Susan Jones throws out a bunch of numbers to start her July 8 article on the latest unemployment numbers:
The civilian labor force expanded in June, adding 414,000 people, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
The number of employed people increased by 67,000 to 151,097,000 in June, but the number of unemployed people increased even more, by 347,000 to 7,783,000.
The unemployment rate ticked up two-tenths of a point to 4.9 percent.
BLS said 94,517,000 Americans were not in the labor force in June, a slight improvement from May's record 94,708,000; and after dropping for three straight months, the labor force participation rate increased a tenth of a point to 62.7 percent in June.
Note that none of the numbers she's tossing around is the really important one: number of jobs created. Taht number -- 287,000 -- doesn't get mentioned until the sixth paragraph of her article.
Jones also surprisingly undermines her and CNS' obsession with presenting the labor force participation rate as a meaningful measure of employment by admitting the large number is largely driven by retiring baby boomers:
Last month, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told Congress the Fed is keeping a close eye on the labor force participation rate. She said she expects that rate to "continue declining in the coming years because we have an aging population."
As baby-boomers retire, "they work less," she noted, even though younger people "participate more."
People who have not actively looked for work in the previous month are not counted as participating in the labor force.
Of course, that didn't get mentioned until the ninth paragraph of the article. Jones'noting that "Yellen told Congress that 'a sign of a strengthening labor market is to see people who were discouraged brought back into the labor force'" -- which further undermines the way Jones presented her numbers -- is buried even farther down.
So apparently there's a Google Chrome app called Nazi Detector that claims to single out right-wing pro-white extremists by putting swastikas next to their names in that browser -- a response to the "Coincidence Detector" app created by neo-Nazis that highlighted Jews on the internet. The Nazi Detector app apparently flagged WND as a organization that deserved this treatment. Cue the outrage from WND:
WND itself is also identified as a “Nazi” group. WND founder Joseph Farah reacted with outrage.
“The left loves to label its opposition as Nazis,” he said scornfully. “It’s disgusting in so many ways – from trivializing the unique horror that Nazis inflicted on their innocent victims to scapegoating and criminalizing political differences just as the Nazis themselves did.
“Nazism was a form of socialism, which I oppose. It’s a form of totalitarianism, which I oppose. It’s a form of state terror, which I oppose. How many of those things do leftists actually oppose?”
Now, we wouldn't go so far as to label WND as Nazi sympathizers. But it's undeniable that WND has gone partly in that direction with its promotion of white nationalist views.
As we documented following Dylann Roof's massacre of several black churchgoers, the white-supremacist views in his manifesto closely tracked WND's editorial agenda over the past few years, with its obsession with black-on-white crime (particularly in the George Zimmerman case) and writers who pine for the days of apartheid in South Africa.WND has never challenged our pointing out of these views, though a few months ago it dropped its chief apartheid-lamenter, Ilana Mercer, as a columnist.
And while WND has been a staunch supporter of Israel -- solicitations masquerading as "news" articles begging readers to shell out to join Farah on his apparently annual trip to the Holy Land havebeenomnipresent in recent days -- it also has a regular columnist Pat Buchanan, who has fretted that there are too many Jews on the Supreme Court.
But then, WND weirdly soft-pedals the racist nature of the Coincidence Detector app:
The “Nazi Detector” is based on the “Coincidence Detector,” another app for Google Chrome which automatically put parentheses around Jewish names designed to represent “echoes.” The “echo” meme was created by the blog The Right Stuff in an attempt to draw attention to what the blog’s authors said was disproportionate Jewish involvement in left-wing movements and causes.
After several Jewish reporters said they were “targeted” with the parentheses online, a spate of articles revealed the supposedly “secret symbol” used to “identify and target Jews.” The “Coincidence Detector” was promptly removed from the Chrome App marketplace, though the “Nazi Detector” remains available.
Some Jewish writers expressed discomfort about the “creepy” and anti-Semitic “Coincidence Detector” because of the “dark, murderous history to the practice of maintaining lists of Jews.”
Actually, the folks at The Right Stuff specifically stated their anti-Semitic intent with the app to serve as a critique of "Jewish power":
"The inner parenthesis represent the Jews' subversion of the home [and] destruction of the family through mass-media degeneracy. The next [parenthesis] represents the destruction of the nation through mass immigration, and the outer [parenthesis] represents international Jewry and world Zionism."
