CNS Works Hard To Deny Existence of Anti-Muslim Bias Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com really, really wants you to believe that Muslims aren't actually persecuted in the United States. On the same day, Dec. 9, it published two articles with effectively the same message.
Michael Morris asserted that "Despite the liberal narrative to the contrary, Jews, not Muslims, were the greatest victims of what the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program designated as religiously targeted hate crimes in America in 2014." Morris pointed out that according to these statistics, 56.8 of reported hate crimes targeted Jews, while "A mere '16.1 percent [16.1%] were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.'"
Morris went on to note that there are even fewer anti-Christian hate crimes than anti-Muslim hate crimes, though he didn't admit that this throws a damper on right-wing claims of anti-Christian discrimination.
A column by the Heritage Foundation's Mike Gonzalez drives home the same right-wing message anti-Muslim violence isn't a thing:
At his national address Sunday night, President Barack Obama lectured Americans at length on the evils of Islamophobia. That is a lofty sentiment, no doubt, but the harangue did strike many as disproportionate. After all, on this score Americans can already be rightly proud.
Despite 9/11; two long and grinding wars against two Muslim countries; terrorist attacks at Fort Hood, Chattanooga, and San Bernardino; and the threat from ISIS, a murderous cult that has beheaded compatriots, Americans have by and large been paragons of equanimity and tolerance.
Candidates may say many things in the midst of an electoral year, but the FBI statistics show that Jews, not Muslims, are the greatest victims of what is designated as religiously targeted hate crimes in America.
Gonzelez did concede that there have been "isolated incidents of bigotry," and did surprisingly admit that these were "reprehensible." Then he quickly added: "But the real story here is that these are isolated events, and thankfully not part of some national furor."
After pretending that Islamophobia didn't exist, Gonzalez then proceeded to blame Obama for it anyway: " Obama may actually make Islamophobia more likely by A, not reassessing his failed strategy against ISIS, and B, appearing to cynically raise fears of Islamophobia to promote his multicultural agenda." Gonzelez also asserted that "The president’s churlish approach has served to divide America."
So people who hate Muslims aren't to blame for their anti-Muslim attitudes? Quite the pretzel of logic there.
Needless to say, CNS has never reported on the numerous anti-Muslimattacks happening across America since the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.
Also needless to say, neither Morris nor Gonzalez explained how many anti-Muslim attacks need to happen in America before they consider it to be an actual problem.
CNS Touts Right-Wing Extremist's Call For 'Muslim Control' Topic: CNSNews.com
Mairead McArdle writes in a Dec. 4 CNSNews.com blog post about how "Long-time conservative columnist and author Don Feder remarked Friday that perhaps what the United States needs is not more gun control, but 'Muslim control.'" McArdle goes on to uncritically promote Feder's anti-Muslim sentiments, but she little to say about Feder himself; along with the above description, she adds only that he is "a former syndicated columnist and editorial writer for the Boston Herald."
What McArdle won't tell you: Feder is a far-right activist who's anti-gay and leans toward white nationalism.
We've documented how Feder served as a "communications director" for a documentary called "Demographic Winter," which frets that white right-wing Christians are not having enough babies and will soon by overrun by brown people who have more children. Feder has (dishonestly) defended white nationalist and anti-immigration leader John Tanton.
On top of that, Feder is communications director for the World Congress of Families, a right-wing group that is not only virulently anti-gay but has grown closer to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, endorsing his anti-gay policies and even planning to hold a meeting in Moscow until Russia invaded Ukraine (the meeting went on, but WCF had to drop its name from it).
Earlier this year, Feder penned a rabidly anti-Hillary column with the less-than-subtle headline "Top Ten Reasons Why Hitlery Will Never Be President," in which one of those reasons is that she's too ugly to get elected.
This is who CNS now considers a person whose opinions are worth spreading. And thus, CNS' race to the right-wing fringe continues apace.
