CNS Ties Muslims To Hatred of Gays, Ignores Christian Gay-Hatred Topic: CNSNews.com
Following the massacre in a gay nightclub Orlando by a man who allegedly claimed allegiance to ISIS, CNSNews.com was quick to reinforce the idea that only Muslims hate gays:
A June 13 article by Susan Jones highlighted Republican Rep. Peter King stating that "I think people don't often realize the hatred that Islamists have toward gays and transgenders."
A June 14 article by Patrick Goodenough asserts that "Half of the countries in the world where homosexual behavior is legally prohibited are Islamic states, and in 13 of those countries, the death penalty is codified in shari’a (Islamic law)."
Censored so far at CNS, however, is the fact that Christian pastors have come out in favor of the massacre because gays were killed.
In Sacramento, pastor Roger Jimenez of the Verity Baptist Church said "I think that's great" that "50 pedophiles were killed today," adding, "The tragedy is that more of them didn’t die. The tragedy is — I’m kind of upset that he didn’t finish the job!" He also said of gays: "I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a firing wall, put a firing squad in front of them, and blow their brains out."
Arizona preacher Steven Anderson said that while he wouldn’t advocate for violence, he said LGBT people should be “executed by a righteous government," adding, "The bad news is that a lot of the homos in the bar are still alive, so they're going to continue to molest children and recruit children into their filthy homosexual lifestyle." He also said, "At least these dangerous, filthy predators are off the streets. I’m just trying to look on the bright side."
Also censored at CNS is Pat Robertson's bizarre claim that gays have allied with radical Islamists, and that "the best thing to do is to sit on the sidelines and let them kill themselves." Robertson's "The 700 Club" desperately tried to spin this after the fact, insisting that he was "clearly" using killing as a metaphor and that he meant gays and Islamists are "killing themselves politically."
Further, while Goodenough's article was eager to highlight the Islamic-dominated countries where homosexuality is illegal, he makes sure not to note which of those countries are dominated by Christians. He also obscures the fact that some of the countries he claims are "mostly Muslim-majority" are actually Christian-doiminated.
For instance, Goodenough lists Uganda as a "Muslim-majority" country where homosexuality is illegal because it's a member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. In fact, only 12 percent of the Ugandan population is Muslim, while more than 83 percent is Christian.
Goodenough seems to have missed the controversy over the past few years over Uganda's attempt to criminalize homosexuality with death, inspired in no small part by anti-gay American Christian pastors like Scott Lively. He also apparently missed a July 2015 CNS article by his boss, Michael W. Chapman, approvingly quoting Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni proudly stating that homosexual behavior is a “no-go” subject in the country and is "never supported by Ugandans,” and that President Obama should "respect African societies and their values." Chapman also happily quoted saying how much he "personally dislike[s]" gays: "They are disgusting. What sort of people are they? How can you go -- I never knew what they were doing." Chapman also pointed out that Uganda is "overwhelmingly a Christian country."
MRC's 'News' Division Doesn't Think Trump Is News Topic: CNSNews.com
As a media watchdog, we read CNSNews.com, the Media Research Center's "news" division, every day, and usually a few times a day. And over the past several days, we noticed something peculiar: Despite Donald Trump being the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and despite Trump being the lead political story over those same past several days with his racially motivated attack on a judge presiding over a class-action lawsuit against Trump's scammy university, Trump rarely appeared on the CNS front page.
(Which is doubly strange because the MRC employs as a contributor Jeffrey Lord, who defends Trump's race-baiting attacks on the judge.)
The CNS front page has numerous slots for story promotions: nine at the top of the page and 30 farther down, plus five blog post slots and four commentary slots. Yet Trump has been mentioned more inside the NewsBusters headline promo box on the CNS front page than on CNS proper.
What did make the CNS front page instead of Trump? Lots of stuff. For instance, Lauretta Brown snagged an exclusive interview with YouTube semi-celebrities Diamond and Silk -- who "were speaking Thursday at a 'Women Vote Trump' event at the National Press Club" -- to talk about "about race relations in the United States since President Obama took office." Brown apparently did not ask Diamond and Silk about Trump, despite the facts that being Trump groupies are the duo's claim to fame and they were speaking at a Trump event.
