CNS Writers Spread Birth Control Misinformation Topic: CNSNews.com
In his July 6 column, CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey decries the Supreme Court failing to take up a right-wing favorite case in which a pharmacy in Washington state claim their religious rights have been violated because it's being punished under state law for refusing to stock the morning-after pill.
Jeffrey repeatedly calls the morning-after pill an "abortifacient" or an "abortifacient drug," and he even quotes Justice Samuel Alito referring to "abortifacient emergency contraceptives."
Just one problem: the morning-after pill is not an abortifacient under the medical definition of the word. As we've previously documented, morning-after pills like Plan B primarily work by suppressing ovulation, thus preventing fertilization.
Jeffrey quotes the right-wing groups pushing the case claiming that "the FDA has recognized" that the morning-after pill "can prevent implantation of an embryo." But research has not definitively shown that the pill works this way, but even if it did, it would not be an "abortifacient" because, medically speaking, an abortion can only take place on a implanted egg.
Plus, as many as 80 percent of a woman's fertilized eggs fail to implant naturally, which would seem to make every woman a walking "abortion" factory. Jeffrey doesn't address that little issue.
Jeffrey also uncritically repeats the right-wing activists' case that "over 30 pharmacies carry Plan B" within a five-mile radius of the pharmacy involved in the case, as well as "from nearby doctors' offices, government health centers, emergency rooms, Planned Parenthood, a toll-free hotline and the internet."
But as the Atlantic points out, the flaw with that argument is that the case would seek to invalidate the law across the state, not just the urban area where the plaintiff's pharmacy is:
In its decision, the Ninth Circuit argued that there are good reasons for Washington not to make religious exemptions to its drug-delivery rules. While the owners of Storman’s argued that they would have been happy to refer customers to other pharmacies, “Speed is particularly important considering the time-sensitive nature of emergency contraception and of many other medications,” the Ninth Circuit said. “The time taken to travel to another pharmacy, especially in rural areas where pharmacies are sparse, may reduce the efficacy of those drugs.” Customers also shouldn’t get sent somewhere else when they ask for medication, the decision said, because “referrals could lead to feelings of shame in the patient that could dissuade her from obtaining emergency contraception altogether.”
At its conceptual core, that’s what this case is about: whether religious business owners and employees should be able to refuse to provide contraceptives to women, even when state regulations require them to do so.
Jeffrey, however, wasn't the only CNS employee dispensing contraception misinformation last week. Penny Starr wrote in a July 1 article bashing "longtime abortion advocate" Carmen Barroso discussing an abortion she had that "Barroso said she got pregnant while using an abortion-inducing intra-uterine device, which failed."
No, IUDs are not "abortion-inducing." As the Atlantic again explains, IUDs work mainly by killing sperm -- which is not abortion -- and it could also possibly work by preventing implantation (it's not clear whether it acually does), but that is, again, also not abortion under the medically accepted definition.
Jeffrey and Starr would better serve the public interest it claims to provide as a "news" operation if they would report facts instead of peddling biased misinformation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Accuracy in Media's Benghazi kangaroo court -- er, the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi -- released its final report last week, which unsurprisingly bashed President Obama and Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi attack, as if would do anything else. Given the fact that the CCB was filled with birthers and Obama-haters, that was pretty much the only option.
AIM effectively declared its bias in the press release announcing the report: "In reality, the Benghazi attacks serve as a Rosetta stone into Barack Obama’s administration—its motives, its ideology, its transparency, its judgment and its ethics. Their actions must be put in context, and their cover-ups must be exposed."
Needless to say, AIM's report omitted any mention of former member Wayne Simmons, whom AIM scrubbed from the CCB -- and pretty much the entire AIM website -- after he was charged with fraud in connection with falsely claiming to have been a longtime CIA operative.
Apparently, it was too much for other right-wing media report the truth of the CCB, so excited were they to have a Benghazi report that, unlike the one run by Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy, engaged in a lot of Clinton-bashing just in time for the presidential campaign.
