Then, a Feb. 22 article by Craig Bannister repeated a slanted Rasmussen poll of the kind CNS loves to promote:
Nearly three in four U.S. adults agree that “It’s okay to be white,” results of a new Rasmussen survey reveal.
In a survey of 1,000 American adults, conducted February 13-15, Rasmussen asked:
“Do you agree or disagree with this statement: ‘It’s OK to be white.’”
In response, 58% said they “strongly agree” that it’s OK to be white and another 14% said they at least “somewhat agree.”
Bannister didn't mention that the phrase "It's OK to be white" has been promoted by white nationalists -- and, in a poll, is a loaded question designed to generate specific answers that advance right-wing narratives. This poll, however, set Adams on a racist tirade in which he declared that "the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people" -- a rant that caused hundreds of newspapers to drop "Dilbert" and publishers to drop book deals with him.
CNS devoted no news coverage to this story, even though it was major news. Instead, it published a Feb. 28 op-ed by Jeff Charles, "socio-political corresponcent" at right-wing site Liberty Nation, that talked about the controversy and tried to whitewash things:
It all started with a poll. After looking at a Rasmussen survey supposedly revealing that almost half of the black American population does not think it is okay for white people to be white, Dilbert creator and political commentator Scott Adams went on a rant that set social media ablaze and likely set a world record for the number of pearls clutched in one day.
Those familiar with Adams’ work speculated that he was deliberately poking the bear, eliciting outrage to prompt a larger conversation. In subsequent broadcasts and an appearance on social media influencer Hotep Jesus’ YouTube channel, the cartoonist clarified his remarks that set the record straight but likely did not quell most of the handwringing outrage coming from folks on both the left and right. If his conversation with Hotep Jesus is “Act Three,” as Adams indicated, where will this film take us next?
Charles didn't mention that "Hotep Jesus" (real name: Bryan Sharpe) is best known as an anti-Semitic media troll, meaning he may have not have been the best person for Adams to seek help in clearing his racist name.He did, however, acknowledge that white supremacists have embraced the "It's OK to be white." Nevertheless, he insisted on continuing totrying to clean up Adams' reputation and portray him as nothing more than an "out-of-the-box thinker":
The conversation between Adams and Hotep Jesus covered a variety of topic, mostly pertaining to race. In the discussion, Adams acknowledged that he made his incendiary remarks to provoke a conversation on the subject. Indeed, those who have watched his work over the years know that while Adams is an out-of-the-box thinker, there seems to be a method to his madness and that he is known for expressing viewpoints that are out of the ordinary.
Nevertheless, as Adams knew would happen, folks are trying to destroy his career and source of income, which doesn’t seem to matter to the cartoonist as he explained that he plans to retire in the near future. Moreover, he indicated that this is only the third act of this particular movie, so perhaps we should expect to see more of the fallout in short order.
Actually, Adams did a fine job of destroying his own career -- nobody mnade him say that, and Charles' attempt to bestow victimhood on him for saying it falls very flat.
CNS Keeps Riding On Right-Wing Anti-ESG Bandwagon Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com continued its ideologically mandated right-wing bandwagon campaign against investments that take environmental, social and governmental issues into consideration with a Jan. 4 article by Craig Bannister:
As 2022 drew to a close, all 10 of the largest Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) funds left investors suffering double-digit percentage losses in the value of their portfolios, an analysis by Bloomberg reveals.
What’s more, the report finds that eight of the ten largest ESG funds, measured by assets, performed worse than the S&P 500:
But actual analyists point out that this is a "very narrow interpretation of the data" and that ESG investments have done well on a long-term basis:
The problem with this argument – ESG products are bad investments and take returns off the table for hardworking pension funds investors – is that it relies on a very narrow interpretation of the data. Looking at both a short- and long-term horizon, the figures are much better. In the third quarter (the latest figures available), global ESG median return was -6.09% compared with a broader global equity peer group return of -6.87%. Nearly two in three funds – a full 65% outperformed the index.
[...]
More important is looking at longer term results. On a one-year basis, 63% of global ESG products underperformed. This reflects the overall underperformance of growth products, as 73% of these investments underperformed the index. But looking at a three-year time horizon is different. Seventy-four percent of ESG products outperformed the benchmark, with a median return of 5.9%.
Neertheless, Bannister quoted a right-wing activist insisting that these numbers "dispelled the myth that ESG is a worthy investment" and demanding tyhat it be "challenged and defeated politically."
Bannister continued to crank out biased anti-ESG articles throughout January and February, many of which were reprinted at its Media Research Center parent's NewsBusters blog (so much for any purported wall between news and opinion at the MRC):
When the Biden adminstration established a new rule that allows retirement plans to more easily consider ESG factors, Bannistert had a preordained freakout over it in a Jan. 30 post:
A new Biden Administration rule took effect Monday, allowing retirement plan administrators (fiduciaries) to base investments on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals, rather than only on the maximum financial benefit of their clients.
The U.S. Department of Labor released the final rule under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) to allow plan fiduciaries to consider climate change and other environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors when they make investment decisions and when they exercise shareholder rights, including voting on shareholder resolutions and board nominations.
The Biden rule eliminates a 2020 Trump Administration rule requirement that fiduciaries consider only the monetary benefit (“pecuniary only”) to their clients when choosing investments.
In other words, it's not a new rule but simply reverses a Trump policy and returns things to the previous status quo. Later that day, Bannister served up some related PR for the fossil fuel industry (which CNS loves to do):
An alliance of two hundred companies engaged in oil and natural gas exploration and production has joined with the attorneys general of 25 states in a lawsuit seeking to stop a new Biden Administration rule allowing retirement account managers to invest in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) efforts, even if they’re not the most profitable for their clients.
The complaint, filed in Texas, seeks a preliminary injunction and permanent relief, in the form of a declaration that the ESG rule violates both the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and is arbitrary and capricious.
“This rule is an affront to every American concerned about their retirement account. The fact that the Biden Administration is now opting to risk the financial security of working-class Americans to advance a woke political agenda is insulting and illegal,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is co-leading the lawsuit, said in a press release announcingthe complaint:
But if the policy simply reverts to previous norms, it makes no sense to call it "aritrary and capricious."
Bannister touted his employer's activism on theissue in a Feb. 1 article:
Every Republican senator and Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) are introducing a resolution opposing President Joe Biden’s new ESG investment rule because it politicizes and threatens the value of Americans’ 401Ks.
Led by Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), the senators condemn the rule, because it allows fiduciaries to consider ideological factors – specifically, environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals – when investing, rather than just rate of return.
[...]
The Media Research Center (MRC), along with more than a hundred other conservative organizations, have endorsed the resolution in the following letter to Congress:
Bannister failed, however, to dlsclose that the MRC operates CNS -- meaning that there's a conflict of interest here. So much for CNS being a responsible "news" organization.
Every one of the 10 cities anchoring a metropolitan area with the most homebuyers looking to relocate, rather than enter, has a Democrat [sic] mayor, results of a new migration study reveal.
