CNS Reporter Serves Up Pro-Trump Rant As 'News' Story Topic: CNSNews.com
The general decline of standards at CNSNews.com over the past year or so, plus its determination to be a pro-Trump stenographer, has led to embarassing things no real "news" operation would ever publish -- like a Dec. 15 "news" article that's more political rant than news. Jones huffs:
Impatient to get President Trump out of the office to which the American people elected him a year ago, media liberals on Monday re-introduced some of the women who have accused Trump of harassing them sexually years ago.
The women first spoke to Megyn Kelly on her cable show, then they held a news conference organized by a group called Brave New Films, which produces liberal propaganda on issues such as "justice," "inequality" and "gun violence."
The re-emergence of Trump's female accusers fits neatly into the script written by Democrats, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who said after the complainants' news conference that President Trump simply must resign.
We don't recall anyone at CNS or its Media Research Center parent similarly portraying the emergence of the women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment and worse as stunts to drive the Republican political agenda. Indeed, MRC chief Brent Bozell and Tim Graham used them to deflect from Trump's offenses when they first surfaced before the 2016 election.
So, apparently, it's OK for only one side to exploit sexual harassment charges for political purposes as far as Jones and Bozell are concerned.
Still, Jones continued to whine, grumbling on the Trump White House's behalf that "Trump's female accusers were among the topics at the White House press briefing on Friday, as spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders fielded questions she's answered before." She concludes that the story is being pushed by reporters "biased against trump" for the sole purpose of trying to get Trump on something since the Russia scandal purportedly isn't panning out:
One biased-against-Trump reporter insisted that Sanders answer her question about Trump's accusers, "because this is spinning and it's focused on him now and--"
Sanders interrupted, noting that Trump has already addressed the issue directly with the American people.
The reporter persisted: "But will he -- it's coming up new and afresh and more people are now speaking out. Will...the president address the nation on this? This is a huge issue, Sarah," the reporter insisted.
As Trump himself noted, that other huge issue -- the special counsel's investigation into the Trump campaign's possible coordination with Russia -- so far has produced no clear evidence implicating the president, which seems to be the point of the investigation.
So cue the Trump accusers...
Again, the complete opposite of the way CNS and the MRC has portrayed Clinton's accusers, which it has never accused of being political pawns though they were certainly no less so than CNS and the MRC accuse Trump's accusers of being.
Being a CNS reporter, it seems, means never having to be held to journalistic standards.
At CNS, Winning Trumps Conservative Beliefs Topic: CNSNews.com
Surprisingly, the Trump stenographers at CNSNews.com found something to dislike about the Republican tax bill: it lowers the maximum age a child is eligible to be counted for the child tax credit from 18 to 17. CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey laid this out in an overly dramatic way in a Dec. 17 article, using language and a headline -- "Republican Tax Bill Says Your 16-Year-Old Won’t Be Your Child Next Year" to bizarrely suggest that the government was going to actually take custody of your children:
The final version of the Republican tax bill released by a congressional conference committee on Friday holds that your 16-year-old child who is living in your home this year and attending high school will no longer be your child next year—even if they continue living in your home and attending high school.
That is because they will turn 17--the age at which the Republican congressional leadership has decided American parents should no longer be able to claim a child tax credit for their child.
This is in contrast to the version of the bill that passed the Senate, which, through 2024 at least, would have allowed parents to claim the child tax credit for their children until they turned 18.
Your newborn, who will be eligible under the final Republican bill for an increased “child” tax credit next year, will no longer be eligible for that increased credit when he or she is 9 years old--because the increased credit will disappear after 2025.
Jeffrey's concern over this provision didn't stop CNS from enthusiastically promoting the tax bill -- as Trump stenographers, they are highly invested in helping Trump score a legislative victory. It touted a (unsubstantiated) claim that the bill had bipartisan input, gave Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin a platform to promote the bill, and promoted a Republican congressman's promotion of the bill, as well as Paul Ryan's shilling for it.