So, no, WND, Coincidence Detector is not a commentary on liberal Jewry.
Both of these apps are blunt instruments designed to make a political statement -- Nazi Detector, for example also flags Pamela Geller, and much of WND's article is dedicated to quoting her screeching about it, but she's merely a xenophobic Muslim-hater, not a Nazi.
So how is it that WND is incredibly offended by Nazi Detector, but it hides the anti-Semitism behind Coincidence Detector? Maybe WND really deserves that swastika after all.
Is The MRC Bitter That Hillary Wasn't Jailed For Email Issues? Oh, A Tad Topic: Media Research Center
The headline of Media Research Center writer Kristine Marsh's July 5 post reads "'Obviously' Clinton Wouldn't Be Charged; Right is Just 'Bitter,' Claim Journalists on Twitter." But instead of arguing that right-wingers like herself really weren't "bitter about Hillary Clinton not being charged over her email controversy, Marsh instead proved justy how bitter she is by her sneering attacks on those "journalists" who commented:
"Paul Krugman, columnist for the elitist The New York Times had his own snotty tweet ready"
"CNN analyst Van Jones snappily replied"
"Jamil Smith of MTV News dismissed the whole scandal in one crass tweet"
While Marsh was also suggesting that the "journalists" she quoted were supposed to be objective, most of them, like Krugman, Jones and Amanda Marcotte, are opinion writers. March very easily could have found conservative "journalists" similarly spouting off.
Marsh also complained that Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel "mocked the GOP" by commenting, "Who’ll be the first elected to call on the GOP Congress to create a special counsel and probe Clinton’s email again?" he was proven right by House Republicans hauling FBI director James Comey before a committee to explain himself, then declaring that the issue would not die due to the committee giving the FBI a referral "in the next few hours" to investigate whether Clinton lied to the FBI, something Marsh's fellow MRC employees at CNSNews.com proudly reported.
Marxh ended her post with one last bitter salvo: "The media’s readiness to quickly dismiss yet another Clinton scandal proves that their attitude towards Clinton hasn’t changed since the days where she characterized her critics as part of a 'vast right-wing conspiracy.'" Of course, there was such a thing, and Marsh's employer was one of the organizations involved with it.
Last Week's Trump Coverage At CNS: Again, Mostly Stenography Topic: CNSNews.com
NOTE: Our CNS Trump coverage tally for the final week of June somehow did not get posted, so we're doing that now.
The big Donald Trump campaign news last week was his campaign emailing overseas politicians begging for donations, in apparent violation of federal election law.
Did you read about that CNSNews.com? Of course not! CNS reports only positive news about Trump and/or stenographic quoting of Trump campaign officials. To that end, this is the only Trump-related news that made the CNS front page last week:
A June 27 article by Susan Jones trying to put a positive spin on Trump's need to stay on message and not go off-script with wild rants, quoting Mitch McConnell touting how Trump is "beginning to right the ship" by using a "prepared script."
A June 28 article by Patrick Goodenough uncritically quoting a Trump campaign operative declaring that "We’re not going to base national security off PolitiFact, or even the United Nations" after fact-checking sites pointed out that Trump got something wrong yet again.
A June 28 AP article on Trump criticizing international trade.
A June 29 stenography article by Jones regurgitating a Trump speech.
CNS has madeitclear that it will avoid putting negative news about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on its front page.
Meanwhile, what else did CNS consider front-page worthy that week? A slobbering story by Barbara Hollingsworth citing the "high praise for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas" by "his former law clerks and colleagues in the Reagan administration" on the 25th anniversary of Thomas being named a justice.
CNS Obsesses Over Hillary Emails, Ignores Trump Topic: CNSNews.com
Apparently, CNSnews.com's blanket coverage of Hillary Clinton's emails -- at least 15 original articles over four days, as we'vecounted -- made CNS reporters too exhausted to put fingers to keyboard to write anything about Donald Trump, even to perform another act of speech stenography.
The only Trump-related story that made it to CNS' front page last week was a July 5 article quoting the Trump campaign denying any anti-Semitic intent in a tweet of a image of Clinton accompanied by a six-pointed star with the words "Most corrupt candidate ever!" despite the fact that the image originated on a website with numerous offensive images on it.
This means the last time CNS did an original article on Trump was June 29, with Susan Jones serving as dutiful stenographer on a Trump speech.