CNSNews.com's Penny Starr cranked out two articles from the CCB's press conference. The first touted "former CIA operative Clare Lopez" calling Obama and Clinton liars. Starr didn't mention that Lopez is a right-wing anti-Muslim activist who once promoted a fake anti-Muslim story and who has ridiculously likened Obama to Osama bin Laden.
Starr's second article featured retired admiral James "Ace" Lyons bashing the Gowdy committee's report as having "copped out." Lyons has previously spread Benghazi conspiracy theories.
Starr not only failed to report on the backgrounds of the committee members, she also made sure not to mention that the disgraced Wayne Simmons was a CCB member.
then again, Starr's employer, the Media Research Center, freaked out that the Gowdy committee report failed to bash Clinton sufficiently to hang Benghazi around her head for the fall presidential campaign, so portraying the CCB as legitimate may have been an order straight from the top.
CNSNews.com responded to the Supreme Court ruling overturning a Texas law as expected: with a June 27 article by Penny Starr uncritially repeating anti-abortion activists predictably denouncing the ruling. And since Starr is in stenography mode, she makes sure not to correct the false claims they make.
Starr quotes these activists decrying how there purportedly are now no saftey standards for abortion clinics in Texas and that they will now descend to the level of Kermit Gosnell:
"The Supreme Court's decision to strike down H.B. 2 undermines the health and safety of vulnerable women,” Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said in a statement about the ruling in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt. “This decision is a loss for women and gives the abortion industry a free pass.
“The need to regulate abortion facilities is necessary to protect women against cut-and-run abortionists at shoddy abortion facilities,” Perkins said. “Mandating basic and necessary health and safety standards such as trained staff, corridors that could accommodate a stretcher in case of emergency, admitting privileges to a hospital, and up-to-date fire, sanitation, and safety codes should be beyond the politics of abortion.
[...]
"How shabby are these abortion clinics that they cannot meet the minimum standards other outpatient surgical centers are required to meet, and just how bad are these abortionists that they can't get admitting privileges at a local hospital?" Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, said in a statement.
"As we saw with Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia, it's clear that the lucrative abortion industry is not able or willing to police itself and allows filthy, deplorable conditions to go unchecked,” Tobias said.
[...]
"The Court was wrong to strike down a reasonable law that protected women from unsafe abortion facilities like Kermit Gosnell's notorious and deadly 'house of horrors' clinic,” Heritage Foundation experts Roger Severino and Elizabeth Slattery said in a joint statement. “This decision will allow abortion extremists to keep open disreputable abortion clinics that fail to meet basic safety and cleanliness standards followed by every other facility that performs invasive surgeries."
In fact, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his majority ruling that earlier court rulings have found that insisting on surgical-center standards at an abortion clinic will not result in improved care, adding that Gosnell would have run afoul of previous Texas standards had they been properly enforced:
In the same breath, the dissent suggests that one benefit of H. B. 2’s requirements would be that they might “force unsafe facilities to shut down.” To support that assertion, the dissent points to the Kermit Gosnell scandal. Gosnell, a physician in Pennsylvania, was convicted of first-degree murder and manslaughter. He “staffed his facility with unlicensed and indifferent workers, and then let them practice medicine unsupervised” and had “[d]irty facilities; unsanitary instruments; an absence of functioning monitoring and resuscitation equipment; the use of cheap, but dangerous, drugs; illegal procedures; and inadequate emergency access for when things inevitably went wrong.” Gosnell’s behavior was terribly wrong. But there is no reason to believe that an extra layer of regulation would have affected that behavior. Determined wrongdoers, already ignoring existing statutes and safety measures, are unlikely to be convinced to adopt safe practices by a new overlay of regulations. Regardless, Gosnell’s deplorable crimes could escape detection only because his facility went uninspected for more than 15 years. Pre-existing Texas law already contained numerous detailed regulations covering abortion facilities, including a requirement that facilities be inspected at least annually. The record contains nothing to suggest that H. B. 2 would be more effective than pre-existing Texas law at deterring wrongdoers like Gosnell from criminal behavior.