Also making the CNS front page instead of Trump was an article by Barbara Hollingsworth on a panel discussion of the 50th anniversary of the William F. Buckley-hosted show "Firing Line." Getting prominent play here was Hollingsworth's boss, Brent Bozell, who is also Buckley's nephew. Bozell shared this observation, according to Hollingsworth:
“You don’t debate on television any more. You fight,” Bozell pointed out.
“When that happens, two things happen. One is that you no longer have a discussion, you no longer have a serious thought in the political conversation because you don't even develop just one single thought.
"Instead, those of us who go on television today--you know, the Apostles spoke in tongues. We speak in sound bites. And we come up with pithy fractions of a thought. And that’s all you have to do on television today is come up with a pithy fraction of a thought," Bozell said.
Says the guy who reportedly insists on not having anyone who holds political views different from his during his segments -- that's why he and other MRC talking heads tend to appear solo at conservative-friendly places like Fox News. Bozell has no interest whatsoever in debating the issues.
On top of that, Bozell apparently has no interest in presenting news that can't be spun to forward his right-wing agenda. We are guessing that's why no Trump news gets a front-page push at CNS -- there's no good way to spin Trump's racial animus toward a judge. That's just not "the right news, right now," to quote the slogan at the top of the CNS front page.
One Trump-related story did make the CNS front page during this time, however. It's a story by Melanie Hunter that offers nothing but a rote regurgitation of a speech Trump gave at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in which he recited a litany conservative platitudes.
Being a dutiful stenographer instead of an actual reporter, Hunter didn't mention that Trump read his speech from a teleprompter, despite the fact that CNS itself last August highlighted Trump's call for a ban on teleprompters for presidential candidates: "These other guys, they're going around, they make a speech in front of 21 people. Nobody cares, they read the same speech -- deet-deet-deet. They have teleprompters. I say we should outlaw teleprompters for anybody, right? -- for anybody -- for anybody running for president."
That may have been "the right news" for CNS in August, but it clearly fails the "right now" test. As does most of what Trump does these days, apparently.
CNSNews.com has a legitimately disappointing unemployment report to write about -- only 38,000 jobs created in May -- but the story on it by Susan Jones continued CNS' established pattern of obsessing over the labor force unemployment rate.
Jones waits until the 10th paragraph to actually mention something she usually ignores because it doesn't fit her agenda -- that the labor force participation rate is heavily affected by "retirements among the aging baby boom generation." But then she tries to spin it by sdaying that "the weak job market has caused other Americans to give up job-hunting in favor of staying home or going back to school." However, she provides nothing to back up that interpretation.
CNS Columnist Takes A Dig At 'Hitlery," For Some Reason Topic: CNSNews.com
The Media Research Center is picking up yet another WorldNetDaily trait: columnists who save their really crazy, hateful stuff for other outlets.
Eric Metaxas is a regular columnist for the MRC's "news" outlet CNSNews.com and author of a book on anti-Nazi spy Dietrich Bonhoeffer whose main gig is hosting the radio show "BreakPoint," succeeding the late Watergate felon-turned-Christian Charles Colson. He usually serves up conservative Christian homilies in line with the bias of CNS management.
Yep, in true WND-emulating style, he referred to Hillary Clinton as "Hitlery" and suggests that Trump is somehow not the ideological demagogue making Nazi-esque appeals to nationalism and against foreigners.
Metaxas later claimed the poll was a joke, and also "complex teasing sarcasm humor." He seems not to be aware that there are a surprisingly amount of people -- check the comments section of any right-wing political site -- who use "Hitlery" unironically, not to mention folks like Don Feder, who CNS uncritically promoted last year.
The idea that President Obama regularly apologizes for America while overseas has long been right-wing dogma, despite the fact that it neveractuallyhappened. The Media Research Center particularly loves this.
So, leave it to MRC "news" division CNSNews.com to perpetuate the bogus meme with a May 25 article by Patrick Goodenough, under the headline "Obama’s Japan Visit Starts With Apology–Although Not For Hiroshima."