Interestingly, none of those articles mentioned Jeffrey's concern about the child tax credit change, even though they were all written after Jeffrey's article was published.
When the tax bill did pass, Jeffrey's article on it curiously failed to mention his own previous concerns about the child tax credit, instead cheering about how the bill "kills that individual mandate to buy health insurance" under the Affordable Care Act. So much for principled outrage.
And after the bill fully passed Congress, Susan Jones gushed about the "vintage Trump press conference" held afterward, with a headline that summed things up: "Trump: 'It's Always a Lot of Fun When You Win'." She also didn't mention the child tax credit her boss was worked up about just a few days earlier.
Winning is all that matters, apparently, and Jeffrey and CNS ultimately care more about making sure Trump wins than holding to any conservative convictions they may have claimed to have.
For CNS Managing Editor, It's Homophobia For the Holidays Topic: CNSNews.com
Michael W. Chapman, the rabidly anti-gay managing editor of CNSNews.com, has struck again. He devotes a Dec. 20 blog post to whining about a new book that "tells the story of a black Santa, his white husband, and their life in the North Pole," complaining that it arrives "just in time to further sexualize (and homosexualize) children."
After quoting the book's author stating how its aim is to mock the "war on Christmas" meme promoted every year by conservatives, Chapman huffs: "Apparently, depicting two 'married' male Santas who presumably anally sodomize each other as pretend-love -- and deliver gifts to children! -- is in no way an attack on Christmas." Looks like someone isn't getting the joke. (And how does Chapman know that gay relationships are "pretend-love"? Has he ever talked to a gay person in his life?)
Chapman concludes his tirade by huffing, "Maybe next Christmas the publisher Harper Collins can gift the world with a transgender Santa." Given that such a book will most certainly set off humorless homophobes like Chapman into paroxysms of rage -- a perverse entertainment unto itself -- we wouldn't be surprised if that's in the works.
CNS Managing Editor Lets Donohue Lie About Catholic Sexual Abuse Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has a new client for its stenography services: The Catholic League's Bill Donohue. Remember that CNS' publisher, Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell, is on the Catholic League's board of advisers probably has something to do with the whole stenography thing -- not that CNS is disclosing this conflict of interest to its readers.
CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman is Donohue's personal stenographer. In a Dec. 14 post, he let Donohue rant about a son succeeding his father as New York Times publisher, making the bizarre complaint that "no women were interviewed for the top spot." No women were interviewed either for the top spot in the Catholic Church the last time that job opened up, but we don't recall Donohue complaining about that.
On Dec. 18, Chapman was the servile stenographer for another Donohue rant, this time about the Boston Globe -- who in Chapman's words "has turned stories about child sexual abuse by Catholic priests into a cottage industry-- not publishing the names of staff members accused of sexual harassment. Donohue ultimately huffs, "We need Hollywood to do a 'Spotlight' film on the corruption within the Boston Globe," forgetting that a couple instances of sexual harassment at a newspaper have nothing whatsoever in common with the decades of systematically covering up sexual abuse of children in the Boston diocese.
Speaking of which, Chapman was the silent stenographer again for another post in which Donahue ranted about too many gays in the priesthood and blaming them for the sexual abuse crisis:
"Though it is not considered polite to say so, most people know that homosexuals are responsible for the lion's share of the problem in the Catholic Church," said Donohue. "This includes those who insist they are gay-friendly."
"We do know that in the U.S., 81 percent of the clergy victims were male, and 78 percent were post-pubescent, meaning that homosexuals committed most of the abuse," said Donohue, "less than 5 percent of the abusers were determined to be pedophiles (see the John Jay College of Criminal Justice reports on this subject)."