Terry Jeffrey's Hypocritical (And Dishonest) Anti-D.C. Snobbery Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey had a huge fit of anti-Washington snobbery this week. First, there was a Dec. 9 article in which he wrote:
Five of the nation's Top Ten wealthiest counties--when measured by median household income in 2014--are suburbs of Washington, D.C.; and the three wealthiest are all in suburban Virginia, according to data released today by the Census Bureau.
Falls Church, Va.--an independent city which the Census counts as a county--led the nation with a median household income of $125,635 in 2014.
Loudon County, Va., was second with a median household income of $122,641.
Fairfax County, Va., was third with a median household income of $110,507.
Jeffrey followed up the next day with this article:
The “county” that the Census Bureau reported yesterday had the highest median household income in the nation in 2014 is disproportionately populated by people who work for the government.
The City of Falls Church, Va.--which the Census Bureau treats as a “county” because it is an independent city that is not a part of any county—had a median household income of $125,635 in 2014.
That put it first on the Census Bureau’s list of the 30 counties in the nation with the highest median incomes.
[...]
In the five-year period from 2010-2014, according to the Census Bureau’s estimate, there were 7,290 Falls Church City residents 16 and older who were employed.
2,389 of these—or 32.8 percent—worked for government.
Nationwide, during the same time period, only 14.6 percent of workers were employed by government.
Thus, workers in the nation’s wealthiest county were more than twice as likely as workers nationwide to be employed by government.
Of course, this is nothing but read-meat government-bashing for the benefit of CNS' right-wing readers (and, hopefully, a few traffic-driving clicks). But Jeffrey isn't telling you the whole story -- like how utterly hypocritical his sneering attacks are.
CNS and its parent organization, the Media Research Center, are headquarted in Reston, Va. -- located in Fairfax County, the third-wealthiest U.S. county that Jeffrey was mocking. And Reston is just a 12-mile drive from Falls Church, Va., which is located in the middle of Fairfax County.
Reston, being located in that wealthy county, is not too shabby on the median income front -- $110,321 according to the Census Bureau. So the denizens of CNS' hometown are living quite well.
As is Jeffrey. We don't know where exactly Jeffrey lives in the Washington area, but with a salary of $122,400 in 2011 -- which has surely increased since then -- he can easily afford a place in Falls Church. Indeed, the salaries paid to all top MRC officials help to prop up that lofty median salary in Fairfax County.
Further, Jeffrey's sneering assertion that "workers in the nation’s wealthiest county were more than twice as likely as workers nationwide to be employed by government" is utterly dishonest. It's ridiculous for Jeffrey to express surprise that a town near the capital of the most powerful country in the world has a large number of government workers.
Also, notice that Jeffrey offers no breakdown of the income of government workers vs. private sector workers in Falls Church. It's entirely possible, if not likely, that the salaries of these private-sector workers are what's driving up the median salary there. If he can't do that, all he's doing is smearing government workers.
If Jeffrey feels so strongly about this and looks down on his fellow Fairfax County residents so severely, why doesn't he talk his boss, Brent Bozell into moving the MRC far out of the Washington area, to that "flyover country" heartland conservatives speak so highly of? Or stop playing the Washington game he purports to despise and leave CNS -- and his six-figure salary -- behind?
CNSNews.com has long had an obsession with specific words President Obama says, or doesn't say. Thus, we get things like this Dec. 6 blog post by Lauretta Brown and Katie Yoder:
President Obama showed solidarity with the nation’s No. 1 abortion provider this weekend by expressing that America is “a people who stand up for the rights of women to make their own decisions about their health,” according to a statement that never once mentioned "abortion."
In case you were wondering, Yoder doesn't work for CNS proper; she's technically an employee of its parent organization, the Media Research Center. Which tells us that CNS is ceasing to be an actual "news" organization (if it ever was one) and is now becoming more than the MRC in journalese.
CNSNews.com has been pushing to the right for some time, trying to mainstream fringe figures like Franklin Graham and Rafael Cruz. Now a couple of fringe-right brothers are benefiting from the CNS whitewash treatment.