What a fundmentally dishonest headline. CNS and Goodenough surely know that at no point did Obama ever claim he would offer an apology to Japan while visiting the site of the U.S nuclear attack on Hiroshima during his visit to Japan (and he did not). But it's clear that pandiering to right-wingers is more important to CNS than reporting facts -- a disturbing attitude for a self-proclaimed "news" operation.
Goodenough's actual article isn't much better, as he too is eager to amplify a false right-wing meme:
President Obama has said he will not offer an apology when visiting Hiroshima this week, but his trip to Japan began on an awkward note and expressions of regret, after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe opened a press appearance by sternly lecturing him over a murder allegedly perpetrated by a former U.S. Marine on Okinawa.
[...]
In his response Obama briefly addressed the Okinawa case, but reprised his remarks by stressing the importance of a bilateral alliance which he said has “helped to fortify peace and security throughout the region.”
He then said he had expressed to the prime minister his “sincerest condolences and deepest regrets” over the incident – the killing of a 20-year-old Japanese woman on the island.
Obama gave assurances that the U.S. would continue to cooperate with the investigation and ensure justice is done under Japan’s legal system.
Note that nowhere in Goodenough's reporting of Obama's remarks is any mention of the apology the article's headline claims and his own introduction suggests. Condolences and regrets over a crime are not apologies.
Goodenough caps off the article by quoting a writer from the right-wing Heritage Foundation (whose ideology he does not disclose) complaining that "Obama’s trip will appear to affirm the oft-expressed Japanese view of itself as victim due to its unique status as the only country to have suffered an atomic attack." Goodenough made no apparent attempt to seek out an alternative, non-conservative viewpoint.
Goodenough is capable of fair reporting when he wants to be, but in recent months he's taken the lazy way out by being content to put right-wing memes over facts, such as he work on Syrianrefugees and anti-U.S. propaganda in Iran.
In a May 19 CNSNews.com article, Melanie Hunter highlights a comment by first lady Michelle Obama that "some U.S. communities are 'play deserts,' because they don’t have sufficient opportunities for kids to participate in sports and other outdoor activities, compared to wealthy communities." Hunter then adds: "As CNSNews.com previously reported, the Obama administration coined the phrase 'food deserts' to describe an urban area where a significant share of the population lives more than one mile from a grocery store."
Hunter has played into a double fail. First, the CNS article to which she links -- a 2012 article by Penny Starr -- at no point claims that the Obama administration "coined" the "food desert" term.
Second, the phrase does very much predate the Obama administration. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the "food desert" term was first documented in a 1999 report by the Nutrition Task Force Low Income Project Team of the United Kingdom Department of Health. It can also be found in a 2008 essay in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
We know CNS is always in a rush to smear the Obamas any way they can, but Hunter's complete lack of basic research here is embarrassing, even for CNS.
CNS Can't Quite Admit To Readers That Syrian Muslims Are Fleeing Persecution, Just Like Syrian Christians Topic: CNSNews.com
Formonths, CNSNews.com reporter Patrick Goodenough has been pushing the misleading meme that the Obama administration is deliberately blocking the admission of Christian refugees from Syria. Goodenough occasionally admits the truth -- that, in his words, Syrian Christian refugees tend not to go through U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) refugee camps, which supplies the number he uses, "due to safety fears, and tend to seek shelter instead with churches, Christian charities or with relatives in surrounding countries."
Goodenough's dishonest reporting has the imprimatur of his boss, CNS editor-in-chief Terry Jeffrey, so he too can maliciously suggest the Obama administrtation is blocking Christian refugees.
But Goodenough's reporting is even more dishonest than that -- he also buries the fact that the Muslims that are fleeing Syria for refugee status in the U.S. are fleeing persecution as well.
In his May 10 article -- he does body counts on refugees every couple weeks or so -- Goodenough plays up the fact that of 451 Syrian refugees arriving in the U.S. in the previous month, "426 were Sunni Muslims and one was a Christian."
Several paragraphs later, Goodenough obliquely writes that Syrian refugees are "escaping from the Allawite Assad regime and its Shi’ite backers, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) or other Sunni Islamist groups among the opposition, or more generally from the violence and deprivation. They include Sunnis, Shi’a, Christians, Allawites, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, Baha’i, atheists and others."