In fact, as we've repeatedlydocumented, Donohue is lying about this. The John Jay report not only found no correlation between homosexuality and the child sex scandals, the report's researchers explicitly warned against doing exactly what Donohue is doing:
"What we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse," said Margaret Smith, a researcher from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, which is conducting an independent study of sexual abuse in the priesthood from 1950 up to 2002. "At this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and an increased likelihood of sexual abuse."
A second researcher, Karen Terry, also cautioned the bishops against making a correlation between homosexuality in the priesthood and the high incidence of abuse by priests against boys rather than girls -- a ratio found to be about 80-20.
"It's important to separate the sexual identity and the behavior," Terry said. "Someone can commit sexual acts that might be of a homosexual nature but not have a homosexual identity." Terry said factors such as greater access to boys is one reason for the skewed ratio. Smith also raised the analogy of prison populations where homosexual behavior is common even though the prisoners are not necessarily homosexuals, or cultures where men are rigidly segregated from women until adulthood, and homosexual activity is accepted and then ceases after marriage.
Donohue frequently lies about this, so you'd think Chapman would want to fact-check his claims instead of playing the servile stenographer. But we know fact-checking the things conservatives say -- particularly conservatives who are friends with the boss -- is not a big priority at Chapman's CNS.
CNS Tries, Fails To Blame 'Sanctuary Cities' For Homeless Crisis Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com reporter Susan Jones' attempt to be a stenographer for the Trump administration goes a little awry in a Dec. 7 article:
On a single night in January 2017, more than half a million people -- 553,742 of them -- were homeless, based on the the government's national estimate.
That's an increase of 0.7 percent from January 2016, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development says the increase is largely attributed to the jump in unsheltered homeless people in larger cities in the West Coast (some of them sanctuary cities, by the way).
Jones' reference to "sanctuary cities" is apropos of nothing. The HUD press release from which Jones takes her article makes no reference to "sanctuary cities"-- let alone to immigration -- and Jones offers no proof to support her claim that immigration and "sanctuary cities" are contributing to the homeless problem in America.
(Jones loves to make snarky, snide parenthetical asides in her purported "news" articles.)
After a blip last month in which it was forced to acknowledge reality, CNSNews.com is back to its old pro-Trump bias when reporting on monthly unemployment statistic.
Susan Jones' main story on November's jobless numbers was in full rah-rah mode, cheering that "The economy added 228,000 jobs in November and the employment rate stayed at 4.1 percent -- a 17-year low." The inconvenient fact that the number of people out of the labor force hit another record high under Trump didn't get mentioned until the fourth paragraph. She then empahsized a different cherry-picked number, claiming that the number of people working part-time but desiring a full-time job "was down by 858,000 over the year."
The only other story was the usual Terry Jeffrey sidebar on manufacturing jobs vs. government jobs, cheering that "Employment in manufacturing in the United States has increased by 189,000 in the year since Donald Trump was elected president" while "employment in the federal government has declined by 3,000 since Trump was elected." No mention of what it claimed was the "real" employment rate, a staple of CNS reporting under President Obama.
CNS Takes Longer To Write About Franks' Resignation Than Franken's Topic: CNSNews.com
Around 1 p.m. ET on Dec. 7, Democratic Sen. Al Franken gave a speech in which he announced his resignation from his Senate seat over allegations of sexual harassment. About five hours later, it was announced that Republican Sen. Trent Franks would resign his seat over a surrogacy controversy. CNSNews.com reported on one with a little more urgency than the other.
Melanie Arter's CNS story on Franken's resignation was posted at 9:52 p.m. ET, about 10 hours after the resignation speech was given. It's a surprisingly straight story, given Arter's history of being a pro-Trump stenographer.
Arter also wrote the story of Frank's resignation -- but it wasn't until 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 8, more than 21 hours after his resignation was announced. Unlike with Franken, Arter did try to spin things for Frank.