Penny Starr -- who uses her position at CNS to serve as an anti-abortion activist despite ostensibly being a "reporter" -- is now promoting Jason and David Benham, who are best known around these parts as WorldNetDaily columnists. Starr writes lovingly in a Dec. 2 article about how the Benhams insist that a true pro-lifer wouldnot have committed the Colorado Planned Parenthood massacre and, in fact, "would have felt called to have taken the bullet on the behalf of those three people that lost their lives." Starr then adds benignly: "The Benham brothers, the sons of an evangelical pastor, said they grew up in a 'pro-life family.' The reporter said the brothers have taken part in protests at Planned Parenthood clinics."
There's a lot more to the Benham story than Starr will tell you. The brothers' father is Flip Benham, one of the more notorious anti-abortion extremists. Right Wing Watch notes that in 2011, Flip Benham was found guilty of stalking an abortion provider after passing out hundreds of "wanted" posters with the physician’s name and photo on it. He's also virulently anti-gay.
And Starr is definitely not going to tell you the nature of the brothers anti-abortion protests: David Benham is on video praising his fellow demonstrators for taking a stand at “the gates of hell” and confronting the “altars of Moloch.”
Starr serves as the Benham's public relations agents again in on Dec. 7, getting an entire blog post of a single tweet:
In a tweet posted on Sunday, Jason Benham said his 11-year-old son was concerned that expressing one’s belief in Jesus Christ could put one in danger.
“So my 11 yr old says, ‘daddy, please stop talking about Jesus - I don't want someone to kill you.’ Yes, it's time for that conversation,” Benham tweeted.
Aww. Starr then does some more whitewashing:
The brothers first gained national recognition for being tapped by HGTV to host the “Flip it Forward” show focused on their real estate dealings, but the cable network canceled the show after a liberal media outlet reported that they are opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion.
The truth -- which Starr will not tell you -- is that the Benhams are not merely opposed to abortion, they rant about the "altars of Moloch." And they are not merely "opposed to same-sex marriage," they are virulently anti-gay.
Right Wing Watch -- the "liberal media outlet" Starr is blaming for the loss of the Benhams' TV show -- has documented the Benhams calling homosexuals "destructive," "vile," and controlled by "demonic forces." And since Right Wing Watch's claims are fully documented, including audio and video, and the Benhams have never questioned the accuracy of what it documented, it's irrelevant whether the outlet is "liberal" or not, except for Starr to indulge the Benhams by letting them play victim (which they love to do).
A real media outlet wouldn't let a reporter get away with such massaging of the facts, not to mention all the obsequious fawning, but that's CNS for you.
CNSNews.com's pattern of distortion of the latest unemployment numbers follows what it has been doing for the past several months by obsessing over the labor participation rate, as Susan Jones does this time around:
The number of Americans not in the labor force last month totaled 94,446,000--a slight improvement from the 94,513,000 not in the labor force in October--and the labor force participation rate increased a tenth of a point, with 62.5 percent of the civilian noninstitutional population either holding a job or actively seeking one.
(The labor force participation rate of 62.4 percent in September and October was the lowest in 38 years.)
CNS won't tell you that the labor participation rate is pretty misleading if you're suggesting, as Jones and CNS clearly are, that there are 90 milion Americans who can't find a job. Even the conservative American Enterprise Institute agrees, pointing out that 41 million of them are retired, and an additional 15 million are not looking for work because they are in school.
We don't recall CNS ever providing a breakdown of thenot-in-labor-force for its readers -- presumably because it wants to make the unemployment numbers look as bad as possible for Obama, even when they are not.
Jones' article is joined by one from CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman with the headline "9.4%: Black Unemployment More Than Double White Unemployment." Needless to say, Chapman can't be bothered to explain that black unemployment has always been double white unemployment, or at least since the Labor Department began tracking unemployment for blacks in 1972.
CNS Follows Right-Wing Playbook In Distracting From Abortion Clinic Shooting Topic: CNSNews.com
When the shooting that killed three at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic -- where the alleged killer, Robert Dear, reportedly ranted about "baby parts" during the crime -- occured, the anti-abortion folks at CNSNews.com knew what it had to do: change the narrative. And that's what it tried to do.
