published. Is CNS trying to become WorldNetDaily, which publishes Bradlee Dean?
CNS Keeps Fretting Over High Beef Prices, Still Won't Explain Why They're High Topic: CNSNews.com
Ali Meyer writes in a March 24 CNSNews.com article:
The average price of a pound of ground beef climbed to another record high in February, hitting $4.238 per pound, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
In August 2014, the average price for a pound of all types of ground beef topped $4 for the first time, hitting $4.013, according to the BLS.
But as she with a similar story last month, Meyer failed to explain why ground beef prices are high: a years-long drought in Texas and the Midwest that shrank the U.S. cattle herd in 2014 to its smallest size since 1952.
Instead, Meyer wants to suggest that the Obama administration is somehow to blame for this. Last time we checked, Obama doesn't control the weather, however much some right-wingers might think so.
'Dancing With The Stars' Is Bigger News At CNS Than GOP Congressman's Resignation Over Corruption Topic: CNSNews.com
Rep. Aaron Schock was a rising star in Republican circles, and CNSNews.com had no problem promoting him. Last September, for instances, CNS devoted original articles to Schock pontificating about how Christians are "in the majority" in the U.S. and that President Obama does not need congressional authorization to take military action against ISIL. In November, CNS penned an article on Schock attacking Obamacare.
Schock resigned his congressional seat over questions about his lavish spending, but CNS is not terribly interested in reporting it. So much so, in fact, that it does not even consider the event to be front-page news.
A screenshot of the top of CNS' front page taken at around 6:30 p.m. ET on March 17 -- a couple hours after Schock's resignation -- shows that a breaking-news banner was devoted to the Israeli election but no mention of Schock's resignation. There is, however, an article about the new season of "Dancing with the Stars." So, apparently, CNS considers a TV show about dancing celebrities to be more important than a congressman's resignation.
Another screenshot of the front page taken around 10 a.m. ET March 18 shows a breaking-news banner for an attack on a museum in Tunisia -- but, again, no Schock. The "Dancing With the Stars" article has fallen off the list, but this update, like the earlier one, includes the latest rant from dishonest anti-abortion extremist Lila Rose.
CNS subscribes to the Associated Press, and it did publish an AP article on Schock's resignation on March 17 -- it simply did not think the story warranted front-page coverage. But unless you burrow way down into CNS' Washington page, you won't find it.
The only original coverage of Schock's resignation to be found on any MRC website is a post on the MRCTV blog.
It seems that CNS will report on Republican members of Congress only if they are feeding the agenda of CNS and its parent, the Media Research Center. And if you are corrupt and have to resign because of it, CNS will cover it up to preserve the Republican brand.
NEW ARTICLE: Why Does CNS Hate Gays So Much? Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com loves to publish anti-gay articles, then allow its readers to spew their anti-gay hatred in comments sections. Read more >>
CNS Still Privileges Alveda King With Unearned 'Dr.' Title Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com loves to privilege Alveda King with the "Dr." title, even though her doctorate is honorary (from Saint Anselm College) and not earned. It did so again twice this past week.
A March 9 CNS article by Penny Starr puts "Dr. Alveda King" right in the headline, and Starr herself gives her the "Dr." title in the article. There's also a photo of King with the grating caption "Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."
A March 13 column by King carries the "Dr. Alveda King" byline, plus a bio tag at the end stating "Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr."
Actually, unlike Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr. earned his doctorate, from Boston University.
If CNS had any journalistic integrity, it would reject Alveda King's blatantly dishonest efforts to inflate her credentials to portray herself as an equal of her uncle. But then, CNS' right-wing agenda has little to do with journalistic integrity.
CNS' Starr Thinks It's News That Sexual Orientation Can Change Over Time Topic: CNSNews.com
This is the entirety of a March 13 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr:
Planned Parenthood Federation of America tells teens on its website that it “can take a long time” to determine one’s “sexual orientation or gender identity.”
"Sexual orientation describes which gender(s) you're attracted to, sexually and/or romantically," says Planned Parenthood's "All About LGBTQ at a Glance" webpage. "Sometimes a person's sexual orientation changes over time, but people can't choose or decided to change who they're attracted to."
“It can take many years for people to understand their sexual orientation, and it can change over your lifetime — so a lot of people call themselves questioning, which means they aren’t sure about their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. This is common — especially for teens,” the website states.
"LGBTQ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning," says the webpage.
That's it. There's no explanation why of Starr finds this to be "news," or even that it's somehow a change from previous information provided by Planned Parenthood or any other credible organization on the subject (it's not).