A new study of homebuyers by brokerage company Redfin examines the target destinations of prospective homebuyer searches from August through October of this year.
The study ranks metropolitan cities by their net outflow, a measure of how many more homebuyers are looking to leave an area than move into it.
San Francisco, California has the highest net outflow, followed by Los Angeles, California and New York City. Washington, D.C. has the fourth-highest net number of homebuyers looking to flee to another area, while Boston, Massachusetts comes in at number five.
Chicago (IL), Detroit (MI), Denver (CO), Seattle (WA) and Philadelphia (PA) round out the top 10 cities with the highest homebuyer net outflows.
Bannister didn't mention the fact that the Redfin study he referenced specifically cited the ability to work remotely -- not anything to do with the mayor's political party -- as the driving factor behind people moving out of large cities.
Bannister pulled a similar stunt in a Jan. 23 article:
Except for Alaska, every one of the 10 markets where consumers pay the highest prices for a gallon of gas was run by a Democrat in 2022, analysis of AAA data released Tuesday reveals.
At a national average of $3.45, the cost of a gallon of Regular gas on Tuesday was:
Up 2 cents from Monday,
Up 12 cents from a week earlier,
Up 35 cents from a month ago, and
Up 12 cents a year ago.
The highest state is Hawaii, which is an island, so gas prices have always been higher. The second highest state is California, where gas is more expensive to refine because of a state-mandated blend esigned to reduce emissions and refineries closing rather than upgrade their facilities. The price factors for those states would remain no matter which party occupied the governor's office -- something Bannister didn't bother to tell his readers.
Editor Terry Jeffrey served up his own contribution to the genre in a March 3 article:
All nine states with the lowest annual average unemployment rates for 2022 had Republican governors during that year, while all ten states with the highest annual average unemployment rates had Democratic governors.
The published the annual average unemployment rates for all fifty states.
What Jeffrey didn't mention: Most of those Republican-led states with the lowest unemployment are mostly either sparsely populated states in flyover areas or tiny states in the Northeast like Vermont and New Hampshire, while the states with the highest unemployment include three of the most populous, Illinois, New York and California.
This is an echo of an Oct. 6 article by intern Lauren Shank that claimed "the national average price of regular unleaded gas was $3.831, with top blue states charging over a dollar more and top red states charging just below the national average, which also omitted context about why gas prices are high in states like California.
Like its Media Research Center parent, CNSNews.com covered the Feb. 8 House hearing on Twitter by focusing only on advancing right-wing narrative sand censoring inconvenient facts that didn't fit those narratives -- but even more so. The first article on the hearing was from managing editor Michael W. Chapman, who selectively focused on ranting by CNS' favorite far-right extremist congresswoman:
House Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) sharply criticized four former Twitter executives at a congressional hearing today, stating that they had "violated" the First Amendment rights of "countless conservative Americans" and had engaged in "election interference." She also explained how Twitter had suspended her personal account in the 2020 election year but did not suspend that of her Democrat opponent.
In relation to that, Greene criticized in particular Yoel Roth, Twitter's former Head of Trust and Safety, for banning conservatives but being apparently incapable of banning "child porn all over Twitter."
“You know, Elon Musk took over Twitter and he banned 44,000 accounts that were promoting child porn," Greene said to Roth at the Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing. "You permanently banned my Twitter account but you allowed child porn all over Twitter."
[...]
At the beginning of her remarks, Rep. Greene made clear that the Twitter executives present at the hearing would not be answering questions from her because turnabout is fair play.
Another article by Chapman uncritically touted another Republican congressman threatening Twitter executives:
At Wednesday's House Oversight hearing on Twitter's censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story just prior to the 2020 presidential election, House Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) warned four former Twitter employees being questioned that "this is the investigation part, later comes the arrest part." He added, "Your attorneys are familiar with that."
A Feb. 9 article by Susan Jones began by noting an interview in which President Biden said the public isn't interested in Republican investigations into his family,then segued to a summary of the hearing:
As Biden spoke in Wisconsin, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee back in Washington was questioning former Twitter executives about their censorship of a New York Post report regarding Hunter Biden's laptop in the days leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
Although the Post had documents -- one from the FBI -- to back up the fact that the abandoned laptop belonged to Hunter, Twitter removed the story and blocked the New York Post's account for two weeks.
"Throughout his presidential campaign, Joe Biden assured the American people that he had never spoken to his son about his overseas visits," Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said. "However, the details exposed in the Post article indicate that Joe Biden lied to the American people."
Comer noted that the former Twitter officials sitting before him were "entrusted with the highest level of power at Twitter, but when you were faced with the New York Post story, instead of allowing people to judge the information for themselves, you rushed to find a reason why the American people shouldn't see it.
[...]
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a member of the Oversight Committee, told the Twitter executives he believes they were "played" by the FBI.
Later, appearing on Fox News, Jordan said he believes Twitter blocked the New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop "because the FBI and the government had primed and prepped them."
Micky Wootten quoted another Republican at length at the hearing in a Feb. 10 article:
During a House Oversight Committee hearing about Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) used her time to show how “Twitter worked overtime to suppress accurate COVID information,” over the course of the pandemic.
On Feb. 8, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held a hearing entitled “Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story.”
[...]
“Thank God for Matt Taibbi, thank God for Elon Musk for allowing to show us and the world that Twitter was basically a subsidiary of the FBI, censoring real medical voices with real expertise that put real Americans’ lives in danger because they didn’t have that information,” said Mace.
All four of these articles quoted only Republican members of Congress at the hearing -- no Democratic members of Congress were quoted, let alone acknowledged. That means CNS censored the biggest news to come out of the hearing: As president, Donald Trump pressured Twitter to delete a tweet by model Chrissy Teigen that called him a "pussy ass bitch." And they also didn't mention that some tweets related to Hunter Biden's laptop were removed because users tried to post nude images of him without his permission, which wasn't permitted then and isn't now.
If you read only CNS, you would not know anything about this hearing that didn't conform to right-wing narratives about Twitter and Hunter Biden. It's not much of a "news" operation.
NEW ARTICLE -- CNS Unemployment Reporting: Reluctantly Noting Good News Topic: CNSNews.com
The country's employment news was so positive during 2022 that CNSNews.com had trouble finding ways to distract from all this positivity happening under a Democratic president. Read more >>
CNS Sets Up Anti-Biden Narrative of U.S. Helping Ukraine Too Much Topic: CNSNews.com
For a guy who's supposed to be an "Investigative Journalism Fellow" her his bio, CNSNews.com writer Micky Wootten sure doesn't do much investigative journalism. Instead, his main job these days is setting up anti-Biden narratives about spending too much money on supporting Ukraine after its invasion by Russia. (If you'll recall, CNS effectively took Russia's side in the runup to the war by touting Vladimir Putin's anti-LGBT initiatives and blaming President Biden for the war for purportedly being too soft on Russia.) The campaign began with a Sept. 8 article featuring Wootten asking a CNS intern-like gotcha question of a Republican senator:
When asked whether the U.S. should continue to provide Ukraine with security assistance, Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said “yes,” while acknowledging the need for “proper oversight over everything that is being sent.”