First on the agenda: dismiss the shooter as crazy, despite the fact that no psychological evaluation of Dear has been performed or otherwise made public. Here's how that narrative was advanced:
Susan Jones declared that Dear was "an apparently unstable man" and quoted GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee calling Dear a "madman" and "very unstable."
Jones, in a separate article, highlighted Dear's "several run-ins with police" and a peeping-tom charge against him.
Eric Scheiner copied a Republican congressman's discussion of "mental problems" because “No one would say, 'I’m standing up for life by going to take a life'. That is completely inconsistent with the movement that is so focused on individuals protecting life."
Melanie Hunter played up Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina's comments on the shooting, noting that she said Dear "appears deranged."
If this tactic sounds familiar, it is. CNS has repeatedlyportrayed Scott Roeder, killer of abortion doctor George Tiller, mentally unstable despite the fact that he did not mount an insanity defense at his trial and a psychologist hired by the defense found Roeder competent to stand trial.
The next step was to separate Dear from the anti-abortion movement, even though he was echoing its attacks on Planned Parenthood. Lauretta Brown (pictured above) -- who we last saw peddling misinformation about birth control and portraying extremist pastorsas "conservative black leaders" -- suddenly found her sense of journalistic balance in her article, in which she counters statements by NARAL Pro-Choice America president Ilyse Hogue condemning the killings and those who apparently inspired Dear with statements from anti-abortion groups denouncing violence.
Brown quoted the Center for Medical Progress' denunciation of the killings -- in which Dear was dismissed as a "violent madman" -- and proudly noted CMP's "undercover videos over the summer showing Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of aborted baby parts," but she did not mention that Dear was ranting about "baby parts" during his rampage.
Similarly, Brown highlighted Operation Rescue's statement denouncing the incident, but she didn't mention that Operation Rescue official Cheryl Sullenger spent time in prison for plotting to blow up an abortion clinic.
Because Hogue specifically called out Operation Rescue president Troy Newman, Brown went further into defense mode:
Hogue was likely referencing comments in a 2000 book, “Their Blood Cries Out,” co-authored by Newman, and which Australian MP Terri Butler recently invoked to deny Newman’s visa for a speaking tour on character grounds.
The Guardian reports that Butler pointed out this passage of the book: “In addition to our personal guilt in abortion, the United States government has abrogated its responsibility to properly deal with the blood-guilty. This responsibility rightly involves executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge bloodguilt from the land and people.”
“Newman has never advocated violence against abortion providers or facilities and has instead adamantly encouraged pro-life activists to work through the legal, legislative, and justice systems to bring abortionists who are breaking the law and harming women to justice,” Operation Rescue replied in a September statement.
But claiming that abortion doctors should go through the legal system before being executed is still demanding that they be executed, no matter how much Operation Rescue tries to deny it; his "Their Blood Cries Out" statement does not differenctiate between abortion docctors doing their job legally and "abortionists who are breaking the law."
Brown concluded her article with an apparent attempt to justify the shooting and blame Planned Parenthood itself for it by invoking Mother Teresa:
Planned Parenthood also tweeted Sunday: “To all of the trolls who spew hatred and lob attacks at us, PP family, or supporters online, you are a part of the problem.”
Mother Teresa, at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast attended by the pro-abortion President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton, called abortion “the greatest destroyer of peace today.”
[I]f we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?” said Mother Teresa. “Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love one another, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”
But CNS was not done. Managing editor Michael W. Chapman tried to change the subject altogether with an article on "The latest abortion surveillance report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention," in which "55.4 percent were performed on black or Hispanic mothers."
Chapman was silent on the ethnicities of the people Robert Dear murdered while apparently inflamed by anti-abortion rhetoric.
October's employment numbers were good news for America -- 271,000 jobs created, unemployment rate dropping to 5.0 percent -- and as we know, good news for America is bad news at CNSNews.com.
