Journalists Gone Wild, er, Scared

A blogger we quoted below commented on this when it happened once, but oddly it happened three times this week. Three major local newspapers, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, and the Montgomery Gazette, all did the same thing.

Reporters from all three of those papers went to our forum -- and then called the President of the Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, a radical anti-gay, anti-safe-sex group, to see what she thought about it.

She hadn't been there.

Check this out.

The Post said:

In a phone interview, Michelle Turner, president of Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, said: "There is no conclusive truth that sexual [orientation] is something you are born with. Where's the science?"

Now, you wonder, as the reporter had just come from our forum -- did he tell her where the science is? He had just seen a lot of graphs and tables of numbers, and heard about a whole lot of scientific studies ... did he answer her question? I'm guessing not. So why did he call her?

The Times gave us another piece of information.

Mrs. Turner was in St. Louis, where she spoke at a conference for conservatives about CRC's efforts. She said schools should teach that there is evidence showing that homosexuality is a choice.

St. Louis, huh? I was trying to think, what radical rightwing group has headquarters in St. Louis? Who's backing the campaign against Montgomery County these days? I couldn't think of anybody off the top of my head.

But not to wonder long. Because The Gazette answers that one.

Michelle Turner, who heads Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, spent last weekend in St. Louis speaking to a conference of the Eagle Forum, a conservative group.

Eagle Forum, a "conservative group"?

That's what you might call an understatement.

The Eagle Forum is a group established by Phyllis Schlafly. People for the American Way's Rightwing Watch has a page on this group, including this paranoid quote from Schlafly:

"The goal [in public schools] is clearly to infuse (i.e., cause to penetrate) the gay/lesbian propaganda into every level of school: every grade K through 12, every academic subject, and every school and social activity."

-The Phyllis Schlafly Report, September 1995

Uh, yeah, right. Now take your meds.

But, OK, so the CRC is tied into these national extremist organizations. We knew that. The question remains: what is going on in this world, when a reporter covers an event, and then calls someone who wasn't there, and who they can be sure is going to say something negative even though they know nothing about what happened, and then quotes them in the story about the event?

I will state the obvious. These reporters are afraid not to include the radical rightwing point of view. Even though the anti-MCPS groups had nothing to do with the TeachTheFacts forum, the reporters know that if they don't get a quote from them, they will be accused of ... bias or something. They have been attacked for so long for being liberal that they're afraid to just write an article about what happened,

It doesn't even occur to them to report objectively. Any of them.

They're scared.

And listen again to what they got. To one, the CRC President says that "Reparative therapy cannot be dismissed." But it has been dismissed by every mainstream professional mental health and medical organization in the country. She is just wrong -- it can be dismissed, and usually is.

To another paper, she says, "Where's the science?" But the science is converging quickly: there are genetic and biological components of sexual orientation, some well understood and others still being discovered and explained. There's lots of science -- it must require tremendous effort to remain in this discussion, and not be aware of these findings.

To the third newspaper, she says that "schools should teach that there is evidence showing that homosexuality is a choice." But there is no evidence at all. No one who studies the subject believes sexual orientation is a choice. No peer-reviewed study ever published has found that it's a choice. Some religious extremists wish it was a choice, to make it a little easier to rationalize their fear and hate, but it isn't. It just isn't.

Amazingly, none of these reporters believed they could write about the TeachTheFacts forum, which was an occasion for highly educated experts to bring the audience up to date on the current state of medical, scientific, and educational knowledge, without calling long distance to interview some ignorant person who didn't know anything about the subject, or anything about what had happened at the forum.