But that obscures the high number of Sunni Muslims seeking refugee status. A report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has stated that Syria's ruling Assad regime has been guilty of crimes against humanity committed against Sunnis and others, and the BBC reports that "Christian opposition activists have accused the government of stoking sectarian tensions, including by using Alawite-led security forces and Alawite militiamen to target Sunni civilians." While Sunni Muslims make up the majority of Syrians -- and, hence, the majority of refugees -- the government of Bashar al-Assad is Alawite.
Why doesn't Goodenough make that clear? Presumably because he's more interested in portraying Christians as the real victims and is content to lump all Muslims together as a sinister infiltration.
Goodenough waited a few more paragraphs after that to tell the truth that "many Christians who leave Syria do not register with the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, for fear of their safety in U.N. refugee camps." In other words, it's not Obama's fault that more Christians are not going UNHCR, no matter how much Goodenough tries to suggest otherwise.
Goodenough's May 23 body-count article began by intoning: "The Obama administration has admitted 499 Syrian refugees so far this month, with no Christians among them." At no point does he bother to mention the fact that Sunni Muslims (which accounted for 495 of those refugees) are facing persecution, and he again buries the fact that Christian refugees avoid going through UNHCR, which skews his numbers.
CNS' Right-Wing Bias Illustrated, In Two Stories Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com, the Media Research Center's "news" operation, likes to pretend it's not biased, what with its mission statement that it "endeavors to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." That's never been true, of course.
Now, CNS has helpfully served up exactly how its right-wing bias works in practice through its treatment of two sides of the same story.
In a May 9 article, CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey begins respectfully: "In a legal complaint filed against the U.S. Justice Department today, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory asked a U.S. District Court to help his state protect the “bodily privacy rights” of people seeking to use public bathrooms consistent with their biological sex."
Throughout the article, Jeffrey painstakingly quotes and paraphrases McCrory's defense of his state's bathroom law, assertg that the complaint "explained the North Carolina law’s basic operations," as if there are no legal experts in the Justice Department. Jeffrey declared that "The complaint simply seeks that the court declare that the North Carolina governor and secretary of public safety are not violating federal civil rights law or the federal Violence Against Women Act by enforcing a law that requires biological males to use men’s rooms and biological women to use women’s rooms."
By contrast, Susan Jones' May 10 article is filled with bias and opinion -- you'd never know it's supposed to be a "news" article from reading it -- that sneered at Attorney General Loretta Lynch's defense of the Obama administration's transgender initatives. Jones' opening paragraph is pure opinion:
The U.S. Justice Department is putting the feelings of transgenders -- men who think they are women and women who think they are men -- above the privacy rights of the vast majority of people who don't contest the biological facts of who they actually are.
Jones then ghoes on to lecture Lynch on how she's wrong about transgenders:
But Lynch was referring to people who, in fact, are pretending to be something that -- biologically -- they are not. A man "identifying" as a woman is not a biological woman. And likewise, a woman "identifying" as a man is not a biological man. Until now, that is, when the federal government has determined that biological facts matter less than wishes and feelings.
Jones lectured some more later in her article:
Lynch accused North Carolina and its leaders of creating "state-sponsored discrimination against transgender individuals, who simply seek to engage in the most private of functions in a place of safety and security, a right taken for granted by most of us."
(Much of the outcry over this issue comes from people who are not confused about their gender "as noted at birth," and who also "simply seek to engage in the most private of functions in a place of safety and security." Many women, in particular, object to sharing restrooms with men who supposedly "identify" as women.)
Remember, this is supposed to be a "news" article. But that's how CNS rolls -- complete with the lie about how it "fairly presents" the news.
CNSNews.com performs its usual misleading job on the latest unemployment numbers, with Susan Jones' lead story on April's umployment once again leading with the labor force participation rate. She again fails to mention the relevant fact that the labor force number -- since it includes students and retirees who aren't looking for jobs -- is a unreliable number for discussing unemployment.
Jones also writes a sidebar noting the high unemployment rate for African-Americans without mentioning that it has always been much higher for African-Americans compared with whites.But, again, Jones' numbers for African-Americans and Hispanics are framed in the misleading and meaningless labor participation rate numbers.