Thus, a Nov. 6 CNS article by Melanie Hunter began instead with its usual cherry-picked data, telling us that "the labor force participation rate nonetheless remained at its lowest point in 38 years." The number of jobss created and the unemployment rate drop had to wait until the second paragraph to get mentioned.
Hunter's article was joined by one from CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman emphasizing that "the black unemployment rate in October was 9.2%, which is more than double the rate of white unemployment of 4.4%." Since the point of this story is to make President Obama look bad instead of imparting useful information, Chapman doesn't bother to mention that black unemployment has always been higher than white unemployment, or that the black-white unemployment gap was much higher in the 1980s under Republican presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Labor force participation rates and the black-white unemployment gap are two things that will mean a lot less to CNS if a Republican president is elected in 2016.
An Oct. 29 CNSNews.com article by Susan Jones touted how "The audience at Wednesday's Republican debate booed moderator Carl Quintanilla when he suggested that Ben Carson had some sort of inappropriate involvement with a nutritional supplement company."
What Jones failed to report: Carson lied to Quintanilla in denying having any relationship with the firm.
Jones included a transcript excerpt of the exchanged in which Quintanilla noted that Carson has had "a 10-year relationship" with the supplement company Mannatech, which has been accused of shady marketing practices and paid millions in fines for false advertising. Carson responded: "Well, that’s easy to answer. I didn’t have an involvement with them. That is total propaganda, and this is what happens in our society. Total propaganda. I did a couple of speeches for them, I do speeches for other people. They were paid speeches. It is absolutely absurd to say that I had any kind of a relationship with them."
In fact, conservative National Review writer Jim Geraghty pointed out that Carson's denials are "bald-faced lies":
Mannatech wanted to improve its image and happily paid Carson, one of the country’s greatest neurosurgeons, the man Cuba Gooding Jr. played in the HBO movie – to appear at their events and to appear in the company videos. They put his face all over their web site (sometime between my story and now, those images were taken down). Carson’s lack of due diligence before working with the company is forgivable. His blatant lying about it now is much harder to forgive.
Further, Carson's business manager, Armstrong Williams (who, interestingly, has his own history of shady business practices), has admitted that Carson had a business relationship with Mannatech, complete with contract that he negotiated for Carson.
Jones' story appeared on the CNS front page, an Associated Press fact-check of the debate that noted Carson's misleading statements regarding Mannatech did not warrant front-page coverage. No original CNS article covers the Carson-Mannatech issue.
So it seems that CNS is giving Carson a pass on his falsehood, even though its mission statement states that it will "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." Apparently, pointing out a Republican presidential candidate's lies is not "legitimate," but that same candidate's anti-media attacks are.
Brent Bozell, head of CNS parent the Media Research Center, similarly gave Carson's lies a pass by dismissing the exchange as Quintanilla "asking Ben Carson about his face on somebody's website." We've also noted that the MRC gave Carson a pass on his conducting research on fetal tissue.
CNS Writer Promotes Her Old Scientology-Touting Article Topic: CNSNews.com
An Oct. 22 CNSNews.com article by Barbara Hollingsworth raises the issue of overprescription of antidepressants. She cites mainstream, peer-reviewed sources to do it. It's a legitimate issue.
But we noted that at the end of her article, Hollingsworth provided a "related" link to a CNS article she wrote a year ago promoting retired Army psychologist Bart Billings' claim that there is “a direct correlation” between the increased use of psychiatric medications to treat PTSD and the high rate of military suicides.
In that article, Hollingsworth tried to boost Billings' credibility by noting that "Billings was the recipient of the 2014 Human Rights Award by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which has produced a documentary, 'The Hidden Agenda,' on the use of use of psychiatric drugs in the military." She didn't report that the Citizens Commission on Human Rights was created by the Church of Scientology with the goal of attacking the field of psychiatry and is not a "human rights" organization at all.
Hollingsworth's Oct. 22 article, while using legitimate sources, do raise the issue, combined with her earlier Scientology-touting item, of what her agenda is and why she's using her CNS platform to try and discredit antidepressants. Her CNS superiors should discuss with her whether this is an agenda they want to be pursuing.