Certainly Trump did nothing newsworthy in the past week -- for example, his continued defense of the offensive image -- and certainly Hillary's emails were at least 15 times more front page-worthy than anything Trump did.
CNS is a "news" organization like they claim, right? (No, they're not.)
UPDATE: So what else did CNS consider front page-worthy that week? A interview by Mark Judge of Kevin Sorbo, the ex-Hercules who's now "playing Joseph the father of Jesus in the film 'Joseph and Mary.'" This means CNS has done more original stories on Kevin Sorbo in the past week than it has on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
AIM's Kincaid Thinks Transgender Soldiers Are Like Corporal Klinger Topic: Accuracy in Media
Accuracy in Media's chief gay-hater, Cliff Kincaid, is at it again. In a June 28 column titled "Corporal Klinger Reporting for Duty," he rants:
As if to add insult to injury, the Department of Defense will lift its ban on transgenders on July 1.
We predicted this development back in 2010. “The MASH television spectacle of Corporal Klinger wearing women’s dresses to get out of the military may now give way to the Pentagon actually permitting transgendered male soldiers to openly wear women’s military uniforms,” we said. “This is what repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ could mean.” The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was designed to keep active and open homosexuals out of the military services.
These developments prove that the “fundamental transformation” of America promised by Obama has been most evident in the cultural rather than economic sphere. His communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a pedophile.
Yes, Kincaid thinks all transgender people will wear dresses on the front lines instead of regular fatigues, like Corporal Klinger.
Speaking of that casual smear of all gays as pedophiles, Kincaid also serves up this creative interpretation of the Stonewall riots:
President Obama’s determination to eliminate any notion of sexual deviance or perversion in American society continues at a rapid pace. He just released a video announcement of his designation of a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn in New York City, as a national monument.
Obama’s video made it seem as if the homosexuals at the formerly Mafia-controlled facility were giving their lives for the greater good of the nation. The place had been raided in 1969 because it was a location for men known as chicken hawks wanting sex with underage boys. Homosexuals rioted in response, injuring several policemen.
No, Cliff, gays were not rioting to have sex with "underage boys." They were rioting against years of harassment by the police. That the bar had Mafia links is irrelevant to the issue.
WND Already Trying to Falsely Race-Bait Over Dallas Shooting Topic: WorldNetDaily
Never let a crisis go to waste, they say, and WorldNetDaily is trying to do exactly that over the sniper shootings of police officers in Dallas.
The cover of this week's WND Weekly -- a digital compilation of free WND articles that WND is trying to make people buy -- screams "BLACK LIVES MASSACRE."
This was joined by that old WND standby, stenography of whatever Rush Limbaugh is saying. This time, Garth Kant gets the honors:
One of the nation’s leading experts on law enforcement and race sees a cause and effect relationship between the president’s rhetoric and the murder of five police officers in Dallas.
“President Obama lied to the nation last night, and he embraced the Black Lives Matter myth that there is a racist war by white officers against black civilians in this country. And we see the results,” Heather McDonald told Rush Limbaugh on his radio program Friday.
“It is simply not the case that the police are disproportionately shooting black males when you take violent crime into account,” she asserted. “And for President Obama to give that movement any credibility when it is now threatening law and order itself, we are at risk of attacking the very foundation of civilization if this type of hatred continues.”
Obama welcomed leaders of Black Lives Matter to the White House in February. Limbaugh recalled how the president praised them and their efforts, saying they were “much better organizers than I was when I was their age.”
“And Black Lives Matter was exactly who they are then as who they are today,” Limbaugh observed. “They’re a terrorist group. They’re quickly becoming a terrorist group committing hate crimes. And the attorney general today is saying that she’s going to look into this, investigate this as a hate crime.”
Just one problem with all of this fearmongering over Black Lives Matter in the Dallas shootings: it's not true.
Newsreports state that the shooter, Micah Johnson, has no affiliation whatsoever with Black Lives Matter or any other organized group; he was a loner who followed black militant groups (of which Black Lives Matter is not one) on social media and amassed an arsenal of weapons in his home.
But then, when has the truth ever mattered to WND? No wonder it has no credibility.
