CBS

Touting the Boy Scouts' "landmark" and "historic" decision to allow openly-gay members, CBS, ABC, and NBC gave supporters of the decision three times as many quotes as their opponents got on Friday morning's news stories.

The networks gave 10 soundbites to supporters of the new Scouts policy and only three to its opponents. Supporters included President Obama, gay scout Pascal Tessier, and former den leader Jennifer Tyrell.

Monday night's CBS Evening News followed CNN and ABC to the ugly decades-old accusations against Pope Francis from his time in Argentina. CBS featured the same critic of Pope Francis that ABC did on Sunday. CNN, meanwhile, was the only one of the three networks to seriously question the accusations.

"There are still questions, though, about the Pope's relationship with Argentina's former government, a military dictatorship that kidnapped and killed thousands in the '70s and '80s," reported fill-in anchor Bob Schieffer. CBS centered the story around Francis' accuser, with only one quote in his defense. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CBS “This Morning” cited an optimistic article about the economy in its “This Morning’s Headlines” roundup of newspaper headlines on February 11, but ignored a pessimistic one from the Wall Street Journal. 

The USA Today article cited was a front page story, concisely labeled “Economists Gain Optimism. The Wall Street Journal ran a contradictory front page story that same day entitled “Companies Fret Over Uncertain Outlook,” which was completely ignored. Instead, the Wall Street Journal article that CBS did cite was one entitled “Lonely Hearts Give Flirting 101 a Try” from page A15. 

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CBSNews.com promoted a restaurant attack by the pro-regulatory food police group the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) Jan. 16, without noting the agenda of the group or providing other points of view.

The online story that regurgitated CSPI’s annual “Xtreme Eating” report released that day, favorably called the group a “watchdog” and essentially ran the group’s entire report with no industry response. The CBS article included a slideshow (with CSPI’s own images) depicting each food item that CSPI criticized, with its nutritional content. Both the article and the slideshow linked back to the original CSPI report. 

CSPI’s director Michael F. Jacobson accused the chains of intentionally making people obese or diabetic. "It's as if IHOP, The Cheesecake Factory, Maggiano's Little Italy, and other major restaurant chains are scientifically engineering these extreme meals with the express purpose of promoting obesity, diabetes, and heart disease," said Jacobson. (Emphasis added) 

Immediately following an antagonistic discussion with the former presidential candidate Rick Santorum, in which he demanded the Pennsylvania Republican to differentiate himself from  Mitt Romney, CBS This Morning’s Charlie Rose previewed the next interview that would be conducted by his co-anchor Gayle King, with a Chris Matthews-like swipe at the GOP as anti-science.

“Republicans here in Tampa believe evolution is just a theory,” Rose teased, adding that “Bill Nye the Science Guy says its science.” Of course this suggests Rose may be a bit scientifically illiterate himself, as the National Academies of Science defines a scientific theory as “a well-substantiated explanation of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.”

To describe evolution as a scientific theory is accurate.