This time around, CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey contributes an additional politically motivated cherry-picking of numbers with an article on how "The United States has lost approximately 191,000 jobs in the mining industry since September 2014."
The implication, of course -- though Jeffrey carefully avoids saying it outright -- is that President Obama's environmental policies are solely to blame for this. In fact, the major driver for the current reduction in mining jobs is a slump and decreased prices in the overall energy sector.Even the conservative Washington Examiner admits that "the precipitous drop in oil prices" has driven the current loss in mining jobs.
And Jeffrey also glosses over the fact that the chart accompanying his article shows that mining industry jobs were fewer during most years of the last Republican presidency -- George W. Bush -- than currently under Obama.
CNS Editor Falsely Suggests Obama Blocking Christian Refugees Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey writes in his April 28 column:
"Today, Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world."
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said that on the Senate floor March 17 after he explained what had happened six months before to a Syrian man and his 12-year-old son.
[...]
Then, on the same day Cotton gave his speech, Kerry met a congressionally imposed deadline by declaring that the Islamic State, which he called "Daesh," was committing genocide against Syrian Christians and other minorities.
Yet, even as they face genocide at the hands of the Islamic State, very few Syrian Christians are being admitted as refugees to the United States.
As Patrick Goodenough has reported in a series of stories for CNSNews.com, their number has not been in proportion to their representation in the Syrian population.
[...]
Cotton has offered the "Religious Persecution Relief Act" to help fix this problem. It would permit up to 10,000 Christians and members of other religious minorities in Syria to be admitted to the United States as refugees each year for the next five years. These refugees could apply through U.S.-backed resettlement centers and would not need to go through the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. But they would go through the same security vetting as other refugees from Syria.
The House of Representatives voted unanimously last month to declare that the Islamic State is committing genocide against Christians and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq. Secretary of State John Kerry had no choice but to concur.
Will they now find no way to allow Middle Eastern Christians fleeing that genocide to find refuge in our land?
Jeffrey is effectively suggesting that the Obama administration is actively blocking Christian refugees from Syria -- something he offers no evidence for, because he knows (or should know) that it's not true.
As we'vedocumented, Goodenough -- the CNS reporter whose work Jeffrey is citing as the basis for his column -- has inconsistently reported on the nature of the alleged refugee imbalance. Goodenough himself reported that Christian refugees from Syria tend to rely no Christian churches and agencies instead of the United Nations, which the U.S. uses to bring in refugees.Goodenough's latest article on the subject, headlined "220 Syrian Refugees Admitted Over Past 2 Weeks Include 1 Christian," again failed to explain that process.
That makes the number of Christian refugees reported to the government artificially lower -- something Jeffrey doesn't mention.
Jeffrey also suggests that the Syrian Muslims admitted as refugees are not facing religious persecution -- a suggestion Goodenough has also made. Jeffrey further complains: "Since Oct. 1, 2014 (the beginning of fiscal 2015), the United States has admitted 3,312 refugees from Syria. Just 38 were Christians. But 3,147 were Sunnis. That equals about 1.1 percent Christian and 95 percent Sunni. The Syrian population, according to the CIA World Factbook, is 10 percent Christian and 74 percent Sunni."
But neither Jeffrey nor Goodenough, in his most recent article, mention the fact that Sunni Muslims are victims of persection. A report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has stated that Syria's ruling Assad regime has been guilty of crimes against humanity committed against Sunnis and others.
That means Cotton's proposed bill is superfluous -- unless the goal of it is to fearmonger about Muslims and advance the right wing's Christian victim narrative. In which case, Jeffrey and Goodenough are all in, even if it means hiding inconvenient facts to advance it.
CNS Frames Volunteers' Emotional Support As 'Abortion-Related Care' Topic: CNSNews.com
Melanie Hunter tries to make it sound as scary and offensive as possible in an April 26 CNSNews.com article:
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) found that members of AmeriCorps, a federally funded service organization, were allowed to provide abortion-related care to pregnant women at three New York City clinics operated by the Institute for Family Health (IFH) between 2013 and 2015.