The important thing about this article is what's not in it: It does contradict right-wing opinion that choosing to be something other than a heterosexual is a conscious choice and nothing more than a "lifestyle" that can be easily changed on a whim. It's nothing but a dog whistle for CNS readers, who have fulfilled their end of the deal by filling the article's comment thread with anti-gay vitriol.
Indeed, CNS gave away the game when it tweeted out a link to Starr's article with the added comment, "Homosexual by Choice?"
Just a few days ago, Starr's fellow CNS reporter Barbara Hollingsworth fretted that "Psychology Today announced last week that it will no longer accept ads from therapists who offer 'conversion therapy' or 'reparative therapy' to gays who want to leave the homosexual lifestyle." As could be expected, she devoted much more space to those who oppose the decision than to those who say such "reparative therapy" is harmful.
If Starr wanted to do real reporting, she would have done a lot more than she did. But these four paragraphs shows she's simply regurgitating her employer's anti-gay agenda rather than being a journalist.
CNS' Hunter Continues Her Obsession With LGBT-Related Federal Spending Topic: CNSNews.com
Hey, look, CNSNews.com deputy managing editor Melanie Hunter has found yet another example of LGBT-related federal spending she has deemed wasteful:
The National Institutes of Health has awarded $228,425 to the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (translated it means Cayetano Heredia University), a private university in Lima, Peru, to study syphilis among gay men in that country.
This makes 10 articles Hunter has written since December on supposedly wasteful LGBT-related spending, versus two articles on non-LGBT spending during that same time period.
Hunter has yet to publicly explain her disproportionate focus on LGBT-related spending or whether she has found any such spending she doesn't consider to be a waste of money.
CNS' Jeffrey Forgets Who Was President When Most Gitmo Detainees Who Returned To Terrorism Were Released Topic: CNSNews.com
In a March 7 CNSNews.com article, CNS editor-in-chief Terry Jeffrey writes about how "The Director of National Intelligence released a report this week indicating that the United States has 'confirmed' that 116 detainees "transferred" out of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, subsequently reengaged in terrorist or insurgent activities." Jeffrey then tries to blame President Obama for this, noting that "Two days after he first took office in 2009, President Obama issued an executive order calling for Guantanamo to be closed. That order also called for officials to review what should be done with each individual transferred from the prison."
But it's not until the 23rd paragraph of his article that Jeffrey admits (grudging, in parentheses) that the recidivism rate for detainees released under Obama is lower than it used to be:
(The percentage of Guantanamo detainees released after President Obama's executive order who have been confirmed to have returned to terrorist or insurgent activity has been less thus far--5.2 percent--than it has been for detainees released before the executive order, which is 17.9 percent.)
Jeffrey curiously doesn't mention who was president before Obama and, thus, the president with the higher recidivism rate: Republican George W. Bush. In fact, Bush's name appears nowhere in Jeffrey's article, even though he repeatedly names Obama and publishes Republican criticism of Obama's Gitmo release policy.
Jeffrey doesn't seem to want to let inconvenient facts interfere with his politically motivated attack on Obama disguised as "news."
CNS' Starr Apparently Thinks Researchers Use Rats Off The Street Topic: CNSNews.com
A March 6 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr is about a biotech firm that "transplants organs from aborted babies into lab rats with the goal of growing them for use in patients who need organ transplants." But look at the photo accompanying Starr's article:
Yes, that's a picture of street rats rummaging through a garbage bag. Apparently Starr thinks those are the kind of rats researchers use.
Actually, laboratory rats are notably different from wild street rats, if Wikipedia is to be believed; scientists have bred many strains or "lines" of rats specifically for experimentation.
So, no, Ms. Starr, rats in the street are not running wild with organs from aborted babies on them, however much you and other anti-abortion activists believe in your heart that is true.
Also, note that CNS is once again misusing Associated Press content by sticking this completely unrelated photo on this story. CNS has a habit of rewriting AP headlines to make them more biased.
CNS Portrays Extremist Pastors As 'Conservative Black Leaders' Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com is devoting another article to its homophobic obsession with the cherry-picked, out-of-context reference President Obama made to gays during last weekend's speech in Selma, Alabama. In it, Lauretta Brown obtains reaction from what she claims are "conservative black leaders" to the reference, giving no indication she provided the correct and complete context of the statement to them.
So who are these "conservative black leaders" that Brown thinks are worthy of perpetuating this manufactured controversy?