At the Capitol on September 8, CNS News asked Senator Ernst, “According to a Congressional Research Service report, since the start of the war, the U.S. has committed $12.9 billion dollars to help provide Ukraine with the equipment they need to defend itself. Should the U.S. continue providing additional security assistance to Ukraine?”
Here's what else Wootten has written on that subject thus far, with a heavy emphasis on how much money is being spent:
Wootten has also promoted other attacks on aid to Ukraine. A Feb. 13 article touted how right-wing hero Elon Musk is limiting what Ukraine can do with the Starlink satellite communications service run by Musk-led SpaceX:
On Feb. 8, SpaceX announced that it has limited the Ukrainian military’s ability to use its Starlink satellite internet service to control drones, citing that the “Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement.” The service reportedly has been weaponized in the fight against Russia.
After Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Elon Musk’s SpaceX sent thousands of Starlink satellite internet kits to help the country stay online while Russian attacks caused disruptions to their internet service.
[...]
However, as the war in Ukraine nears its one-year anniversary, Musk and SpaceX have expressed concerns over the ways in which his Starlink services are being used by the Ukrainian military. Furthermore, Musk’s rhetoric online in recent weeks suggests the billionaire is among those who fear that the ongoing conflict has the potential to escalate in the coming months.
Wootten used a Feb. 17 article to tout an "anti-war" rally featuring fringe and pro-Russia figures:
On Sunday, Feb. 19, former House Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) will speak at the “Rage Against the War Machine” rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and call for a long-list of anti-war objectives, including stopping the arming of Ukraine, and negotiating a peace deal.
The rally, which is being organized by both the Libertarian Party and the People’s Party, will start at 12:30 p.m. at the Lincoln Memorial and will end at the White House.
Gabbard, of course, is a CNS favorite for being a purported Democrat who criticized actual Democrats and for spouting anti-Biden(and, thus, pro-Russia) talking points on Ukraine. Wootten also hyped that "Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters will be making a guest appearance via video" without mentioning that he too is a Russian stooge to the point that Russia invited him to speak at the United Nations on its behalf.
CNS Finds Exorcists To Push Right-Wing Talking Points Topic: CNSNews.com
As its publication of Michael Orsi shows, CNSNews.com is not afraid to exploit Catholic teachings to push right-wing talking points -- not surprising, given that the people who run it think they're more Catholic than the pope. Managing editor Michael W. Chapman has even taking to citing Catholic exorcists to push those narratives. He wrote in a Dec. 5 article:
Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a licensed psychologist and exorcist for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., said in a recent interview that a pornography addiction, "like any serious sin, is an opening to the demonic," which can "distort a person's sexuality."
Msgr. Rossetti, 71, has worked as a licensed psychologist for 30 years. He is a priest with the Diocese of Syracuse and has been an exorcist with the Washington Archdiocese for more than 15 years.
In a Dec. 1 interview with the Catholic News Agency, Rossetti said, “A pornography addiction, like any serious sin, is an opening to the demonic. It is never a good thing to exploit people as sexual objects, which the porn industry does."
Chapman moved to a different exorcist who more closely repeated current right-wing narratives in a Jan. 9 article:
In his Jan. 8 sermon on the family, Fr. Chad Ripperger, a Catholic priest and exorcist, explained that "transgenderism" is a direct attack "on "motherhood," and added that "the entire feminist movement is an assault on motherhood."
Fr. Ripperger spoke at St. Mary of Pine Bluff Catholic Church in Madison, Wisc.
While discussing marriage and how it is under constant attack by our culture, Fr. Ripperger said, “Things like transgenderism is a full-blown attack against motherhood. People usually don’t put it together. Why is it [an attack on motherhood]?"
"Well, because any woman who goes through a transgender operation can’t bear children anymore," he said. "And any guy who becomes a woman – at least by the modern technology – he’s not having any kids."
"In point of fact, the entire feminist movement is an assault on motherhood, which is frankly one of the most sublime and magnificent offices that God ever created," said the priest.
In his Jan. 8 sermon on the Holy Family and the necessity of marriage in civil society, Fr. Chad Ripperger, a Catholic priest and exorcist, defined what marriage is and dismissed "gay marriage" as an "abomination," a "disordered" practice for which God will punish us.
Fr. Ripperger spoke at St. Mary of Pine Bluff Catholic Church in Madison, Wisc.
Today, "there’s a complete, all-out assault on the very nature of marriage," said Fr. Ripperger. "The definition of marriage is that it’s a solemn contract between a man and a woman for the sake of having children. The primary end is having children. That’s what it is ordered towards."
“This is something which, unfortunately, has not been understood today,"' he added. "People think marriage is just a license to engage in the conjugal act. But that’s not what we are talking about here."
[...]
"The fact that there is gay marriage – perhaps put marriage in quotes because it’s not true marriage -- it doesn’t meet the definition of marriage," he said. "It’s an abomination. There’s no way that God isn’t going to afflict us in some manner, as a result of taking on something that is that disordered."
"In fact, their acts are so disordered that St. Catherine of Siena said that even the demons find it repulsive," said Fr. Ripperger. "And yet today it’s glorified."
In her writings, St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) claimed that Jesus Christ Himself had remarked pitifully on some of the clergy who had engaged in homosexual behavior.
"Like the blind and stupid, having dimmed the light of their understanding, they [practicing homosexuals] do not recognize the disease and misery in which they find themselves," she wrote. "For this not only causes Me [Christ] nausea, but is disgusting even to the devils themselves whom these depraved creatures have chosen as their lords."
CNS Rages At Pope For Not Hating Gay People Enough Topic: CNSNews.com
When Pope Emeritus Benedict died at the end of December, CNSNews.com cranked up respectful tributes for a former pope whose views aligned with its own right-wing takes:
But CNS being CNS, it couldn't keep some of its right-wing bias from influencing its "news" coverage. When President Biden issued a statement on Benedict's death, an anonymously written Jan. 4 article complained that Biden noted that Benedict had "a more conservative view" of the Catholic church than he did.
By contrast, the boys who run CNS love right-wing Catholicism and hate liberal Catholicism, and they consider themselves more Catholic than the pope when that pope is a non-conservative one like Francis. When Francis stated in January that while homosexuality is a sin, it shouldn't be a crime, an anonymously written Jan. 25 article whined that a news article emphasized the "not a crime" part of the "is a sin" part:
In an interview this week with the Associated Press, Pope Francis reiterated the Catholic position that homosexual behavior is a sin.
The Associated Press published the pope’s statement in an article that carried the headline: “The AP Interview: Pope says homosexuality not a crime.”
The first two paragraphs of the AP story said: “Pope Francis criticized laws that criminalize homosexuality as ‘unjust,’ saying God loves all his children just as they are and called on Catholic bishops who support the laws to welcome LGBTQ people into the church."