Again: Starr is a stenorgrapher, not a reporter, so her readers won't know that the anti-abortion activists she quotes are being deceptive.
CNS Columnist: Gay Marriage Is A Fad, Just Like Communism Topic: CNSNews.com
Brigham Young University law professor Lynn Wardle writes in a June 23 CNSNews.com column about how the number of same-sex marriages has leveled off following an initial burst after the Supreme Court ruling legalizing them across the country. Then he goes on to make some really bizarre conclusions from that:
In other words, there has been a novelty “blip” in the number of same-sex marriages. But in just one year, the novelty of same-sex marriage has worn off and the increase in the number of same-sex couples getting married has tapered off.
The Post notes also that the Gallup analysts predict that growth in same-sex marriages in the future will be a long-term, low-growth process because many supports of same-sex marriage are too young to marry now.
Of course, novelty fads appeal to the young. For example, from the 1920s through the mid-1950s communism was a popular movement among many naïve and young Americans. But as people mature, their naïveté usually diminishes or disappears. That is why communism never gained significant political influence in the United States. By the time young persons were old enough to vote, they saw the situation differently than they did when they were immature.
First: Wardle doesn't seem to understand that a initial burst then a leveling off is arguably the pattern for many things that, like gay marriage, suddenly became obtainable after a lengthy period of it not being available.
Second: Gay marriage is a "fad" like communism? Really?Does this mean all gays are communists? We're confused.
Wardle goes on to insist that there are "negative consequences for individuals, families and society resulting from same-sex marriage," stating: "Many abandoned opposite-sex spouses (especially wives) have been seriously harmed by same-sex marriage. Many children have been severely disadvantaged by one or both parents leaving a traditional marriage for same-sex relationships, or from being raised by same-sex couples."
But if same-sex relationships are treated as valid as opposite-sex relationships, such behavior would decrease because gays would feel much less societal pressure to enter a marriage that conflicts with his or her orientation.
Wardle's a law professor, and these arguments never occurred to him? And the bizarre ones he wrote about did?
Last Week's Trump Coverage At CNS Again Ignores The Big News Topic: CNSNews.com
What was the big Donald Trump news last week? The departure of his longtime campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and the fact that his presidential campaign raised a paltry $3.1 million in May -- when he became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee -- had just $1.3 million in the bank and paid several companies linked to Trump for campaign expenses. This, in part, forced Trump to forgive $50 million in loans he made to his own campaign.
Did you read about any of that on the front page of CNSNews.com? Not really. CNS put Lewandowski on the front page only within the context of an Associated Press article about him being hired by CNN as a commentator.
So what other direct Trump stories were deemed newsworthy enough at CNS to make it to the front page?
An AP article on the arrest of a man who claimed he wanted to kill Trump.
An AP article on late-night host Seth Meyers' focus on Trump.
Another stenography article by Jones on Trump's comments about "the United Kingdom's historic vote to leave the European Union," which somehow neglected to mention that Trump mostly talked about his golf course and other real estate interests in Scotland.
An AP article on the engagement ring Trump gavehis second wife Marla Maples going up for auction.
Another AP article on Trump walking back his stance on guns in nightclubs, "a stance even the NRA says is untenable."
And yet another stenography article by Jones on Trump apologizing to the real Pocohontas over his repeated mocking references of Sen. Elizabeth Warren as Pocohontas.
That's actually more stories that the previous week, but it ignored the big ones.
CNS has a prettybad track record so far on putting Trump on its front page. You'd think they'd want to put him there more, since he's the presumptive Republican presidential candidate and all. What are they asahmed of?
CNS Hides Columnist's Employment By Think Tank When Writing About It Topic: CNSNews.com
We noted that in April among the armada of op-eds CNSNews.com published criticizing a subpoena against 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 one by Hans Bader, described only as someone who "practices law in Washington, D.C."