-- Jesse Lee Peterson is a Sean Hannity-backed pastor and WorldNetDaily columnist who has issues with women. He's also a rabid Obama-hater who once claimed that the president is "committed to spreading evil."
In his comments to CNS, Peterson went even farther off the Obama-hating rails by likening Obama to a Ku Klux Klan leader. No, really:
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson of BOND (The Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny) was similarly critical of the president’s speech.
“There was no hope in that rally,” Peterson said. “Just think about this: 50 years later we have a black president in the United States of America. This country has done more than any other country to make amends for slavery in this country and yet there was no appreciation of that. There was no praise of America, thanking America for what it had done. It was as though it was still 1955.”
“It was disgusting, it was evil, it was wrong,” said Peterson.
“That rally was a klan’s rally, was no different than the KKK, it was a hate rally, a hateful rally,” said Peterson.
The third "leader" Brown quoted, C.L. Bryant, has complained that Obama isn't a real black American and his election is a "slap in the face" to those who are.
These are who Brown and CNS consider "conservative black leaders." Actual conservative black leaders should be insulted.
It's been a while since we checked in with CNS' obsession with promoting every little pearl of wisdom that falls from Mark Levin's mouth, but yes, they're still at it:
Since this is stenography and not reporting, there's no attempt to fact-check anything Levin says -- apparently, if he says it, it's axoimatically true.
There's also no mention of the fact that CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, has a business deal with Levin in which they cross-promote each other. It's also not disclosed whether all these fawning Levin posts are part of that promotion deal.
CNS Obsesses Over Single Line Referencing Gays In Obama's Selma Speech Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com's story on President Obama's speech in Selma, Alabama, for the 50th anniversary of the famous civil rights march there isn't even a story, really -- it's just a lazy, unbylined copy-and-paste of a few paragraphs of the speech from the White House website, plucked out of context from the much longer speech.
Why did CNS do this? Because Obama said something CNS didn't like: he failed to denigrate gays. Or, as the completely context-free headline screams, "Obama: 'We’re The Gay Americans Whose Blood Ran in the Streets of San Francisco’."
So offended was CNS that it put this out-of-context speech excerpt and its even more out-of-context headline as the lead story of its website today, accompanied with a picture of an arrogant-looking Obama (because that's the impression of him CNS wants its readers to have).
CNS is has been ramping up its anti-gay agenda in recent months, and this article shows how it's happening.
After a month in which it was forced to report good news on the unemployment front because it apparently couldn't find sufficiently negative numbers to cherry-pick like it usually does, CNSNews.com is back to its old routine with February's numbers in a pair of articles by Ali Meyer:
Not News at CNS: Gaffes And Birthers At CPAC Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com sent a full complement of reporters to cover the speeches at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference -- chief among them from their boss, Brent Bozell.
But curiously, CNS' reports on the speeches quoted only the red-meat attacks. Missing was any hint of gaffe or controversy.
Ali Meyer's story on the speech by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker plays up his anti-Washington attacks, such as calling the District of Columbia “68 square miles surrounded by reality.”Meyer failed to mention a serious gaffe by Walker in which he likened pro-union protesters to ISIS.
Strangely, CNS did publish (but buried by refusing to promote on its front page) an Associated Press article about Walker's gaffe.
(Meanwhile, the MRC's Kyle Drennen huffed that NBC reported on Walker's "blunder," while happily noting that "CBS didn't deem the comments newsworthy.")
When two CPAC speakers -- Donald Trump and Rick Santorum -- pandered to extremists by making birther-friendly comments, CNS not only refused to report on them, it neglect to report on their speeches at all.
Given how long Bozell has worked to bend CPAC to his right-wing will, he certainly doesn't want any controversy over extremist statements overshadowing the festivities. Through selective and biased, reporting, his "news" division is making sure that doesn't happen.
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman is quite the fanboy of right-wing evangelist Franklin Graham.
Rabbi Aryeh Spero is apparently the Jewish 
Ali Meyer writes in a March 24 CNSNews.com 
Rep. Aaron Schock was a rising star in Republican circles, and CNSNews.com had no problem promoting him. Last September, for instances, CNS devoted original articles to Schock 
CNSNews.com 
This is the entirety of a March 13 CNSNews.com 
Hey, look, CNSNews.com deputy managing editor Melanie Hunter has found 
In a March 7 CNSNews.com 
CNSNews.com is devoting another article to its 
It's been a while since we checked in with CNS' 
After a month in which it was 