But what is this "abortion-related care" that Hunter finds so offensive? She doesn't tell us until the fifth paragraph:
According to the report, NACHC [National Association of Community Health Centers, an AmeriCorps grantee] in Bethesda, Md., allowed “a few AmeriCorps members to provide emotional support (doula care) to women during abortion procedures” at three IFH clinics in New York.
Wait ... providing "emotional support" is the offense? Apparently.
Since Hunter doesn't bother to explain what "doula care" is -- all the better to make it sound more sinister, as if AmeriCorps was directly providing abortions -- we had to go elsewhere on the internet. Here's how one abortion doula provider explains what they do:
We provide nonjudgmental, compassionate and empowering support focused solely on nurturing your needs during your experience with pregnancy. Having a Full Spectrum Doula during your experience can alleviate anxiety and help with healthy aftercare. We listen to you and respond compassionately without judgment. We honor your unique needs and feelings throughout your experience. Your well-being is our only concern.
Apparently, the anti-abortion activists at CNS don't want anyone involved in providing "nonjudgmental, compassionate and empowering" support.
But it's not just them; this was apparently a Republican-led provision that AmeriCorps violated, given how Hunter provides ample space for Republican Rep. Diane Black to rant that AmeriCorps "broke trust with the American people" and provided "support of abortion" (even though, again, it provided emotional support for those having one, not for the procedure itself).
But Hunter doesn't explain why volunteer compassion is forbidden when it comes to abortion. Which tells us she's more interested in pushing an agenda than being an actual reporter.
CNS Unleashes Army of Op-Eds to Defend Right-Wing Think Tank Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com' response to Virgin Islands attorney general Claude Walker subpoenaing the right-wing think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute about its relationship with ExxonMobil, and that company's alleged suppression of evidence that climate change is driven by fossil fuels, was not to do any reporting on it -- surprising, since it claims to be a "news" organization and all.
No, what CNS did is publish a bunch of op-eds defending climate change denialism in general and CEI in particular. This week alone, CNS has published at least four op-eds.
Hans Bader -- identified only as someone who "practices law in Washington, D.C." -- declared the the subpoena is "raising red flags under the First Amendment" and the investigation of ExxonMobil itself is "a threat to climate science and the First Amendment."
Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation ranted that "a truly outrageous abuse of his authority and a misuse of the law," asserted that "CEI is well-known for its high-quality, objective research on energy and climate issues," went Godwin by calling Walker a part of the "Axis," and declared that " What is happening to ExxonMobil and to the Competitive Enterprise Institute is persecution." Von Spakovsky slobbered over Exxon:
Walker is using a criminal statute designed to go after major drug dealers and mob organizations to go after a company that produces the gasoline and diesel fuel that Americans (and the rest of the world) use in their cars, trucks, boats, lawnmowers, and other equipment of every kind. And ExxonMobil and CEI are being targeted for having taken what these legal barons consider the wrong side of a scientific theory that is being actively debated and questioned.
The fact that ExxonMobil produces a relatively cheap, reliable energy source that helps power our world but is disfavored by Progressives and their political representatives like Walker seems to be what the company is really guilty of.
The Heritage Foundation's Kim Holmes asserted that the subpoena and other actions against Exxon are "blatant attempts to bend the law ... to shut down free and open research. It is but another example of the new illiberal attempt by progressive liberals to use the power of the law to intimidate and coerce those with whom they disagree." Holmes ignores that there's precedent for such action: As Media Matters' Denise Robbins notes, then-Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican, demanded that the University of Virginia provide emails and other documents from climate scientist Michael Mann, which were also sought by the American Tradition Institute, whose senior director of litigation, Chris Horner, was also a senior fellow at CEI.
Holmes also claimed that "It is possible that CEI was being targeted by Walker precisely because one of its attorneys, Hans Bader, had criticized New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman who was leading the campaign." Funny, Bader did not disclose his relationship with CEI in his CNS op-ed.
CNS, finally, published an op-ed from a disclosed CEI employee. Kent Lassman, CEI's president, ranted:
It is not and cannot become a crime to disagree with a government official. Somewhere along the line, dissent from orthodoxy has transformed from a uniquely American virtue to a crime. This subpoena is a blatant attack on CEI’s First Amendment rights of free speech and association. It threatens the rights of anyone who holds opinions different from those with the power of the federal or state governments behind them.