NEW ARTICLE: Pelosi and the Protester Topic: CNSNews.com
The Media Research Center tries to pretend that their employee who hurled a gotcha question on abortion to Nancy Pelosi is an actual journalist instead of an activist and fundraising tool. Read more >>
How is CNSNews.com hating on gays lately? Here's a couple of examples.
Melanie Hunter did another of her "how dare the federal government fund gay things!" articles, an Oct. 9 piece complaining that "The National Institutes of Health has awarded $603,412 to the University of Pittsburgh for a five-year study of patterns of healthy aging among gay men." Here's the image CNS chose to illustrate Hunter's article with:
CNS has a thing for only depicting gays as flamboyantly and provocatively dressed and marching in gay-pride parades.
Then, an Oct. 12 column by Eric Metaxas warns against young-adult literature that isn't sufficiently hateful of gays:
If your teens read a lot, and I hope they do, they’re bound to come across books that promote the gay lifestyle. What to do about that next.
The way to win over a culture is to capture the minds and hearts of its young people. The gay-rights movement has certainly learned that lesson, which helps explain a current trend in youth literature. Anyone who reads books for teens these days will tell you that portrayals of gay relationships and characters are rapidly increasing.
In fact, they’re increasing to the point where they’re all out of proportion to reality. If you know the statistics on rates of homosexuality in the real world, you know that it’s somewhere around 3 percent, maybe less. Not so in the world of Young Adult fiction; there, it’s far more pervasive.
Book reviewers on the Youth Reads page at our website BreakPoint.org, are noticing that the subject is coming up in more and more contemporary teen novels. It doesn’t matter if they’re romances or fantasy novels or any other genre—the theme runs through all kinds of books for this age group. Acclaimed author Rainbow Rowell is just one prominent recent example. She wrote a bestselling young adult book about a college girl who writes stories about a gay couple—and then Rowell wrote her own young adult book about the gay couple in her character’s stories!
Metaxas' column is headlined "Disproportionately Gay: Alarming Trend in Youth Lit." Metaxas did not identify what he considered to be a suitably proportionate number of gay characters in young-adult literature, nor did he identify an enforcement mechanism he would use to achieve that desired proportion.
CNS Won't Fact-Check Ben Carson on Guns and Holocaust Topic: CNSNews.com
Melanie Hunter was in full stenography mode in an Oct. 9 CNSNews.com article:
GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday that the “likelihood” of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler accomplishing his goals in the Holocaust “would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed.”
“I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” said Carson.
[...]
“So just clarify: If there had been no gun control laws in Europe at that time, would 6 million Jews have been slaughtered?” Blitzer asked.
“I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” responded Carson.
“Because they had a powerful military machine, as you know, the Nazis,” said Blitzer.
“I understand that,” said Carson.
“They could have simply gone in, and they did go in and wipe out whole communities,” said Blitzer.
“But you realize there was a reason that they took the guns first, right?” Carson replied.
Hunter didn't see fit to investigate the accuracy of Carson's statement -- apparently she believes, as the rest of CNS seems to, that statements by conservatives are axiomatically true. But Carson's statements regarding gun control in Nazi Germany are fundamentally false.
The people were, in fact, armed. Alex Seitz-Wald explained in 2013 that the Nazis actually deregulated gun possession for most Germans and exempted some classes of people, such as Nazi party members. The only Germans who were subject to any sort of severe form of gun control were Jews and other persecuted classes.
What isolated incidents there were of Jews fighting back against the Nazis tended to be ruthlessly crushed, as the Huffington Post notes; the famous Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943 resulted in the deaths of about 13,000 Jews and just 20 Nazis.
Even the Anti-Defamation League shut down Carson's line of reasoning: "Ben Carson has a right to his views on gun control, but the notion that Hitler’s gun-control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate. The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state."
But you won't read about any of this in Hunter's article, even though this information was available to her at the time she wrote her article. Carson has spoken, and apparently that's all that matters to her.