More CNS Bias: 7 Articles on Comey Testimony, Zero on Trump In Past Week Topic: CNSNews.com
As we've seen, CNSNews.com can marshal its reporting resources when moved to by its right-wing agenda. CNS did so again regarding FBI director James Comey's testimony before a Republican-dominated congressional committee on Thursday. Here are the original articles CNS got out of that hearing:
All of these seven articles are based on either Comey testimony or questions asked by Republican committee members. No article even mentions there are Democratic members of Congress at the hearing, let alone quote any of the questions they asked.CNS also failed to mention how Comey debunked several right-wing talking points about Clinton's emails.
That would appear to be another violation of its mission statement that it's "a news source for individuals, news organizations and broadcasters who put a higher premium on balance than spin."
Meanwhile, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, is still nowhere to be found on CNS' front page. The most recent original CNS article on Trump appeared more than a week ago, on June 29. CNS cannot plausibly claim Trump has done nothing newsworthy since then.
To tally it up: Including CNS' earlier selectively wall-to-wall coverage of Comey's press conference on July 5, that's at least 15 CNS articles related to Clinton's emails, but zero CNS articles on anything Trump has done in the past nine days.
Is CNS a "news" organization, or is it a Clinton attack operation? Looks like it's the latter.
MRC Rants Against Gas Taxes, Provides No Alternative Method To Fund Transportation Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center's Alatheia Nielsen ranted in a June 30 NewsBusters post:
If you’re taking advantage of the extended Independence Day weekend to embark on a road trip, you’ll be filling up the tank.
If you are researching prices to see just how much your trip will cost, have you thought about which states siphon the most money from each tank of gas you purchase?
Unlike the federal gasoline tax, which is set at 18.4 cents per gallon across the nation, states set their own gas taxes, which vary widely from 12.25 cents to 50.3 cents per gallon, according to data from the American Petroleum Institute. Five states are the biggest money grubbers. If your weekend plans take you through these five states, just remember how much of your gas money is actually going straight to the state government:
But Nielsen overlooked the fact that these "money grubbing" gas taxes in those five states -- as well as every other state -- goes mostly or entirely toward funding transportation needs in those states.
For instance, in California, which Nielsen identified as having "the 5th highest state gas tax," 57 percent of that total goes to highways, 36 percent for cities and counties for various needs -- mostly streets and roads -- and 7 percent for transit. In other words, nearly all of it; a small part goes into the state's general fund.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Hawaii, with the fourth highest gas tax, spends 96 percent of its gas tax revenue on state and county roads. In New York, the third highest gas tax, the money is completely earmarked for state and local transportation projects. IN Washington state, with the second highest gas tax, more than 61 percent is earmarked for transportation. And in Pennsylvania, the state with the highest gas tax, 100 percent is dedicated to transportation programs.
In other words, the gas tax is the main method states use to build and fix roads, as well as fund other transportation needs. It's a logical tax in that it's not a regressive tax and it's paid by people who benefit almost entirely from the service it provides. It makes eminent sense for drivers to pay for the roads they drive on, and the easiest way to do that is the gas tax.
Nielsen offers no alternative way to fund transporation needs if states' gas taxes are eliminated. But then, given that she got her information from the American Petroleum Institute -- which is part of the fossil-fuel industry whose bidding the MRC routinely does -- offering a solution was never part of the plan.
WND Redefines 'Birther' To Bash Hillary Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last time we checked, WorldNetDaily was running as fast from the birther issue as it could to avoid having to avoid having to apply the standards it applied to non-foreign-born Barack Obama to definitely-foreign-born Ted Cruz.
Now, WND is apparently comfortable enough with birtherism to actually redefine what a birther is. A July 5 WND article by Joe Kovacs carries the headline "Hillary goes birther, shouts out Obama's 'birthplace'."
Wait -- is Hillary challenging Obama's eligibility to be president? No, quite the opposite, according to Kovacs:
uring a campaign appearance Tuesday with Barack Obama in Charlotte, North Carolina, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton intentionally re-opened the contested issue of where the president was born, firing a Twitter shot against her Republican opponent Donald Trump.
As part of her remarks about Obama, Mrs. Clinton tweeted out: “Someone who has never forgotten where he came from. And Donald, if you’re out there tweeting: It’s Hawaii.” –Hillary on @POTUS
No, Joe, "going birther" is what WND did pretty much every day for the eight years before Cruz ran for president. What Hillary did is what Kovacs and WND have refused to do on birther issues: tell the truth.