On top of highlighting that Franks is "pro-life" and "most recently sponsored the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which bans abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy or greater with exceptions when the mother’s life is in danger or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest," she also gave space to a former Franks aide to insist that Franks "never put the question to them if they would be surrogates for him" and that she’s never "been made to feel uncomfortable by the congressman” and “never seen any slightest bit of sexual harassment or intimidation." Arter also uncritically pushes Franks' later abrupt explanation of his decision to change his resignation from January to immediately, claiming he was motivated by his wife's illness.
But as WorldNetDaily did, Arter censored evidence that Franks' staffers were unconfortable with the surrogacy conversations because they thought he personally wanted to impregnate them, and that one staffer said she was retaliated against for rebuffing Franks' surrogacy advances.
Apparently, CNS needed all that extra time on the Franks story to figure out how to put the best face on a scandal surrounding an ideological ally.
CNS Columnist: Manson Was The Ultimate Progressive Topic: CNSNews.com
Think of how Charles Manson could rightly be seen as the penultimate expression of the progressive’s worldview: He was his own God. In fact, he sometimes claimed to be God. Manson rejected organized religion, claiming he was both Jesus Christ and/or the Messiah. When he did quote the Bible, Manson misquoted it, twisted the words, and handled it selectively and self-servingly. Manson bragged he could start wars, purge and remake the culture, and preside over a world-wide reckoning.
Commentators are exhausting their vocabularies in describing the vile nature of Manson’s deeds and legacy. But Manson’s agenda was simply secular progressivism faithfully lived out: Manson, nor today’s liberals/relativists, bow to any deity other than themselves. They invent “truth” to suit their needs, hold unflinching confidence in their own importance and are willing to exploit others to advance their ideas.
It was moving that Sharon Tate’s sister said she had, “prayed for Manson’s soul.” News of the cult leader’s death caused most to think God and divine retribution: If evil is to be judged and if some go to hell—well, you connect the dots. But here is reality, folks: If there isn’t some divine judgement for those complicit with abortion-on-demand, like the presidential candidate we almost elected one year ago this month, then God will owe Charles Manson an apology. Planned Parenthood has murdered millions of times more humans than Charlie’s “family.”
The shedding of innocent blood didn’t faze Charlie. Manson, complicit with seven murders, is vilified. Secular progressives fight for the government subsidy of thousands of abortions each week. He is the personification of their worldview. No, secular progressivism by its very nature doesn’t do what we think of as “church.” But if they did, Charles Manson should quickly be canonized in their pantheon. Over a decades-long, pervasive scale, Charlie simply decreed, “My will be done.”
CNS Forgets Trump Mocked A Disabled Reporter Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com reporter Melanie Arter goes into stenography mode once again in a Dec. 4 article to uncritically repeat the latest pearls of wisdom from Dear Leader:
President Donald Trump commemorated International Day of Persons with Disabilities on Sunday with a statement saying that “too many people around the world” believe that having a disability justifies “destroying precious human lives.”
“Too many people around the world hold the misguided view that disabilities justify degrading or destroying precious human lives or that people with disabilities should not be entitled to full participation in civic life,” he said in the statement. “This way of thinking will always be morally wrong and contrary to our Nation’s core values.
“As Americans, we must set the global standard for ensuring those with disabilities are treated with the dignity and respect that all people deserve. Working with other nations, we will advance the rights of people with disabilities around the world,” the president said.
Arter failed to mention that time when Trump did, in fact, degrade a precious human life by mocking a disabled reporter.
During the 2016 campaign speech, Trump mocked the movements of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski -- who has arthrogryposis, which visibly limits the functioning of his joints -- over claims that Kovaleski purportedly altered a story claiming that Muslims in New Jersey allegedly celebrated the fall of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11.
That would seem to undercut the sincerity of Trump's words, but Arter didn't think that was an important fact to relate to her readers.
CNS Reporter Uses 'News' Article To Rush to Trump's Defense Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com doesn't just do stenography for Trump -- it runs to his defense and presents it as "news."