UPDATE: CNS is perfectly capable of fact-checking, as it does in this Oct. 12 article by Patrick Goodenough asserting that "In ‘60 Minutes’ Interview, Obama Muddles Facts on Ukraine."
MRC Proves CNS 'Reporter' Really Is A Protester Topic: CNSNews.com
The Media Research Center may be insisting that CNSNews.com "reporter" Sam Dorman is a real reporter, but its actions show that he really did serve as a "protester" in asking a loaded gotcha question to Nancy Pelosi, as the Washington Post originally called him.
When a real news organization's reporter gets slighted by a public figure, it usually doesn't try to build a PR campaign off it. The MRC, by contrast, is doing just that. An Oct. 6 CNS article by managing editor Michael Chapman touts how his boss, Brent Bozell, "wrote to Pelosi, noting that good reporters 'ask tough questions,' that her answer was 'disrespectful'; and that she should apologize to the reporter, CNSNews.com’s Sam Dorman."
Of course, Dorman's question wasn't "tough"; it was a gotcha question designed to mock her stance on abortion. Dorman hadbeengoingaround to various Democratic members of Congress asking the very same question before hitting up Pelosi. Hurling the same gotcha question to multiple people is the act of a protester, not a journalist.
If Dorman's question wasn't an act of protest, the MRC wouldn't be trying to raise money off it. And that's exactly what it's doing.
An Oct. 6 email to followers contained a link to a page at CNS where it requests that readers send it money: "It costs $12,000 to fund an Intern at the MRC, and it is an example like Sam’s as to why your continued support for our MRC Internship Program is so vital!"
Wait, the internship program? Yep. It turns out that Dorman isn't even a real reporter -- he's an intern. The MRC has not admitted that until now, not even in the two stories on the situation written by his boss Chapman.
The MRC tries to elide that in its fanciful description of the Dorman-Pelosi encounter (bold in original):
Sam Dorman was excited to be the intern chosen to represent CNSNews.com at the weekly press briefing on October 1st. Armed with a laptop, recorder, and his journalist credentials, he entered the briefing with intention to ask truthful questions directly related to public policy. When called upon, Sam addressed leader Nancy Pelosi, simply asking:
“In reference to funding for Planned Parenthood: Is an unborn baby with a human heart and a human liver a human being?”
But Pelosi responded with, “I do not intend to respond to your questions”.
Pelosi even went so far as to belittle the credentials of our CNSNews.com intern.
Somehow, we doubt that the Capital's press office would give out credentials to an intern so easily; you might remember that a decade ago, WorldNetDaily essentially complained that the Senate Press Gallery's standards for press passes weren't low enough for WND to get one (which they eventually did). It may be that the credentials belong to CNS, and Dorman simply had access to them that day.
The MRC is just throwing the "credentials" stuff around to pump up the idea that CNS is a real news organization.
But the ultimate evidence of Dorman's intent comes from Dorman himself, in a statement underneath his picture: "At first I was nervous to ask the question, but after Pelosi erupted with anger, I knew I had pushed the right button."
Journalists try to gather information. Protesters try to push buttons. Dorman's admission that he was trying to push a button on Pelosi and provoke the response he got is all the evidence we need that he was in protest mode, not in journalist mode.
So, that settles it. Dorman is a protester, CNS is an ideological news organization, and the MRC is trying to exploit Dorman's ideological clash with Pelosi to raise money. It's almost as if the whole thing was planned this way.
CNS Managing Editor Not Concerned His Reporter Acts Like A Protester Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman kept up the Media Research Center's misguided defense of his alleged reporter Sam Dornan in the flap over his asking a loaded gotcha question of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, redirecting his ire toward the Washington Post instead of his own reporter. Chapman whines in an Oct. 2 CNS article:
In Kelsey Snell’s story posted at 12:14PM at The Washington Post’s PowerPost, the headline incorrectly read, “Nancy Pelosi shut down an abortion protestor’s question in a press conference.”
There was no “abortion protestor” at the press conference; the question was asked by a CNSNews.com reporter, who is credentialed with the U.S. Capitol.