But Kovacs goes on to demonstrate the behavior actual birthers engage in:
Her comment refers to Trump’s push during Obama’s first term for the president to release his long-form birth certificate amid questions of his natural-born citizenship and constitutional eligibility to serve.
While the president claims he was born in Honolulu, there have been numerous questions, especially since a law-enforcement investigation by Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, found “probable cause” that the birth certificate released by Obama was forged. Also, Obama mysteriously has a Connecticut-based Social Security Number, when neither he nor his parents ever lived there.
Ironically, it was Hillary Clinton herself who started the birther movement in 2008, according to numerous news agencies.
Kovacs doesn't mention that Arpaio's so-called investigation -- which included WND writer Jerome Corsi as a member -- is a discredited joke. And Kovacs' sole proof that "it was Hillary Clinton herself who started the birther movement" is a Breitbart article claiming that the Washington Post confirmed this,citing a strategy memo by Mark Penn, a strategist for Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.
But as the Post has also pointed out, the memo never questioned Obama's citizenship or elligibility to be president -- two pillars of the birther movement led by WND -- and not only did her campaign never act on the part of the Penn memo suggesting she play up Obama's "otherness," staffers who did bring it up were admonished.
So Kovacs is the birther here by doing what birthers do -- promoted false and discredited claims about Obama's eligibility and citizenship. All the Orwellian redefining in the world doesn't change that.
CNS Columnist Rant About 'Corrupt' Supreme Court After Abortion Ruling Topic: CNSNews.com
Right-wingers had a serious temper tantrum after the Supreme Court ruling on Texas' attempt to legislate abortion clinics out of existence (also known as the Hellerstedt ruling) failed to go their way, and that extends to CNSNews.com. In fact, CNS' stable of columnists are so upset by the ruling that two of them have declare declared the court "corrupt" because their pet cause was rejected.
Lynn Wardle -- who last we saw calling gay marriage a fad just like communism -- complained that the Hellerstedt ruling "overturned decades of small, carefully-crafted pro-life inspired regulations of abortion" -- Wardle doesn't seem to consider that maybe they weren't that carefully crafted after all if their aim of incrementally outlawing abortion with these laws was so blatantly obvious -- and hurled around the C-word:
We must speak up and speak out and write often to express our dissatisfaction, disgust, outrage, and non-acceptance of the corrupt abortion rulings and the corrupt judiciary that issues them.
The abortion rulings and judicial patterns of the past forty-three years are clear indicators that something is wrong, something is broken in our federal judicial system.
The Founders of the American experiment created an independent judiciary. After forty-three years of almost unbroken pro-abortion judicial rulings, it is clear that the federal judiciary is not really independent when it comes to abortion cases and abortion issues. It is a captive agency. The question is – who owns the Supreme Court?
He was joined by birther lawyer Herbert Titus, who along with law partner William J. Olson declared that the Hellerstedt ruling was "corrupt" because, well, Clarence Thomas said so in his dissent, and asserted that the majority ruling employed "corrupt precedents,"though in both instances their definition of "corrupt" appears to mean "didn't support the views of anti-abortion activists." They also ranted that "Truly, the U.S. Supreme Court has once again uttered lawlessness masquerading as a judicial decision."
Titus and Olson then gushed of Thomas' dissent: "This brilliant dissent should be required reading for every law school student who is increasingly unexposed to reasoning from fixed principles, and instead trained in the techniques of judicial balancing — as if the latter was all that law is about."
This from two guys whose own "fixed principles" appear to involve denigrating a court for simply ruling against their personal opinions.
MRC Bizarrely Attacks Newspaper Article on Obama Being A Good Dad Topic: Media Research Center
The hatred for President Obama at the Media Research Center is so visceral, they simply can't accept any reporting about him that's even remotely positive.
Even noting something as benign as Obama being a pretty decent father to his two children is beyond the pale at the MRC. When the Washington Post did just that, Melissa Mullins was ready with knives out:
The Washington Post is already working on crafting Obama’s presidential legacy story once he leaves office next January – and it isn’t just any legacy they are attributing to him – it’s an “unusual” legacy. Why? Well, The Post certainly couldn’t use ObamaCare which was shoved down the throats of Americans and far exceeded projected costs. They couldn’t use the issue of Immigration that Obama so passionately ran on during his campaign – especially after it was just smacked down by the Supreme Court earlier this week. No – Obama’s “unusual” legacy was being “a good dad,” something that had nothing to do with his presidency.