The story continued: “‘Being homosexual isn’t a crime,’ Francis said during an exclusive interview Tuesday with the Associated Press.”
Sixteen paragraphs into its story, the Associated Press reported the following:
“On Tuesday, Francis said there needed to be a distinction between a crime and a sin with regard to homosexuality.
“‘It’s not a crime. Yes, but it’s a sin,’ he said. ‘Fine, but first let’s distinguish between a sin and a crime.’”
The anonymous writer went on to emphasize that The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that homosexual acts are 'intrinsically disordered'" -- but he or she didn't explain why that meant homosexuality must be made illegal.
For a Feb. 1 article, managing editor Michael W. Chapman found a foreign official who cheerfully criminalzes homosexuality in a weird attempt to own the pope:
Pope Francis recently said that homosexual activity is "not a crime" but it is "a sin," a claim that South Sudan Minister of Information Michael Makuei rejected, stressing that "God was not mistaken" and that in his country so-called gay marriage "is a crime, is a constitutional crime."
Pope Francis is scheduled to visit South Sudan on Feb. 3. In that East African state, sodomy (defined as anal sex between men or men and women) is illegal, as is same-sex marriage. Sodomy is punishable by up to seven years in prison and, after a third offense, life in prison.
[...]
After a cabinet meeting on Jan. 27, Information Minsiter Makuei spoke with the media. As reported by Radio Tamazuj, he said, “If he [Pope Francis] is coming here and he tells us that marriage of the same sex, homosexuality is legal, we will say no. But this is not what he is coming for.”
Makuei further said, “God was not mistaken. He created man and woman and he told them to marry one another and go and fill the world. Do same-sex partners give birth?”
“Our constitution is very clear and says marriage is between the opposite sex and any same-sex marriage is a crime, is a constitutional crime," said the Information Minister.
Chapman didn't mention that Makuei Lueth -- his full name -- has been sanctioned by the U.S. and the United Kingdom for obstructing the peace process in South Sudan.He was also dismissive of the death of a U.S.-British journalist covering unrest in the country, smearing him as a "white rebel."So may be he's not the best person to oppose the pope.
Instead, Chapman spent the rest of the article recalling the good ol' days when everyone hated gay people:"Up until the early 1960s, nearly every state in the U.S. had laws against sodomy, and when the Lawrence v. Texas case was decided (6-3) by the Supreme Court in 2003 those laws were invalidated in every state and territory."
For a Feb. 3 article, Chapman found a right-wing priest here at home to demand that gay people be imprisoned to teach them a lesson about morality:
Fr. Gerald Murray, a priest with the Archdiocese of New York and a frequent contributor on EWTN, strongly criticized Pope Francis's recent remarks about homosexuality as confusing and contrary to Church teaching in some respects. He also said the Pope, "unfortunately," is "becoming an advocate of decriminalization of anti-sodomy laws."
[...]
In reference to the Pope's interview, Fr. Murray said, “Now, laws against sodomy are designed to warn people not to commit that sin and to protect society where, if that sin were tolerated, it might become more widespread. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible is a warning to us."
“The Pope, unfortunately, is becoming an advocate of decriminalization of anti-sodomy laws," said Murray. "And it’s hard to believe we would say that."
CNS didn't mention that following his visit to Africa, Francis joined with leaders of other Christian congregations in denouncing laws punishing homosexuality. Rather, Chapman found another right-wing Catholic group to bash the pope in a Feb. 9 article:
Pope Francis' recent remarks to the Associated Press that homosexual behavior is "not a crime" but "is a sin" were strongly condemned by the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts because they "will confuse and mislead the faithful" and be presented by the liberal media as "papal affirmation of same-sex relations and the LGBTQ identity."
[...]
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts in a press release said the Pope's remarks constitute "a major victory for the homosexual movement, which will be presented to public opinion as papal affirmation of same sex relations and the LGBTQ identity."
"The scandalous, improvident, and un-Catholic remarks of Pope Francis will confuse and mislead the faithful, empower and embolden the opponents of Christian morality, and demoralize and marginalize its defenders," said League Executive Director C.J. Doyle.
"These remarks will, in the long term, have significant adverse effects on the struggle to preserve what remains of moral sanity in Western society and to protect the already circumscribed rights of religious believers," added Doyle.
[...]
What the Pope said "repudiates 1,700 years of Christian legal principles," said Doyle. "Beginning in the fourth century AD, all Christian legal traditions---Roman Law, Canon Law, English Common Law and the positive laws of Christian states---have, harkening back to Mosaic Law, treated sodomy as a crime against nature, and have, accordingly, prohibited it, and attached penalties to its practice."
"Unlike Francis, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church understood sodomy to be both a sin and a crime," added Doyle. "The Angelic Doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas, quotes Saint Augustine's statement that 'Those foul offenses that are against nature should be everywhere and at all times detested and punished....'"
An anonymously written Feb. 10 article hyped a video "that featured Father Jason Charron delivering a video message that criticized Pope Francis for his recent remarks on homosexuals and said that the pope was “using his platform to embolden sinners.”:
On the video, Father Charron says: “I am sure you heard today, as many people have, that Pope Francis again has called for the decriminalizing of homosexual acts among other things no his return flight from his African visit home to the Vatican.”
“And it struck me that a lot of the Holy Father’s public comments, you know, revolve around this issue of homosexuality as though that were the center piece of his ministry,” said Father Charron. “You don’t hear a whole lot of comments from him calling for the defense of persecuted Christians in place like, oh, I don’t know, China.”
“This is the great shame--that he has abandoned his first love and instead of preaching the Gospel, emboldening the saints and calling sinners to repentance, he’s using his platform to embolden sinners and to shame the saints into silence in conformity with the world,” Father Charron says in the video.
Chapman called on his favorite EWTN priest again in a Feb. 23 article to bash Francis for failing to hate gay people enough:
Fr. Gerald Murray, the pastor of Holy Family Church in Manhattan and a regular contributor to EWTN's The World Over, said that Pope Francis is neglecting "his duty to defend the Church's teaching" on sexual morality, which is contributing to a "grave disorder" in the church.
Fr. Murray added that faithful cardinals and bishops need to stage a "tough love" intervention with the Pope and "frankly" tell him "that this madness must be stopped. Now."
There is a very serious struggle going on in the Catholic Church, with progressive/left clerics pushing acceptance for homosexual relations and gay marriage or civil unions, gender ideology, and realted topics. On the defense are faithful bishops and priests trying to uphold the Church's 2,000-year-old teachings on sex, marriage, and sin.
Unfortunately, Pope Francis is clearly on the side of the progressives.
Murray apparently didn't explain how all this hatred helps anyone or why his hatred for LGBT people is so vicious that he refuses to follow the leader of his own faith.
CNS Whines Capitol Riot Considered Among Nation's 'Darkest Days' Topic: CNSNews.com
An anonymous CNSNews.com writer huffed in a Jan. 19 article:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) sent out a tweet on January 6 of this year stating that January 6 of 2021 was “one of the darkest days in our nation’s history.”
