Connect with us

Fox News Reporter Just Can’t Figure Out Facts In Anti-Gay Bakers Story

Published

on

Is Fox News’ religion reporter having a hard time separating facts, or is he just defaulting to incorrect information?

It’s no secret Fox News religion reporter Todd Starnes is anti-gay and a fan of anti-gay hate groups. It’s also no secret that his reporting is biased and all-too-often inaccurate.

Starnes has been taken to task by those he has wrongly reported on several times. For instance, during the War on Christmas of 2013, Starnes reported that “as long as anyone can remember, teachers at Brooklet Elementary School have posted Christmas cards in the hallways outside their classrooms – until Monday. When boys and girls returned from Thanksgiving break, they discovered that their teachers’ Christmas cards had been removed – under orders from the Georgia school’s administration. … The Christmas card censorship comes as the Bulloch County Board of Education cracks down on religious expression in their schools.”

Starnes’ piece, titled, “Georgia School Confiscates Christmas Cards,” was of course false – there was no secret war on Christmas cards or religious expression.

A local news channel did Starnes work for him, and some actual reporting.

“This year, due to a legitimate, personal privacy concern raised by one of the school’s staff members, [Principal] Baker moved the display to the opposite wall inside the office work room so that the staff member could still participate in the tradition,” the school district, attacked by Starnes fans, said in a statement to WSAV. “Baker wanted to respect the staff member’s privacy and that of his/her children depicted in the Christmas card.”

That statement also read, “Unfortunately, today the school was terrorized by an intentional and vicious dissemination of untrue information that disrupted the good work going on inside. Fox News Radio Commentary Host Todd Starnes, acting on misinformation that neither he, nor his media outlet corroborated with the school system or Baker, misreported a story about student Christmas Cards being removed from the school.” [Bolding ours]

That’s just one example. 

Media Matters today refers to Starnes as a serial misinformer, points to “Starnes’ consistently inaccurate ‘culture war’ reporting,” and offers as more evidence Starnes’ reporting on the now infamous case against Oregon baker Melissa Klein of Sweet Cakes By Melissa.

In his Fox News piece yesterday, “Christian bakers face government wrath for refusing to make cake for gay wedding,” Starnes writes, “Aaron and Melissa Klein refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, and now they must pay for their crime.”

The judge’s ruling paves the way for a March 10 hearing at which the Christian business owners could be ordered to pay $200,000 in fines and damages.

Wrong.

In the real world, the Kleins, through their lawyers, tried but failed to get a judgment in their favor and $200,000 in court costs and fees out of the same-sex couple they refused to serve.

Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) Communications Director Charlie Burr gave Media Matters a statement denying Starnes’ reporting.

Todd Starnes is writing that the bakery owners face fines of up to $200,000 in damages. That’s false. In fact, it’s the Kleins who have asked for $200,000 in damages from our agency for our enforcement of the Equality Act. We rejected the request due to jurisdictional issues.

The agency’s prosecution unit is seeking up to $75,000 per person in damages, but no ruling on amounts has been made. [emphasis original]

Starnes also “asks” if the deciding official in the case, Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian, “wants to ship the Christians off to a government-sanctioned re-education camp?”

And he concludes, the “evidence seems to indicate that Christian business owners are being intentionally singled out for persecution. And it appears the courts are consistently ruling that gay rights trump everyone else’s rights.”

Anyone care to weigh the truth of that statement? 

 

Image via Facebook

There's a reason 10,000 people subscribe to NCRM. You can get the news before it breaks just by subscribing, plus you can learn something new every day.
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

‘Good Chance’ Trump Will Be Electorally ‘Humiliated’ in November: Carville

Published

on

Democratic strategist and pundit James Carville, responding to the international outcry and condemnation over President Donald Trump’s failed efforts to acquire Greenland, predicted that he will likely lose big in the November midterm elections.

“I think the world wants to return, with the United States as being part of the world,” Carville said on his podcast. “And I think the way that that happens is Trump has to be humiliated.”

“He has to be electorally humiliated, and I think there’s a good, good chance that’s gonna happen this November in our elections,” he said. “It’s not enough that he just walk away, and the Democrats take over the presidency.”

There has to be “a well laid plan and strategy to utterly humiliate him, to the point that everybody around the world says, ‘This m — —, or no one like this m — —, is gonna ever come back and lead the United States,'” Carville declared.

READ MORE: Trump ‘Miscalculated’ and It ‘Backfired’: Columnist Explains What Led to Trump ‘Failing’

“I think that’s the possibility, and I think if that happens, I think we can renormalize the world a lot faster than most.”

“And he’s completely crazy,” Carville also remarked. “He’s going downhill.”

According to the New York Post, Trump will be campaigning during the midterm elections as if he were on the ballot.

“President Trump will treat the November midterm election like a presidential campaign, his senior leadership team tells The Post — traveling like he’s on the ballot, flooding key races with cash and hammering home how his policies will help Americans with affordability,” the Post reported.

Susie Wiles, Trump’s White House Chief of Staff and his former campaign co-chair, told The Post, “He’s going to campaign like it’s 2024.”