In the lead of the story, Snell also incorrectly reported that Pelosi “was not interested in entertaining questions Thursday from an anti-abortion protestor who shouted a question to the California Democrat during her weekly press conference.”
There was no “anti-abortion protestor” and the question was not “shouted.” (See the video.) In addition, the lead is further misleading because it has changed from the headline’s “abortion protestor’s” to “anti-abortion protestor.”
In the second paragraph of her story, Snell wrote that, “the protestor sat in the first row of the presser and spoke up over several reporters vying to ask a question of the Democratic leaders.”
Again, the reporter, Sam Dorman, was not a “protestor.”
Snell then wrote, “It was unclear who the questioner was and for which news organization they worked.” Here the facts changed again somewhat, with Snell claiming the “questioner” – not the “anti-abortion protestor” – worked for a “news organization,” the identity of which was “unclear.”
Snell did not speak with CNSNews.com ‘s Sam Dorman at the press conference. She did not ask for his name or his news affiliation; and she did not email him or, even later, make a telephone call to CNSNews.com to clarify her report.
One hour after Snell’s inaccurate story was posted, CNS’s Dorman did tweet Snell, saying, “I am not an anti abortion ‘protestor.’ I am a credentialed member of the press. Please correct your story.”
Chapman seems not to understand the fact that he has to state three times in five paragraphs that his reporter is not an "anti-abortion protestor" is evidence of how unclear that was to Snell and other journalists present at the press briefing. Chapman also provides no evidence that Dorman identified himself and his employer before asking the question, thus further raising legitimate questions about whether he was a protester.
Chapman also failed to mention that, as we've pointed out, Dorman's tweet at Snell came from an account that did not identify his real name nor his occupation, so Snell could not possibly have known who he was. As of this writing, Dorman's Twitter account still does not list his real name or his occupation.
Chapman continues whining:
Snell did not name the “news organizations with an ideological perspective” to which she was referring. When CNSNews.com asked her by Twitter Direct Message if The Washington Post was one of the “news organizations with an ideological perspective,” Snell did not respond.
She also did not answer numerous questions that CNSNews.com sent to her by Direct Message, including who told her that the questioner was “an anti-abortion protestor”? Also, if it was “unclear who the questioner was,” then why did Snell report that it was a “protestor”? Where did she get this information? And is she credentialed as a reporter at the U.S. Capitol? Snell did not reply.
Is Chapman actually denying that CNS has an ideological perspective? Dorman's question alone -- whether "an unborn baby with a human heart and a human liver a human being" -- should answer any questions about intent and ideology.
Curiously, Chapman recites Snell's journalistic background (Medill, Politico, NPR) but not that of his own reporter, while still complaining Dorman was labeled as an "anti-abortion protestor." Does Dorman have an anti-abortion background Chapman doesn't want to mention, or some other activities in his past that betray Chapman's attempt to portray him as a straight-news reporter?
We'd ask Chapman about this, but he has blocked us from following him on Twitter, and questions we've previously sent to CNS through its "Contact Us" page have routinely gone unanswered. So Chapman should perhaps not whine about Snell not answering his questions unless he can start handling his own queries.
And instead of complaining about how the Post reporter misidentified Dorman, Chapman should be asking why his reporters are indistinguishable from protesters.
CNSNews.com really, really wants you to believe that Muslims aren't actually persecuted in the United States. On the same day, Dec. 9, it published two articles with effectively the same message.
Mairead McArdle writes in a Dec. 4 CNSNews.com 
CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey had a huge fit of anti-Washington snobbery this week. First, there was a Dec. 9 
CNSNews.com has l
CNSNews.com has been 
When the shooting that killed three at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic -- where the alleged killer, Robert Dear, reportedly ranted about "baby parts" during the crime -- occured, the anti-abortion folks at CNSNews.com knew what it had to do: change the narrative. And that's what it tried to do.
An Oct. 29 CNSNews.com 
An Oct. 22 CNSNews.com 
Melanie Hunter was in full stenography mode in an Oct. 9 CNSNews.com 
The Media Research Center 
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman kept up the Media Research Center's 