“It’s been exactly 2 years since one of the darkest days in our nation’s history,” Schumer said.
“We will never forget what happened on January 6, 2021,” he said. “And we will never stop fighting to protect our democracy from the forces that sought to overthrow it.”
Schumer did not mention what other days he considered to be among “the darkest days in our nation’s history.”
If Jan. 6, 2021 was “one of the darkest days in our nation’s history” in Schumer’s analysis, it presumably would rank near Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor; or Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Towers in New York City; or the days from 1861 to 1865, when the United States fought a Civil War; or the days that marked the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy; or April 4, 1968, when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated; or Oct. 24, 1929, when the stock market crashed, marking the beginning of the Great Depression.
Our anonymous writer refused to explain why the Capitol riot shouldn't be counted among those days -- which is what is clearly implied by bringing up those comparisons. CNS -- partcularly managing editor Michael W. Chapman -- has been on a kick lately in trying rewrite history around the Capitol riot to make it sound not so bad.
The writer didn't explain why it took 13 days after Schumer issued his tweet to write this response article. Maybe it took that long to dig up other potentially dark days.
When a Chinese spy balloon was found to be flying over the U.S., CNSNews.com's instincts kicked in -- fearmonger about Israel and blame Biden. The first CNS article referencing the balloon, a Feb. 3 piece by Susan Jones, did the former:
As a Chinese spy balloon drifts over the United States, there are growing concerns down below about companies with ties to Communist China buying property and exerting influence all over the USA.
And it's not just American farmland: "Chinese-backed private equity are buying up boarding schools, private schools, and secondary education all over Florida, New York, California, from what we can tell," Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, told "The Ingraham Angle" Thursday night.
CNS actually did what could be considered actual news articles on the balloon's progress:
When the balloon was ultimately shot down, CNS did an anonymously written article about it, followed by an article from Patrick Goodenough on China complaining about it as well as a timeline compiled by Jones. After that, it was Biden-bashing time with several articles featuring Republicans spouting off:
That talking point on how there were no Chiese spy balloons over the U.S. when Trump was president was an important one for CNS to promote -- but it didn't age well. When it was revealed that there were, in fact, Chinese spy balloons over the U.S. when Trump was president, A Feb. 7 article by Goodenough made sure to blame anyone but Trump:
The head of the U.S. military command responsible for countering airborne threats to North America said on Monday that it had not detected Chinese spy balloons that reportedly flew over the United States prior to last week’s incident.
Instead, those previous incursions had been discovered “after the fact” by the intelligence community using “additional means of [information] collection,” said Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command. He did not elaborate.
According to an official transcript of an off-camera briefing to Pentagon reporters, VanHerck attributed the fact that NORAD had not detected those earlier balloons to “a domain awareness gap.”
A senior defense official asserted at the weekend that, before last week’s incursion, Chinese surveillance balloons had flown briefly over the continental U.S. at least three times during the Trump administration, and at least once at the beginning of the Biden administration.
So important was it for CNS to not blame Trump for any of this that Susan Jones wrote a second version of this very same talking point a few hours later:
Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command, told reporters on Monday the United States military failed to detect four earlier balloons sent either toward U.S. air space or into it.
"So those balloons, so every day as a NORAD commander it's my responsible to -- responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats.
"And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out. But I don't want to go in further detail," VanHerck said at an off-camera briefing.
Oddly, Jones did not name Trump during her article, presumably to avoid having to admit these incidents did, in fact, ocur during his presidency.
An article by Melanie Arter did surprisingly give Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg space to explain that it would have been a bad idea to shoot down the balloon over populated U.S. land since the debris field it acreated when it was shot down off the South Carolina coast was seven miles long. But that was followed by an article from her featuring Ted Cruz (who employs the daughter of CNS editor Terry Jeffrey) giving backhanded praise to Biden for shooting the balloon down but having "allowed a full week for the Chinese to conduct spying operations over the United States" before doing so -- with no mention of the debris field it left.
This was followed by more attack articles, some featuring Democrats and some pushing more China-bashing:
The lone direct response to all of this that CNS allowed was an article by Jones quoting Biden saying that "any suggestion that he was derelict in his duty to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon before it traversed the United States is 'a bizarre notion.'"
'CNS opinion pieces -- which are ultimately not that different from its "news" coverage -- also attacked Biden over the balloon incident. James Carafano of the right-wing Heritage Foundation ranted in a Feb. 6 commentary:
What’s next? Could this happen again? Absolutely. I don’t think the Chinese are afraid of this administration.
The problem here, however, is much bigger than balloons. We need to understand what’s behind the balloons—what China is up to—and put a stop to it.
How concerning is this overall? This is a big problem because this is a big signal the Biden administration has no clue how to handle the China threat. It appears about as competent securing our airspace as it does securing our border.
A Feb. 8 column by Jeffrey obsessed over Chinese treatment of Muslim Uyghurs in the country, which he called a "genocide," trying to fold the balloon story into it:
President Biden's approach toward the government of Communist Chinese has changed — at least cosmetically — since that regime flew a spy balloon over the United States last week.
Secretary Blinken announced he was canceling his trip to China.
But will Biden now do anything about America's massive and mounting trade deficit with this regime that Biden's own administration says is engaging in genocide?
This is pretty much the only context in which CNS will ever talk about Muslims in a sympathetic way.
CNS Opnion Writers Match Its 'News' Side In Hating Biden State of the Union Address Topic: CNSNews.com
In addition to its highly biased "news" coverage of President Biden's State of the Union address, CNSNews.com served up some highly biased opinion pieces about it. A Feb. 8 piece by the Heritage Foundation's Jarrett Stepman purported to fact-check a Biden statement:
In his second State of the Union address, President Joe Biden spoke Tuesday night about inflation, which has risen steeply during his presidency.
“Inflation has been a global problem because of the pandemic that disrupted supply chains and Putin’s war that disrupted energy and food supplies,” Biden said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
Although it’s true that inflation has hit other nations’ economies, it did not start in the U.S. at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, nor did it begin during Russia’s war on Ukraine. The president’s description of the inflation problem is misleading at best.
Stepman offered no evidence that a specific Biden policy was directly tied to a specific increase in inflation. EJ Antoni, also of Heritage, similarly complained:
For starters, Biden has frequently said that inflation was out of control when he became president, going so far as to say it was one of the reasons he ran for office. But inflation averaged less than 2% during the primary campaign and averaged closer to 1% during the general election campaign. When Biden took office, annual inflation was a mere 1.4%.
Fast-forward a year and a half, and inflation was 1.3%—for a single month.
Prices were rising about as fast in one month as they did in the entire year before Biden took office. The annual inflation rate broke 9% for the first time in four decades.
He too failed to offer evidence that directly links specific Bidenpolicies to specific increases in inflation.
Hans Bader groused that Biden said crime went down during the first year of the COVID pandemic when it actually went up, then rushed to blame the following crime surge on "massive anti-cop riots in cities across the country," not mention that 1) Biden was not president at the time, and 2) the incidents of police brutality, such as the death of George Floyd, that sparked those "anti-cop riots."