A second op-ed by Bader on the subject was published by CNS on June 16. In it, he attacked that "incredibly burdensome subpoena" that was issued to CEI and asserts that the investigation "raises obvious First Amendment issues."
CNS published a third op-ed by Bader on June 22, in which he attacks the subpoena as a "climate-change witch-hunt" and explained that "CEI filed a motion for sanctions against the attorney general who sent us that subpoena, Claude Walker of the U.S. Virgin Islands, under the District of Columbia’s anti-SLAPP law." In the latter two op-eds, Bader is again identified only as someone who "practices law in Washington, D.C."
But he's much more than that: He's a senior attorney at CEI.So of course Bader is going to criticize the subpoena -- that's what he's being paid to do.
In addition to CNS failing to disclose this clear conflict of interest to its readers, Bader himself doesn't explicitly disclose it. Given that the op-eds originated as posts at CEI (here, here and here), he really didn't need to, but he knows that CNS reproduces his posts, as we see from a an April 8 CEI post in which he cited "an earlier commentary at CNS News" that he wrote.
While Bader should have made sure CNS disclosed his CEI employment on his columns, it's ultimately not his job. CNS shouldn't have to be asked to do so, given that disclosure of conflicts of interest is a bedrock principle of journalism.
Earlier this week, the MRC was giddy that it prompted NPR to issue a correction on an item that identified a woman as less political than she actually was. Don't expect CNS to do the same -- the MRC is rarely interested in practicing what it preaches.
What was that Tim Graham, official at CNS parent the Media Research Center, was saying about conservative media outlets making quality, original journalism and are totally not aggregators? Never mind.
Zika’s spread is being aided by red tape the Obama administration left unchanged, even as it illegally diverted money needed to fight Zika to the UN’s Green Climate Fund.
Writing in the New York Post, Jillian Kay Melchior of the Independent Women’s Forum notes that the federal government is thwarting a low-cost solution to Zika: DDT. That life-saving pesticide remains banned by federal regulations, preventing it from being used to kill mosquitos carrying this awful disease:
[...]
For years, the Obama administration has ignored advice like this to allow DDT, disregarding warnings that have grown louder and more frequent as Zika has spread. Indeed, Obama recently gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the former EPA administrator who relied on junk science to ban DDT. In a case of politics overruling science, that administrator “banned DDT after ignoring an EPA administrative law judge’s ruling that there was no evidence indicating that DDT posed any sort of threat to human health or the environment.” He “never attended any of the agency’s hearings on DDT. He didn’t read the hearing transcripts and refused to explain his decision,” notes Steven Milloy at Junk Science.com.
Haber and Melchior are ignoring the fact that, as we've pointed out, most mosquitoes are immune to the effects of DDT due to past overuse, so re-legalizing the chemical to fight Zika would do little good.
Bader goes on to write: "Similarly, Melchior notes that the most famous advocate of banning DDT, Rachel Carson, falsely claimed that use of DDT was threatening the American robin with extinction – in the very same year in which noted ornithologist Roger Tory Peterson wrote that the robin was actually 'the most abundant bird in North America.'" Actually, as we've also pointed out, Carson never called for the banning of DDT or any other pesticide, just a stop to their overuse.
While Time magazine concedes Carson was wrong on the imminent extinction of robins, she was correct on the workings of the food chain that made DDT a threat to robins. DDT was sprayed on elm trees in the 1950s to try and kill a tree disease, but DDT residue remained on the leaves. When the leaves fell in autumn, earthworms ate the leaves, and robins would eat the worms the following spring. Because DDT persists in the environment unusually long after it is sprayed, DDT could build up to toxic levels in robins from eating earthworms. And there are documented cases of robins dying from DDT poisoning -- it's what inspired Carson to write her book.
Oh, and Bader pulled that Carson-robin anecdote from a pro-DDT article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (which also fails to mention that most mosquitoes are DDT-immune), published by the far-right Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. The journal is notorious for publishing an article falsely claiming that there has been an explosion of leprosy cases in the U.S.