What other issues are next on the taboo list? If the attorneys general succeed, we can be assured this list will vary from election to election—something for all people of good conscience to dread.
The audacity of this legal action is profound. George Orwell’s dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” described “crimethink” as entertaining thoughts unacceptable to the government.
And, of course, Lassman tries to spin away climate change:
While global warming could pose challenges, we do not believe it is a planetary emergency. We are deeply concerned that national and global campaigns to tax, regulate, and ban fossil fuels are an expensive exercise in futility. Our policy work rests on the scientifically supported view that affordable, plentiful, and reliable fossil fuels make the world safer and the environment more livable. Further, we hold the humanitarian view that affordable energy should be accessible to those who most need it, especially in developing economies.
[...]
The biggest problem with proposals to address alleged, rapid warming is that there is no realistic implementation plan. Taken out of the context of international meetings and put to the practical tests of real-world economics, they do not work. Coal, oil, and natural gas supply 80 percent of the world's energy. Finding substantial emissions reductions from these three fuels using available technologies, such as wind and solar power, is a very expensive dead end.
As we have seen for hundreds of years, modern societies develop the technologies and resources to address environmental challenges, whatever the cause. Unlike some of our climate-alarmist friends, at CEI we think the record of human ingenuity is pretty strong. Innovation and adaptation can surmount the largest challenges when individuals are provided circumstances to promote human flourishing.
None of these op-eds address the actual reasoning behind the subpoena. As InsideClimate News explained, Exxon had an "emerging understanding of climate change science in the 1970s," but then subsequently worked to "undermine the scientific consensus, in part by financing research organizations including CEI."
Why would CNS do any actual reporting when it can published opinion pieces, two of whom are by interested parties?
CNS Mocks Report On Climate Change With The Day's (Completely Unrelated) Weather Topic: CNSNews.com
Climate change deniers tend to believe that any bit of cold weather somehow debunks the reality of climate change. Itdoesn't, but it's gotten to the point that Fox News only discusses climate change when it's cold.
The fact that weather is not climate isn't going to stop CNSNews.com from suggesting otherwise. For instance, this April 4 article by Barbara Hollingsworth:
The White House published a report Monday warning that “extreme heat can be expected to cause an increase in the number of premature deaths”--the same day the National Weather Service issued winter weather advisories for April snowstorms.
“From children to the elderly, every American is vulnerable to the health impacts associated with climate change, now and in the future,” said administration's report.
It was released by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and John Holdren, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the same day the National Weather Service predicted “another round of wintry precipitation” for the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes region that could dump up to 10 inches of snow on upstate New York.
Southern New England also remained under a Winter Weather Advisory until 8 pm on Monday with sub-freezing temperatures and up to six inches of snow predicted for some areas.
Another April snowstorm with 60 mph winds slammed into Massachusetts on Sunday, killing two people and downing power lines for tens of thousands of residents.
See what she did there? Juxtaposing a discussion of a heating climate with the day's weather in southern New England, a very tiny area of the earth.
CNS Gives Right-Wing Architecture Critic A Platform Topic: CNSNews.com
Did you know there's a right-wing political movement in architecture? We didn't either until we came across an April 4 CNSNews.com article by Barbara Hollingsworth.
The article stars Justin Shubow of something called the National Civic Art Society ranting over the idea that a government office building in Washington, D.C., is being considered for the National Register of Historic Places because it's among the first such modernist-style buildings in the city. Shubow declares that he "would like to see the building torn down and replaced" because it's "unpleasant and unliked," like apparently all modern architecture is:
Shubow pointed out that a National Register listing “makes it more difficult to make alterations to it and also affects development in the neighborhood.
“So one of the results could be the encouragement of building other Modernist buildings around it, as opposed to beautiful, inspiring classical buildings - the sorts of buildings we all associate with Washington, D.C.,” he said.
That seems like a lot of energy and hate to waste over a government building, which suggests there's something deeper happening.