Linnea Lueken whined in what read like a press release from the oil industry:
For the sake of my blood pressure and mental health, I did not watch the entire State of the Union Address this year. I did, however, take a look at President Biden’s statements on climate change and energy. Unsurprisingly, Biden’s commentary on those topics was not overly insightful or nuanced.
Biden opined on how climate change is causing more extreme weather events (it’s not), he slammed oil companies for daring to make profits when oil prices skyrocketed last year, and then he went off script and admitted that we still need oil for the next few decades, at least.
Lueken is a researcher with the right-wing Heartland Institute's Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy. If that name sounds familiar, it should: Art Robinson is the perpetually failed candidate for a congressional seat in Oregon who is a favorite of WorldNetDaily for a bogus petition denying climate change and developing a homeschool curriculum built in part around a series of century-old adventure books for children whose racial insensitivity and old-school imperialism hasn't exactly held up well.
Yet another Heritage writer, Peter Brookes, grumbled that "Biden made no mention of nuclear proliferation problems Tuesday night in his State of the Union address. Could the issue of nuclear weapons have slipped his mind?"
A different right-wing think-tanker, Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution, spent his Feb. 10 column ranting at Biden:
Biden simply did on Tuesday in his State of the Union address what he always does: misinform, ignore, and attack!
Misinform. After sending inflation, energy, and interest rates to astronomical rates, and then seeing them momentarily taper off a bit, Biden declares that he “lowered” these indices that remain far higher than they were when he entered office.
He brags of a low unemployment rate. But Biden never discloses the better indicator of the labor participation rate that has declined under his tenure—or the fact he inherited a growing economy naturally rebounding on autopilot from a disastrous two-year COVID-19 lockdown.
Ignore. Consider what he will never mention. China just violated international law and U.S. airspace. How did Beijing assume rightly that it so easily could get away with it?
There is no southern border. Biden destroyed it. He greenlighted over 5 million illegal aliens to enter the United States without audit or legality—even as smuggled Mexican drugs kill 100,000 Americans each year.
[...]
He never mentions that Russia went into Ukraine because Russian President Vladimir Putin saw no downside after this debacle in Afghanistan, or that Biden’s own inept remarks about not worrying over a Russia invasion of Ukraine if it just proved to be “minor” probably played some role.
Attack! Remember Biden comes to life only when he smears his enemies while calling for “unity” and “bipartisanship.”
Only then his voice rises, his brow furrows, and his face reddens. He claims that “the rich” avoid “paying their fair share,” even as he knows that just 1% of the country pays over 40% of all income taxes.
[...]
In sum, it was the same old, same old dishonest Biden: misinform, ignore, and attack—and then call for “unity,” as the country collectively slides into ruin.
Craig Bannister devoted a Feb. 8 article to another right-wing ranter, Ben Shapiro, under the misleading headline "Ben Shapiro: ‘Last Night Was One of the Worst Events in American Life’." But the article itself makes it clear that Shapiro is raging about State of the Union addresses in general, not specifically Biden's.
CNS Covered State Of The Union Speech Through An Anti-Biden Lens Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com prepped for President Biden's State of the Union address with a little pre-speech grousing:
A Feb 6 article by Micky Wootten complained that "In preparation for President Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union (SOTU) address, security fences have been erected around the perimeter of the U.S. Capitol building, a practice that has become commonplace since the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021."
A Feb. 7 article by Susan Jones carried the editorializing headline "White House: 25 Guests 'Personify' Liberal Agenda That Biden Will Address Tonight," but the article itself did not use the word "liberal" at all to describe the guests or the agenda.Jones did, however, insist on referring to same-sex marriage as "homosexual marriage."
An article by Craig Bannister hyped that "A gaming site is giving two-to-one (2-1) odds Pres. Joe Biden will say the word 'Trump' during Tuesday night’s State of the Union (SOTU) address – and even greater odds he’ll use less flattering terms to refer to his predecessor."
The main after-speech article, by Patrick Goodenough, carrired the derogatory headline "Biden Inexplicably Shouts About Chinese Leader, in an Address Light on Foreign Policy":
In a State of the Union address that was otherwise almost entirely devoid of foreign policy, President Biden on Tuesday night did devote several hundred words to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and to the challenges posed by China.
On the first, he said America had united NATO, confronted Vladimir Putin’s aggression, and stood with the Ukrainian people.
On China, too, Biden touted U.S. leadership on his watch, declaring, “Before I came to office, the story was about how the People’s Republic of China was increasing its power and America was failing in the world.”
“Not anymore,” he added with a small grin.
So talking about Ukraine was "foreign policy"? Weird. That was followed by a raft of Republican and CNS (but we repeat ourselves) attacks on Biden and the speech:
And like its Media Research Center parent, CNS threw a fit over Biden pointing out that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare. Melanie Arter complained:
President Biden claimed Tuesday during his State of the Union address that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare, but his words prompted boos and outcry by Republicans during his speech.
“Some of my Republican friends want to take the economy hostage. I get it. Unless I agree to their economic plans. All of you at home should know what those plans are. Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans, Some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset,” Biden said, which prompted outcry from Republicans in the audience.
“I'm not saying it's a majority. Let me give you Anybody who doubts it. Contact my office. I’ll give you a copy. I'll give you a copy of the proposal. That means Congress doesn't vote. I'm glad to see you. No, I tell you I enjoy conversion. It means if Congress doesn't keep the programs where they are, they go away,” he said.
“Other Republicans say, I'm not saying it's a majority of you. I don't even think it's even significant— but it's being proposed by individuals. I'm not— politely not naming them, but it's being proposed by some of you. Folks. The idea is. That we're not going to be, we're not going to be moved into being threatened to default on the debt if we don't respond,” Biden said to boos from the GOP.
Then the president recognized that Republicans don’t want to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Another article by Arter complained that Biden said he got Republicans to agree to not cut Social Security and Medicare by calling them out:
One day after accusing Republicans of trying to cut Medicare and Social Security during his State of the Union address and then relenting, President Biden was at it again during a speech on the economy in DeForest, Wis.
He talked about the Republican outcry to his remarks, then called out Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah) for proposing cuts in both programs, but he said the “good news” is that he made a “deal” with Republicans on the House floor not to make cuts to either program.
A Feb. 9 article by Arter quoted Scott -- the very Republican Biden was effectively calling out -- playing whataboutism: "Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) accused President Biden of lying about his intention to sunset Medicare and Social Security, pointing out that it was the president himself that proposed that very thing in 1995 when Biden was a senator." Arter also gave Scott space to explain how hisproposed economic plan doesn't actually advocate for cutting Social Security and Medicare even though it demands that all federal programs be sunsetted in five years.