READ MORE: Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

Image via Reuters

 

Continue Reading

News

Trump ‘Miscalculated’ and It ‘Backfired’: Columnist Explains What Led to Trump ‘Failing’

Published

on

President Donald Trump “miscalculated” his level of support — especially on the issues that won him re-election in 2024, and it has “backfired,” according to an opinion columnist.

In “Why Trump is failing,” Steven Roberts in the Columbia Missourian writes: “Trump has called 2025 ‘the greatest first year’ of any president, but a majority of Americans strongly disagree.”

“To hardcore MAGA loyalists, the president can do no wrong. But rabid Red Hats account for only about 35% of Americans,” observes Roberts.

He identifies where the president is losing support: “since Trump received almost 50% of the popular vote, that means about 15% of his backers were not true believers, and they are the ones who are slipping away.”

Roberts identifies why.

“The single biggest reason Trump won a second term was economic discontent with the Biden administration, and it’s the single biggest reason so many voters are now disillusioned,” he says, pointing to a CNN poll that, he writes, finds “55% say Trump’s policies have actually made things worse and almost two-thirds say he has not done enough to reduce their cost of living.”

But Roberts offers more.

READ MORE: Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

He explains that Americans supported Trump’s policies on immigration when it was about immigrants at the border.

“They were ‘others’: easy to demonize and dehumanize. They had no voice and no identity, and Trump and his media managers could control what voters knew and felt about them.”

But, he continues, “Trump miscalculated, and his show backfired,” because his targets are no longer “faceless hordes but real people with jobs and families, friends and neighbors.”

The came the shooting of a Minneapolis mother of three, Renee Good.

“The administration tried to brand her as a domestic terrorist who had caused her own demise by driving at the agent. But the videos — seen by more than 80% of Americans — told a different story,” he writes. “Good simply did not look like a terrorist. Plus, independent news organizations analyzed the cellphone footage and concluded that it ‘contradicted’ the official line.”

Trump “lost control of the narrative, and public opinion turned against him.”

The president’s other miscalculation: his stance on the affordability issue, an issue that arguably got him re-elected.

With just 36 percent of Americans saying Trump has the right priorities, Roberts surmises that is simply his “loyal MAGA base.”

And he warns that if this trend continues, voters at the polls in November will “take it out on his party.”

READ MORE: These 19 Democrats May Already Be Jockeying for a Presidential Run: Report

 

Image via Reuters 

Continue Reading

News

Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

Published

on

President Donald Trump on Thursday unleashed dozens of rapid-fire social media posts after what critics described as a difficult few days at Davos. His speech there reportedly further strained relations with U.S. allies, following his Greenland gambit, which produced few if any clear gains and drew criticism over its diplomatic costs. The rollout of Trump’s Board of Peace also struggled to gain traction, with a handful of European allies participating in the inaugural signing ceremony.

In spoke of the more recent posts, Trump went off on “Fake Polls,” while admitting that they have his approval rating “in the low 40s,” although The Economist shows his net approval rating currently at 37%.

“We have the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country, we have the Strongest Border in History, nobody has ever done a job like I have done, and they have me in the low 40s,” he complained. “The Democrats destroyed Healthcare, I’m trying to fix it, and they give me FAKE low numbers. Fake Polls on the Economy, on the Border, on just about everything, are ridiculous and dangerous. The REAL Polls have been GREAT, but they refuse to print them.

“The Times Siena Poll, which is always tremendously negative to me, especially just before the Election of 2024, where I won in a Landslide, will be added to my lawsuit against The Failing New York Times,” he wrote. “Our lawyers have demanded that they keep all Records, and how they ‘computed’ these fake results — Not just the fact that it was heavily skewed toward Democrats. They will be held fully responsible for all of their Radical Left lies and wrongdoing!”

READ MORE: Top Conservative Think Tank Roasted Over ‘Retrograde’ Marriage and Family Report

Some posts promoted questionable claims, including suggesting that annualized U.S. GDP grew to more than 5 percent — while most expectations and Congressional Budget Office predictions are currently about half that number.

He promoted a claim that he “helped create ‘The Martin Luther King Jr International Freedom Games’ in 1966,” when he would have been about 20 years old.

Other posts he promoted talked about the U.S. trade deficit, alleged illegal voting in the 2020 election, immigration, tariffs, globalism, Don Lemon, Supreme Court oral arguments for Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and one declaring Trump the “greatest President in the world.”

Another post offered the transcript and video of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller allegedly claiming, and without evidence, that James Comey, Jim Clapper, John Brennan, Lisa Monaco, and President Barack Obama “all conspired and worked together to sabotage, undermine, unravel, and overthrow the United States government and the democratic institutions and structures of this country.”

That post, as Raw Story reported, appeared to be in response to former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s currently ongoing congressional public testimony.

Another post included video of Argentinian President Javier Milei attacking “wokeism” while praising the “Americas.”

READ MORE: These 19 Democrats May Already Be Jockeying for a Presidential Run: Report

 

Image via Reuters 

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.