A Nov. 28 "news" article by Susan Jones begins with this lament
President Trump's many tweets criticizing "fake news" and the "dishonest" media are an exercise of his own free speech, but that's not the way his liberal critics see it.
Among those critics is James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence under President Obama, who told CNN Monday night that the president's "attack on the free press" is "dangerous and disturbing."
Jones offeres no evidence that Clapper is a "liberal" (being DNI under Obama is not evidence) or that every critic of Trump is a "liberal," as she appears to be suggesting.
After Clapper raised the specter of repressive regimes that suppress the media, Jones leaped into full defense mode: "Trump has never advocated suppressing acccess to the Internet. In fact, since he began his presidential campaign, Trump has used Twitter, an Internet platform, to get his message past liberal media filters."
Unmentioned by Jones: Trump has, in fact, advocated changing libel laws to make it easier to sue media organizations.
Jones uniroinically concludes her article by whining: "The nation's media outlets remain free, but objectivity has flown out the window in the Trump era." It's also flown away from CNS as a whole, and from Jones in particular, who uses a so-called "news" article -- traditionally the epitome of objectivity -- to attack the media and defend a politician she adores.
CNS Dutifully Regurgitates the Trump White House's Line On Flynn Topic: CNSNews.com
As a dedicated Trump stenographer, CNSNews.com has a primary mission to spin news events to a pro-Trump orientation and unritically report anything that comes out of the Trump administration. And so it goes with the guilty plea by former national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI.
In her Dec. 1 article on Flynn's plea, Susan Jones frames it as narrowly as possible to reflect the way the Trump administration wanted it reported -- that Flynn's plea had nothing to do with any other controversy the Trump White House is facing:
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was fired last February for giving “incomplete information” to Vice President Mike Pence about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador, and on Friday, he pleaded guilty in federal court to one count of lying to the FBI about those same phone calls.
Lest there was any doubt about whether CNS was doing Trump's bidding in playing up that angle, a story by Melanie Arter later that day quoted a Trump attorney saying basically the same thing, albeit with more words:
President Donald Trump’s attorney Ty Cobb issued a statement Friday in response to news that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in the Russia probe.
In his statement, Cobb downplayed Flynn’s involvement with the Trump administration, saying he’d only been working for Trump for 25 days and referring to him as “a former Obama administration official.”
“Today, Michael Flynn, a former National Security Advisor at the White House for 25 days during the Trump Administration, and a former Obama administration official, entered a guilty plea to a single count of making a false statement to the FBI,” Cobb said in a statement.
Cobb added that the “false statements” that Flynn gave the FBI “mirror the false statements” that led to his departure from the Trump administration. Flynn was fired for giving “incomplete information” to Vice President Mike Pence about his calls to the Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
“The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year,” Cobb said.
“Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn. The conclusion of this phase of the Special Counsel’s work demonstrates again that the Special Counsel is moving with all deliberate speed and clears the way for a prompt and reasonable conclusion,” Cobb added.
Jones didn't really need to do her story, since Arter's stenography of Trump's lawyer was all the pro-Trump spin CNS was really obligated to do.
CNS Portrays Trump's Scarborough Conspiracy Theory As Plausible Topic: CNSNews.com
The problem with CNSNews.com's pro-Trump stenography is that it just lets anything Trump and/or his administration says go by without fact-checking -- you know, like an actual news organization would.
For instance, in a Nov. 29 CNS article, Susan Jones lets this go by:
In a later tweet, Trump took aim at MSNBC's "Morning Joe," which daily attacks the president as incompetent and "not well."
"So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the “unsolved mystery” that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!"
Scarborough is a former congressman from Florida. Trump apparently was referring to the death of Lori Klausutis, a 28-year-old intern who was found dead in Scarborough’s district office in Okaloosa County, Fla., in July 2001, two months after Scarborough announced that he would resign from Congress.