An article by Bannister the same day let Scott rant:
“You pick the time and the place,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) offered Thursday, challenging Joe Biden to a debate, during the president’s visit to Florida, regarding Biden’s claim that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Scott tweeted the invitation to Biden just before one in the afternoon, saying he wanted an opportunity to dispel Biden’s lies:
Arter also tried to play gotcha in a Feb. 9 article: "President Joe Biden has been accusing Republicans of trying to cut Social Security and Medicare, but it was Biden who proposed that very thing back in 1995 when he was a senator debating the Balanced Budget Amendment." But a Feb. 10 article by Jones featured Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell emphatically making the point that Scott's plan is "not a Republican plan," going on to complain that "The issue of benefit cuts, which came to the fore in the 2022 election (thanks to Rick Scott), looks to be a main argument for Biden and his fellow Democrats in 2024 as well."
(A week later, Scott amended his plan to specifically exclude those programs, a development CNS has yet to tell its readers about.)
Arter went into stenography mode for a couple articles that weren't anti-Biden, repeating statements from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre:
Bannister devoted a Feb. 9 article to cheering allegedly low ratings from Biden's speech:
State of the Union viewership fell 28% this year, setting the record for the lowest audience for an official State of the Union address in the 30 years Nielsen has been reporting the statistic.
Biden’s 2021 address to Congress was lower, but it wasn’t an official State of the Union address, because he had been in office for only a few months, instead of a full year.
The complaints continued days later, as demonstrated in a Feb. 13 article by Jones:
President Biden continues to insist the Republicans wants to cut Social Security and Medicare programs, pointing to the plan of a single Republican -- Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.
Republican leaders in both chambers say there's no way they'll cut those benefit programs, and two Republicans emphasized that on different Sunday talk shows:
"We're not going to cut Social Security or Medicare. We've been very clear about that," Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told ABC's "This Week."
Jones didn't mention that Republicans can be easily found on the record advocating for cutting Social Security and Medicare.
CNS Keeps Up Lazy 'Meathead' Insults of Rob Reiner Topic: CNSNews.com
Like its MediaResearchCenterparent, CNSNews.com has a penchant for lazily trying to dismiss anything Rob Reiner has to say by callling him "Meathead" -- a role he hasn't played in more than four decades, never mind that he has since had an acclaimed career as a film director. It has continued to do so over the past year.
A February 2022 article (anonymously written, of course) grumbled that Reiner, "the actor who played 'Meathead' on 'All in the Family,' sent out a tweet on Wednesday claiming that former President Donald Trump 'has committed the single worst crime in presidential history'" by triyng to overthrow the government. An Aug. 29 article by Craig Bannister -- which highlighted how TV host Bill Maher "sparred with radical liberal activist and Hollywood mogul Rob Reiner" -- was the only one of these to carry a byline and the only one to refrain from calling Reiner "Meathead."
An anonymously written Nov. 16 article referring to "‘Meathead’ Rob Reiner" in the headline groused:
Actor Rob Reiner, who played Michael “Meathead” Stivic on “All in the Family” has sent out a series of tweets over the last three days calling for Attorney General Merrick Garland to indict former President Donald Trump.
“Hey, remember when Donald Trump stole highly classified documents?” said a tweet that Reiner re-tweeted on Nov. 13.
Reiner followed-up that re-tweet with a tweet said: “After the Dec. 6 runoff, there is absolutely no reason for Merrick Garland not to Indict Trump for Stealing Top Secret Classified Government Documents. To strengthen Democracy, it must be done."
CNS kicked off 2023 with a couple more lazy hits on Reiner. An anonymously written Jan. 25 article referred to "Rob ‘Meathead’ Reiner" in the headline:
Rob Reiner, who played Archie Bunker’s son-in-law Meathead on “All in the Family,” sent out a tweet earlier this month declaring his opinion that “Donald Trump is a pathologically lying criminal.”
This was only one in a series of tweets in which Reiner attacked Republicans generally and Trump specifically.
And there was anonymously written "Rob ‘Meathead’ Reiner" article on Feb. 16:
Rob Reiner, the actor who played Archie Bunker’s son-in-law “Meathead” on “All in the Family,” sent out a tweet on Tuesday obscenely expressing his view of former Vice President Mike Pence.
“So Pence is fighting the DOJ subpoena to testify about the Jan. 6 insurrection,” said Reiner. “Guess he feels more comfortable flying up Trump’s a** than helping to save democracy.”
In a preceding tweet that he also sent out on Tuesday, Reiner went after Trump.
“On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump led a violent attack on the United States Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the Government,” said Reinter. “If he is not indicted for that, he will have succeeded.”
In fact, Trump did not go to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump did not need to go to thte Capitol when his speech beforehand sufficiently incited the crowd.
That was the only pushback on Reiner in any of these articles. There was also no explanation of why CNS (not to mention the MRC) specifically attacks tweets from Reiner when ignoring him might be a more prudent path -- unless, of course, it thinks Reiner is easy clickbait, which makes CNS even lazier than we thought.
NEW ARTICLE: CNS Managing Editor's Gay-Bashing Beat Topic: CNSNews.com
Michael W. Chapman has spent the past couple of years making sure hatred for LGBTQ people is a key part of CNS' "news" coverage. Read more >>
CNS Cranks Out Attacks On Abortion Medication Topic: CNSNews.com
We've noted how CNSNews.com has promoted a right-wing effort to ban mifepristone abortion pills, and it has continued to launch attacks on them. After the Food and Drug Administration ruled that abortion pills could be obtained from pharmcists, a Jan. 4 article by managing editor Michael W. Chapman called on anti-abortion activists (which not honestly labeled as such) to fearmonger about them:
Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director who now advocates for life, said in a statement, "I've had two abortions and one of them was the abortion pill -- it was horrific. I was alone, in immense pain, and bleeding profusely."
"The thing is, it almost doesn't even matter that the FDA is allowing the abortion pill to be more widely available because the women aren't seeing a doctor either way," said Johnson. "They aren't having ultrasounds and some aren't even verifying they are pregnant."
"While the abortion lobby will say this move is a huge step forward for women, it's only a step forward for them and for those who manufacture the abortion pills because it means more money for them while throwing women under the bus," added Johnson.
Some of the potential side effects of Mifeprex include fatal infection and prolonged heavy bleeding, according to the product's label.
A Jan. 18 article by Spencer J. Fairfield promoted how "Twenty-two U.S. attorneys general have sent a letter to the FDA regarding its new policy that allows the abortion pill, mifepristone, to be sold in pharmacies, stating this is an abandonment of 'commonsense restrictions,' and is 'illegal and dangerous.' In the past, the drug could only be obtained directly from a physician and had to be ingested in the doctor’s presence." Fairfield censored the fact that all of these attorneys gheneral are Republican. Fairfield followed up with a Jan. 23 article hyping an anti-abortion doctor fearmongering about the pill:
At the 50th Annual March for Life on Jan. 20, Dr. Ingrid Skop, a Texas OB/GYN who has delivered more than 5,000 babies, shared her knowledge about the dangers of chemical abortion drugs (mifepristone). Skop told CNSNews that the FDA’s decision to allow abortion pills to be sold in retail pharmacies is “clearly politically driven,” and that “the FDA is basing their decisions on studies that undercount complications.”