“An analysis of past presidents shows how unusual Obama's hands-on parenting really is,” claimed the subheadline. Historian Joshua Kendall has written a book on First Dads. Check out some of the never-ending overflow of sappiness from the Post -- you may want to grab a tissue, or a trash can.
[...]
Obama also had a rule that he would have dinner five nights out of the week with his family -- which left only two nights for fundraisers. Ironic that Obama gets lauded for this but when Speaker of the House Paul Ryan wanted to be at home with his family on the weekends, he took a lot of heat.
Kendall ended his gushy piece by saying, "In sharp contrast to his own neglectful father, this president with the perfect attendance record at his daughters' parent-teacher conferences has emerged as a model father. Out of his own feelings of loss and alienation, which he described in [his early memoir] Dreams from My Father, has come a road map for personal and social transformation.... ..for Obama, good parenting is a powerful tool for social transformation. It may also be a key component of his legacy."
Someone please, get me a trash can.
If Mullins is so offended by a mere newspaper article that she feels the need to vomit, she needs more than a trash can -- she needs psychiatric help.
WND's Chumley Has A Vendetta Against Michelle Fields, For Some Reason Topic: WorldNetDaily
Cheryl Chumley really, really doesn't like Michelle Fields for some reason.
Back in March, we noted how the WorldNetDaily reporter helped Breitbart throw then-employee Fields under the bus after she claimed then-Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski forcefully grabbed her and left a bruise. Chumley suggested Fields as a liar by, among other things, uncritically repeating a tweet from Lewandowski calling Fields an "attention seeker."
Chumley was less ambiguous about her disdain for Fields in a May 23 WND article noting Fields' new employment at the Huffington Post. Chumley sneered that Fields "became an American household name in part because of her widely reported assault accusations against Corey Lewandowski, manager for the Republican Party’s Donald Trump," going on to assert that "Video and investigation later revealed Fields’ claims were wildly exaggerated."
In fact, according to the Florida police department that investigated Fields' claim, video did show Lewandowski grab Fields, and the investigator wrote there was "probable cause" to charge Lewandowski with simple battery. The fact thatthe state attorney declined to prosecute the case does not mean there was no evidence to do so -- which we're sure Chumley and her fellow WND employees are more than happy to point out in the case of Hillary Clinton's email server.
But Chumley wasn't done slagging Fields. She devoted an entire June 28 article to gloating that "Amazon reviews haven’t been kind" to Fields' new book, filling much of the article with excerpts of said negative reviews (with one positive one, for balance, apparently).Chumley again falsely asserted that Fields' claims against Lewandowski were "debunked by video, as WND previously reported."
There's really no reason for this article to exist other than for Chumley to take out a personal vendetta against Fields. Was her book outselling Chumley's book or something? Is Chumley envious that Fields because "an American household name" for a brief moment? Is she mad that Fields exposed the thuggish tactics of the Trump campaign for what they were? We don't know.
The fact that Chumley would act in such a petty, unprofessional manner is just another reason why WND has no credibility.
CNS Bias: 8 Articles on Clinton Email, Zero on Trump's Anti-Semitic Tweet Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com claims in its mission statement that it's "a news source for individuals, news organizations and broadcasters who put a higher premium on balance than spin."
That's a total lie. CNS is interested only in spin.
The latest example: CNS marshaled its team of so-called reporters to crank out a whopping eight articles in the past day or so related to the FBI not recommending charges against Hillary Clinton over her private email server:
All eight of these articles got front-page play at CNS.
By contrast, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump tweeting out an image of Hillary Clinton considered anti-Semitic got no special coverage from CNS reporters. The only attention CNS bothered to give to this issue involving its preferred presidential candidate was an lone Associated Press article that appeared on the front page.
That story, by the way, was the only mention of Trump on CNS' front page this week despite the fact that he would seem to warrant coverage equivalent to Clinton. No CNS reporter has written about Trump for nearly a week; the most recent story was a June 29 article by Susan Jones serving as dutiful stenographer on a Trump speech.
If CNS really did put "a higher premium on balance than spin," Trump's peccadilloes would get the same attention as Hillary's. But they don't making CNS' mission statement a lie.
Newsmax Columnist Pushes False Claims Against Planned Parenthood Topic: Newsmax
Is Newsmax getting back into the crazy-right-wing-commentary business?