Indeed, there is. The National Civic Art Society is apparently some sort of right-wing group; two of its leaders are officials with the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (a rather plain rendition of the Goddess of Democracy created by the Tiananmen Square protesters), and only about half have any sort of stated art or architecture background. (Shubow himself is a lawyer by training.) Its advisers include representatives of right-wing think tanks such as the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.
The society's main job right now is hating the proposed Eisenhower Memorial for being designed by modernist architect Frank Gehry and not being being part of the "classical tradition" in Washington. Shubow demands that the design competition for the memorial be reopened and that it be dominated by "a classical design, one that comports with the best of our memorial tradition."
The society's "about us" page includees even more ranting against modern architecture. Just as right-wing jurists think the only good Constitution is a dead one, the society believes the only good architectural style is the dead, rigid form that was good enough for Rome, Athens and the Founders:
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson consciously chose the classical style to physically embody the new nation's form of government and political aspirations--architecture they intended to be a model for the entire country. The Founders understood that the classical tradition, harkening back to democratic Athens and republican Rome, is time-honored and timeless. It is unparalleled in its dignity, beauty, and harmony, not to mention its legibility to the common man.
Needless to say, Hollingsworth made no effort whatsoever to seek out the view of any other architect to counter Shubow's anti-modernist rantings, making this yet another unbalanced work from the decidedly unbalanced reporter.
CNS Reporter Is Sad Poor Blacks Will Get To Live In White Suburbs Topic: CNSNews.com
We've noted how the Media Research Center has slowly been turning into WND. Now it's creeping into WND-esque race-baiting.
In a March 25 CNSNews.com article, Susan Jones sounds the alarm about a "landmark" settlement in suburban Baltimore that means "low-income housing" (read: black people) will be coming to "affluent" suburbs (read: white people). She grumbles: "The goal is to move low- and very-low-income people out of the city and into the suburbs." As she's wont to do, Jones adds a little editorial snarking to her "news" article:
The county must, within 180 days, introduce (and keep trying to pass) legislation that prohibits housing discrimination based on a person's lawful source of income. This means a landlord can't refuse someone housing if he or she plans to pay the rent with Social Security or other public assistance instead of a paycheck (job!).
As WND did when it tackled the issue of housing inequality in the Baltimore suburbs a few months earlier, Jones ignores the history of racial discrimination in Baltimore and its suburbs that keep blacks in the inner city and out of the suburbs.
While Jones mocks the idea that the Baltimore suburbs must pass a law prohibiting discrimination against the type of income used to pay rent, she doesn't explain why such discrimination is a good thing. And her sneering that people who have housing vouchers don't have "jobs!" -- and, therefore, are lazy bums who aren't even white -- ignores the fact that people who are on disability and cannot work are also eligible to receive housing vouchers.
Jones is simply engaging in lazy reporting that caters to her right-wing (and, we can presume, mostly white) CNS audience.
Following the massacre in a gay nightclub Orlando by a man who allegedly claimed allegiance to ISIS, CNSNews.com was quick to reinforce the idea that only Muslims hate gays:
As a media watchdog, we read CNSNews.com, the Media Research Center's "news" division, every day, and usually a few times a day. And over the past several days, we noticed something peculiar: Despite Donald Trump being the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and despite Trump being the lead political story over those same past several days with his racially motivated attack on a judge presiding over a class-action lawsuit against Trump's scammy university, Trump rarely appeared on the CNS front page.
CNSNews.com has a legitimately disappointing unemployment report to write about -- only 38,000 jobs created in May -- but the s
The idea that President Obama regularly apologizes for America while overseas has long been right-wing dogma, despite the fact that it 
In a May 19 CNSNews.com 
For
CNSNews.com, the Media Research Center's "news" operation, likes to pretend it's not biased, what with its mission statement that it "endeavors to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." That's never been true, of course.
By contrast, Susan Jones' May 10 
Melanie Hunter tries to make it sound as scary and offensive as possible in an April 26 CNSNews.com 
CNSNews.com' response to Virgin Islands attorney general Claude Walker 
Climate change deniers tend to believe that any bit of cold weather somehow debunks the reality of climate change. 
Did you know there's a right-wing political movement in architecture? We didn't either until we came across an April 4 CNSNews.com 