“It is clearly politically driven because every time the FDA has loosened restrictions on Mifepristone it’s been in a Democrat administration,” said Dr. Skop. “But the other thing that’s happening, the abortion industry publishes studies to promote their product.”
“They will usually say it’s 99 or 98 percent effective, but they are doing that based on flawed data,” said the doctor. “Because, again, they are only talking about the women they know of that had a complication. But if the women do not come back to them, if they come to me (or other OBGYNs) nobody knows about those complications. So, the FDA is basing their decisions on studies that undercount complications.”
Fairfield refused to interview anyone who contradicted Skop's biased view. In a Feb. 3 article, Fairfield exploited a woman's death to fearmonger about the pill:
It was reported this week that a 19-year-old Canadian woman died on July 4, 2022 apparently after using the abortion drug, Mifegymiso, the brand name for mifepristone. Pete Baklinski, director of communications at Campaign Life Coalition in Ottowa, said that Canada’s healthcare system should declare that medication abortion in general is “an imminent hazard to public health.”
“This human pesticide is not only deadly to the smallest members of the human family, but to pregnant mothers as well,” said Baklinski. “The abortion pill must be immediately pulled from the Canadian market. Health Canada must declare it an imminent hazard to public health.”
Fairfield quoted only anti-abortion activists bashing the pill and censored evidence of the pill's safety, particularly compared with pregnancy.
It wasn't until a Feb. 24 article by Melanie Arter that CNS gave significant space to arguments in favor of mifepristone:
Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday that pro-life efforts to prevent access to the abortion drug mifepristone amounts to “‘an attack on the very foundation of our public health system.”
[...]
“That medication is called mifepristone. It is a drug that is used to perform medication abortion,” the vice president said.
“It is FDA approved and was approved 20 years ago, after a strenuous peer-reviewed process of determining that it is safe and appropriate for its intended use, but there are now partisan and political attacks attempting to question the legitimacy of a group of scientists and doctors who have studied the significance of this drug,” Harris said.
"There is now an attempt by politicians to remove it from the ability of doctors to prescribe and the ability of people to receive,” she said.
Unlike with stories focused on anti-abortion activists, Arter made sure to note anti-abortion activists criticizing the pill.
CNS also published commentaries from anti-abortion activists that attacked mifepristone without balance or pushback, such as a Jan. 9 commentary by Lynne Marie Kohm maliciously described it as "chemical abortion." Dishonest Catholic Bill Donohue spent a Jan. 18 column attacking New York City Mayor Eric Adams for making available for free at one clinic in the city:
More important is where Adams decided to open his freebies abortion clinic. The first of four such clinics opened today in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, more generally known as the South Bronx.
Guess who lives there? Almost 6 in 10 are Hispanic and 36 percent are black. The white population is 3.2 percent and the figure for Asians is 0.6 percent. The poverty rate in New York City is 16 percent, but in the Bronx, the figure is 26.4 percent. In Morrisania it is 40.3 percent. Its serious crime rate is double the city average.
Some things never change. Why is it that liberals always favor black and brown neighborhoods to set up their abortion clinics?
Yes, Donohue is accusing a black man of being racist against black people. that gave Donohue license to repeat a dcouple false anti-abortion tropes:
Rev. Dean Nelson, a black minister who directs Human Coalition Action, notes that “nearly 80 percent of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities [are] located within walking distance to Black neighborhoods.”
It is undeniably true that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a notorious racist. The KKK must have been proud of her efforts to help abort black babies.
As we've documented, Sanger was not a "notorious racist," and most abortion clinics are locatd in white neighborhoods.
Another anti-abortion activist, Patty Knap, raged against increased availability of mifepristone -- a name she refused to use, instead calling it "abortion pills" instead -- in a Jan. 30 commentary wildly accusing the "abortion industry" of profiteering:
A crucial aspect of allowing pharmacies to sell abortion pills that has not been talked about very much is the wholesale elimination in the process of possible life-affirming intervention by pregnancy help organizations prior to a woman procuring a chemical abortion.
For the profit-motivated abortion industry, bypassing the very people prepared to help women choose life is a big win.
The abortion lobby has been determined to cut out in-person doctor visits for a woman to obtain abortion drugs to get dangerous abortion pills into the hands of pregnant moms faster before anyone can offer her help with her pregnancy. Abortion pills are also more profitable than surgical abortions because there is no brick-and-mortar-building and associated costs, or actual hands-on procedure involved.
Now President Joe Biden has come through for abortionists and granted their wish, with the FDA recently announcing that abortion pills can be sold at your neighborhood pharmacy.
This means that these abortions require neither a visit to the doctor nor even a pregnancy test.
Knap didn't explain how reducing doctor visits equates to profiteering. Instead, she expressed her real fear, that anti-abortion "crisis pregnancy centers" can't interfere in the process:
Many pregnancy centers throughout the country are purposefully located near abortion centers. Likewise, the people who pray at those abortion facilities offer the truth and real help to young moms heading inside for an abortion by encouraging them to instead visit the pregnancy centers. The compassionate efforts of both result in babies being saved and moms being spared a lifetime of agony.
Without the need to go in person to a Planned Parenthood or other abortion center, there’s no chance a pregnant mom has of seeing her baby’s ultrasound, no chance of hearing about available help, or hearing about couples who ready and eager to adopt.
[...]
Conversely, the significance of the life-affirming work of the nearly 3,000 pregnancy centers across the country cannot be overestimated, as thousands of lives are saved each year through their life-affirming intervention.
These life-saving interactions will be impeded with abortion pills available via a mere run into a corner drug store.
That declining opportunity to interfere seems to be what Knap really fears.
Like its Media Research Center parent, CNSNews.com promoted the right-wing leanings of "Dilbert" cartoonist Scott Adams over the years:
CNSNews.com continued its ideologically mandated 
Another one of CNSNews.com's biased reporting tricks -- alongside 
Like its 
For a guy who's supposed to be an "Investigative Journalism Fellow" her his bio, CNSNews.com writer Micky Wootten sure doesn't do much investigative journalism. Instead, his main job these days is setting up anti-Biden narratives about spending too much money on supporting Ukraine after its invasion by Russia. (If you'll recall, CNS 
As its publication of Michael Orsi shows, CNSNews.com is not afraid to exploit Catholic teachings to push right-wing talking points -- not surprising, given that the people who run it think they're 
When Pope Emeritus Benedict died at the end of December, CNSNews.com cranked up respectful tributes for a former pope whose views aligned with its own right-wing takes:
An anonymous CNSNews.com writer huffed in a Jan. 19 
When a Chinese spy balloon was found to be flying over the U.S., CNSNews.com's instincts kicked in -- fearmonger about Israel and blame Biden. The first CNS article referencing the balloon, a Feb. 3 
In addition to its 
CNSNews.com prepped for President Biden's State of the Union address with a little pre-speech grousing:
Like its 
We've noted