You may recall Newsmax started toning things down on its website (or, at least, burying the crazy stuff as much as it could) after CEO Christopher Ruddy started making nice with the Clintons and a 2009 commentary by longtime columnist John L. Perry advocated a military coup to resolve America's alleged “Obama problem.”But it seems Newsmax is starting to let right-wingers let their freak flag fly again.
A few weeks back, Obama-hater Pat Boone appeared on Newsmax TV to declare that Obama is a Muslim and celebrates Islamic holy days in the White House. Now, in June 29 Newsmax column, Michael Shannon lets fly with an unhinged rant against Planned Parenthood that starts with the falsehood that government money to Planned Parenthood is funding abortion:
Taxpayers opposed to having their money used to finance a procedure they considered an abomination and politicians afraid of them were assured “no federal funds sent to Planned Parenthood are used to pay for abortions.”
State and federal tax dollars are supposedly specifically earmarked by conscientious bureaucrats for use in only non-abortion related services, and are in no way allowed to facilitate Planned Parenthood’s industrial–strength disassembly lines.
It’s a complete and total lie that still poisons the abortion debate today.
The government can no more earmark money in a pool any more than you can earmark water in a pool. It’s as impossible as eating an entire chocolate cake and ordering it to avoid landing on your behind.
As Barbara Boland of CNSNews.com points out, almost half of Planned Parenthood’s funding comes from federal, state and local government, a total of $540.6 million.
Pretending that enormous sum of money doesn’t free up other dollars to pay for killing the unborn is like telling the judge two of the four beers you drank had no effect while you drove the car into the ditch and shouldn’t count against your blood alcohol level.
Actually, Shannon's the one who's telling a "complete and total lie." the government can and does earmark money for various purposes, and the federal money that goes to Planned Parenthood is specifically earmarked for various services such as cancer and STD screenings and specifically prohibited from being spent on providing abortions.
Slate's Amanda Marcotte explains how, despite Shannon's insistence that government funding to Planned Parenthood "frees up other dollars to pay for killing the unborn," that doesn't actually happen since medical services are billed and funded individually.
But here's where Shannon gets really crazy:
Planned Parenthood’s combined revenue from tax dollars, profit and private contributions was over $1 billion in 2013. Planned Parenthood claims 327,166 abortions during that year, but the figure is low.
It doesn’t include dispensing 1,590,000 doses of morning after pills that are the equivalent of a drive–thru abortion.
Um, no. As we've explained, morning-after pills mainly work by preventing ovulation, which is not abortion. It may also work by preventing implantation of a fertilized egg, which is also not abortion according to the medical definition. Since more than half of a woman's fertilized eggs never implant, Shannon would have to declare that all women are "the equivalent of a drive–thru abortion."
Shannon's bio dexderibes him as a "commentator" and "researcher (for the League of American Voters)." The right-wing League of American Voters, headed by Michael Reagan, hasn't updated its website in two years (nor is he listed on the organization's staff list), so maybe he needs to go back there and do some more research on whether he actually has a job.
Susan Jones throws out a bunch of numbers to start her July 8 article on the latest unemployment numbers:
So apparently there's a Google Chrome app called Nazi Detector that 
The headline of Media Research Center writer Kristine Marsh's July 5 
NOTE: Our CNS Trump coverage tally for the final week of June somehow did not get posted, so we're doing that now.
Apparently, CNSnews.com's blanket coverage of Hillary Clinton's emails -- at least 15 original articles over four days, as 
Accuracy in Media's chief gay-hater, Cliff Kincaid, is at it again. In a June 28 
Never let a crisis go to waste, they say, and WorldNetDaily is trying to do exactly that over the sniper shootings of police officers in Dallas.
As we've seen
The Media Research Center's Alatheia Nielsen ranted in a June 30 NewsBusters 
Last time we checked, WorldNetDaily was 
Right-wingers had a serious temper tantrum after the Supreme Court ruling on Texas' attempt to legislate abortion clinics out of existence (also known as the Hellerstedt ruling) failed to go their way, and that extends to 
He was joined by 
The hatred for President Obama at the Media Research Center is so visceral, they simply can't accept any reporting about him that's even remotely positive. 
Cheryl Chumley really, really doesn't like Michelle Fields for some reason.
Is Newsmax getting back into the crazy-right-wing-commentary business?
