A July 18 CNSNews.com article by Melanie Arter starts off by reporting on a House vote to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. But most of the article — 10 of its 14 paragraphs — was devoted to an attack on a higher minimum wage by Alfredo Ortiz, president of the Job Creators Network, repeating the usual right-wing talking points and plugging an effort by the organization to push for higher-paying careers.
In addition to being an example of the right-wing bias CNS is increasingly unafraid to display — at no point does Arter include any voices in support of a higher minimum wage — Arter’s article fails to disclose a conflict of interest. As we documented earlier this year when CNS promoted a JCN attack on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, JCN is funded by the Mercer family, which also happens to be the largest individual donor to CNS’ parent, the Media Research Center, providing one-fourth of its multimillion-dollar annual budget, some of which presumably goes to pay for CNS reporting.
CNS has promoted JCN several other times this year without disclosing the conflict of interest:
- Managing editor Michael W. Chapman devoted a Jan. 16 article to repeating JCN’s anti-minimum wage attack, blandly describing JCN as a “small business non-profit advocacy group.”
- An April 29 article by Chapman quoted JCN’s Ortiz supporting the nomination of right-wing economist Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve board.
- A May 3 article by Craig Bannister touting low Hispanic unemployment rates included a quote from Ortiz.
- A June 7 article by Bannister gave Ortiz space to spin away a low job creation rate as being caused by a labor shortage.
Committing to right-wing talking points over journalism isn’t a good look — especially when those talking points come from the same funders that fund you.