(Scarborough tweeted later on Wednesday, "Looks like I picked a good day to stop responding to Trump's bizarre tweets. He is not well.")
Had Jones bothered to go beyond stenography to, you know, do even the slightest bit of basic research like a real news organization would, she would have told her readers that there is no mystery about Klausutis' death: Authorities investigated it at the time and concluded the woman's death was caused by hitting her headwhile collapsing from an abnormal heart rhythm.
Jones was still treating Trump's conspiracy theory as plausible the next day, instead attacking Scarborough for engaging in another "anti-Trump diatribe":
Declaring President Trump to be mentally unfit for office and in the early stages of dementia, the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Thursday said it is time for Trump's Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, which allows for the president to be removed from office when “he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
The anti-Trump diatribe -- not too much different from those that occur daily on "Morning Joe" -- follows President Trump's tweet on Wednesday aimed at NBC executives and "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough:
Trump tweeted: "So now that Matt Lauer is gone when will the Fake News practitioners at NBC be terminating the contract of Phil Griffin? And will they terminate low ratings Joe Scarborough based on the 'unsolved mystery' that took place in Florida years ago? Investigate!"
A 28-year-old intern was found dead, reportedly of natural causes, in Scarborough's Florida district office in 2001, two months after Scarborough announced his retirement from the U.S. Congress.
Jones does not acknowledge that Trump's conspiracy theory is bogus; instead, she feeds it by suggesting it was never investigated and Klausutis merely "reportedly" died of natural causes. That's important context to this story and, arguably, a key explanation to why Scarborough criticized Trump so harshly and why it was not, as Jones insisted, "not too much different" from other criticism of Trump.
Jones is treating Trump as accurate and authoritative despite the fact that the truth is not on his side, and she's treating the person Trump lied about as a deranged partisan for calling out Trump's lie. That's the textbook definition of media bias -- but it's apparently what CNS is paying Jones to do.
CNS Suggests Roy Moore Accuser Was A Temptress Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com, despite presenting itself as a "news" operation, has continued to mostlyignore the news about the scandal of Republican senatorial candidate Roy Moore's history of perving on teenage girls (while pushing sexual harassment scandals involving non-conservatives). Now it's suggesting that Moore's accusers are the ones at fault.
A Nov. 20 CNS article by Susan Jones summarizes an interview witih Moore accuser Leigh Corfman. The writeup is mostly straightforward; the headline, however, betrays CNS' right-wing bias. It reads, "Leigh Corfman, Roy Moore’s Accuser: ‘I Was Expecting Candlelight and Roses’."
Huh? That makes it seem like Corfman was the one trying to seduce Moore.
The quote in questions doesn't appear until the fifth paragraph of Jones' article, the it reads much differently in its proper context:
She said it did not occur to her at the time that she had been molested, but she said the experience did change her life for the worse:
"I'd been reading Harlequin romances, you know, for years at that point, and I was expecting candlelight and roses, and what I got was very different.
"It took away a lot of the specialness of, you know, interactions with men. It took some trust away. It allowed me to delve into some things that I, you know, wouldn't have otherwise. It took years for me to regain a sense of confidence in myself. And I felt guilty," she said. "You know, I felt like I was the one to blame. And it was decades before I was able to let that go."
In other words, Moore is the one who anti-candlelight and roses and basically ruined adult relationship for Corfman.
Curiously, Jones edited a Corfman quote later in the article. She writes:
Corfman told NBC's Savannah Guthrie she was not paid or compensated in any way for coming forward: "If anything, this has cost me. I have no tickets to Tahiti. And my bank account has not flourished. If anything it has gone down."
In fact, Corfman said (Jones' omissions in italics): "If anything, this has cost me. I've had to take leave from my job. I have no tickets to Tahiti, and my bank account has not flourished. If anything, it has gone down because currently I'm not working.”
Why does Jones want to hide the fact that Corfman has been unable to work because of the accusations she made against Moore? We don't know.
