When it came to reporting on Donald Trump’s vile misogyny in a video released last last week, CNSNews.com — the “news” division of the Trump defenders at the Media Research Center — first covered it only with Associated Press articles. That’s not unusual for CNS, which posts no original content on weekends, though you’d think that with a hotly contested presidential election it might try to act like the news organization it claims to be and have some weekend staffing.
But with the new week, CNS was following the lead of its parent — the only original articles it posted on Trump’s vile remarks was from those defending him or spinning what he said.
An Oct. 10 article by Melanie Hunter featured right-wing strategist Mary Matalin doing some heavy spin by insisting that Trump merely had a “private conversation about sex he’s not getting,” while the Democratic Party stood behind President Bill Clinton during his sex scandal with a White House intern. Hunter quotes others in her article criticizing Trump, but the fact that she made Matalin’s defense the lead means that’s what the CNS spin will be on Trump — presumably as dictated by editor in chief Terry Jeffrey, managing editor Michael W. Chapman or even MRC chief Brent Bozell himself.
Later that day, Hunter followed up with another article reinforcing the official CNS spin, this one uncritically quoting Mike Pence, Trump’s vice presidential candidate, spinning even harder by saying that “while he doesn’t condone what GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said in controversial remarks that that surfaced over the weekend, he believes in forgiveness and grace.”
In both articles, Hunter rather benignly whitewashes the extent of Trump’s vile misogyny, not bothering to quote any of Trump’s actual words but, rather, merely claiming he was caught on tape “bragging about kissing and groping women.”
It looks like Hunter had her marching orders: hide the truth and spin for Trump. And that’s exactly what she did. It makes her a good right-wing apparatchik, but not that good — or honest — of a reporter.