Mark Judge waxes enthusiastic about Mel Gibson's new film project in a June 10 CNSNews.com blog post:
The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Mel Gibson and writer Randall Wallace are working on a sequel to the 2004 blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ."
"The evangelical community considers 'The Passion' the biggest movie ever out of Hollywood," Wallace told the Hollywood Reporter, "and they kept telling us they think a sequel would be even bigger."
The Reporter's Paul Bond writes that Wallace, who recently directed and co-wrote 2014's "Heaven is for Real," says he and Gibson "began to get serious about a sequel to The Passion, the most successful independent film of all time, while making Hacksaw Ridge, which Gibson directed and Wallace co-wrote. Hacksaw Ridge opens in November and centers on World War II Army medic Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor."
There is no studio or financial backing lined up for the "Passion" sequel, which is still in the early script stage. "The Passion of the Christ" made $612 million on a $30 million budget.
That's the entirety of Judge's post. Notice something missing? You know, like Gibson's history of ugly anti-Semitism (not to mention an even uglier breakup with his mistress) and the fact that "The Passion of the Christ" has itself been credibly accused of being anti-Semitic?
Needless to say, the Media Research Center has a double standard on not mentioning the unseemly history of entertainers. In January, MRC chief Brent Bozell and his deputy Tim Graham marked David Bowie's death by complaining that the media was ignoring stories of Bowie bedding underage groupies, lamenting that "David Bowie died to universal acclaim, even from a star-struck Vatican newspaper." Bozell and Graham whined about how "the secular news industry in New York and the social justice warriors in Hollywood pour outrage all over the predatory Catholic priests who abused children in this same era of sex and drugs and 'revolution,' the rockers and the filmmakers plowed their way through a polyester playground of high-school groupies exploiting their 'star privilege.'" Never mind that Bozell and Graham have given that very pass to right-wing icon and underage groupie-bedder (and underage groupie-marryer) Ted Nugent.
It looks like Gibson will get a pass on his notorious past from Judge and the rest of the MRC simply because he made a popular religious movie.
Last Week's Trump Coverage At CNS: Nothing But Stenography Topic: CNSNews.com
We've noted how CNSNews.com, despite presenting itself as a "news" operation, weirdly doesn't think the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is newsworthy enough to appear on its front page.
As if in response to our making that discovery, CNS quickly slapped a couple of Trump stories on the CNS front page early last week:
A June 14 article by Susan Jones summarizing a speech Trump gave on immigration and other subjects.
Another June 14 article by Jones summarizing a Trump appearance on Fox News.
In other words, no reporting, almost entirely stenography. And we didn't see any other Trump stories on the CNS front page the rest of the week.
The big Trump news last week, of course, was Trump barring Washington Post reporters from covering him for purported bias. That got mentioned in the final few paragraphs of Jones' Trump-Fox articlebut apparently did not warrant any further "news" coverage.
What did make the CNS front page last week? Some more stenography: a report on conservatives whining that there aren't enough conservatives in the college professor ranks. And a blog post on the Benham brothers describing their "Christian response" to the Orlando massacre at a gay nightclub that failed to mention that the Benham brothers are anti-gay to the point that they called gays "destructive," "vile," and controlled by "demonic forces" -- an inconvenient fact CNS loves to whitewash.
So: Perpetuating conservative memes is "news" at CNS, but reporting on its preferred presidential candidate is not. Got it.
In his July 6 column, CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey decries the Supreme Court failing to take up a right-wing favorite case in which a pharmacy in Washington state claim their religious rights have been violated because it's being punished under state law for refusing to stock the morning-after pill.
Susan Jones throws out a bunch of numbers to start her July 8 
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 
As we've seen
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 
Accuracy in Media's Benghazi kangaroo court -- er, the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi -- released its 
What was the big Donald Trump news last week? The departure of his longtime campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and the fact that his presidential campaign 
We 
Mark Judge waxes enthusiastic about Mel Gibson's new film project in a June 10 CNSNews.com 
We've 