CNS Gives Space to A Fox News Democrat Topic: CNSNews.com
While the Media Research Center tries to make "MSNBC conservative" a thing, the MRC's "news" division is giving space to a Fox News Democrat.
CNSNews.com managing editor Michael W. Chapman touted in a Nov. 7 blog post:
Democratic strateist Doug Schoen, who worked on Bill Clinton's 1996 campaign and Hillary clinton's 2008 campaign, said that, given the allegations of "rigging" the primaries against Bernie Sanders by the DNC and new revelations about the Clinton email and Uranium One scandals, it is time for a "special prosecutor" to look into the entire mess.
Schoen, a Harvard Law School and Oxford University graduate, added that "the entire Democratic Party stinks from the head down, the whole process," and "everyone really has a stain on their hand."
Schoen made his remarks on the Nov. 6 edition of Hannity, where he was joined by Tezlyn Figaro, the national justice director for the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign.
Chapman fails to menton that Schoen's main purpose on Fox News is to bash what he claims are his fellow Democrats. Schoen is so not an actual Democrat that he has helped fund-raise for Republicans (along with fellow Fox News Democrat Pat Caddell) and has donated to Republicans.
So, the MRC is being hypocritical and a bit cynical. No surprise there.
CNS Reporter Is WH Press Secretary's Unofficial Stenographer Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has a White House press pass, it seems, and the CNS reporter who has it a majority of the time is Melanie Arter.
But according to ConWebWatch research, Arter is using that press pass the way the Trump administration would like the news media to act: as a servile stenographer.
In September and October alone, Arter wrote 26 articles that primarily or entirely -- including making it the story's lead element -- are simply repeating what White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, largely without full context, fact-checking or analysis.
That's 26 stories by Arter in which the White House saying something is presented as the most important aspect of the article and in the headline -- something that fully functioning journalistic judgment should tell you is not accurate. A spokesperson's parroting of official talking points about a given thing is almost never the most important thing said about it, let alone worthy of an article in its own right, yet Arter is repeatedly portraying it as such.
In short, she's a stenographer, not a reporter. And CNS is paying her to do exactly that.
The general decline of standards at CNSNews.com over the past year or so, plus its determination to be a pro-Trump stenographer, has led to embarassing things no real "news" operation would ever publish -- like a Dec. 15 "news" article that's more political rant than news. Jones huffs:
Surprisingly, the Trump stenographers at CNSNews.com found something to dislike about the Republican tax bill: it lowers the maximum age a child is eligible to be counted for the child tax credit from 18 to 17. CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey laid this out in an overly dramatic way in a Dec. 17 
Michael W. Chapman, the 
CNSNews.com has a new client for its stenography services: The Catholic League's Bill Donohue. Remember that CNS' publisher, Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell, is on the Catholic League's 
After a 
Around 
Think of how Charles Manson could rightly be seen as the penultimate expression of the progressive’s worldview: He was his own God. In fact, he sometimes claimed to be God. Manson rejected organized religion, claiming he was both Jesus Christ and/or the Messiah. When he did quote the Bible, Manson misquoted it, twisted the words, and handled it selectively and self-servingly. Manson bragged he could start wars, purge and remake the culture, and preside over a world-wide reckoning.
CNSNews.com reporter Melanie Arter goes into 
As a dedicated Trump stenographer, CNSNews.com has a primary mission to spin news events to a pro-Trump orientation and unritically report anything that comes out of the Trump administration. And so it goes with the guilty plea by former national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI.
The problem with CNSNews.com's pro-Trump stenography is that it just lets anything Trump and/or his administration says go by without fact-checking -- you know, like an actual news organization would.
CNSNews.com, despite presenting itself as a "news" operation, has continued to 
While the Media Research Center tries to make "
CNSNews.com has a White House press pass, it seems, and the CNS reporter who has it a majority of the time is Melanie Arter.
