Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Two ways One News Now picks homophobia over accuracy

The American Family Association led phony news service One News Now seems to be on a tear about the lgbt community right now.

There are two articles in today's edition about us and both of them are slightly twisted.

The first one is about Jennifer Keeton, the Augusta State University graduate student who unsuccessfully sued the university claiming that she was forced to compromise her beliefs about homosexuality in order to receive her degree.

What it boiled down to was the fact that Keeton didn't want to read material on counseling gays nor did she want to counsel gays at all.

Of course One News Now makes her sound like a martyr:

Dr. Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America sees judicial activism in action.

"The really horrendous part is that one single judge is able to make a decision that influences so many different aspects of our culture. And we're seeing it over and over again where that judge is imposing his own personal views -- which is such a contradiction and is so ironic when this young woman's rights are being taken away from her."

The judge has placed a gag order on the case. But in an interview last month, Keeton's attorney -- David French with the Alliance Defense Fund -- said one of the elements in the remediation plan called for Keaton to attend a "gay-pride parade" and write about her feelings. He called it "ridiculous."

"She should be free from thought reform," the attorney argued. "She should be free from sensitivity training merely because she holds Christian beliefs. Just respect her First Amendment rights."

Of course the article omits the fact that during deliberations, Keeton neither testified on her own behalf nor offered up any witnesses to prove her case.

The second article involves Bradley Manning, the solider in the middle of the Wikileaks scandal.Wikileaks is a site which has displayed classified documents of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Manning, a 22-year-old soldier suspected of leaking documents to Wikileaks. He is currently awaiting court martial.

In the midst of this scandal, there is a claim, propagated by anti-gay activist Cliff Kincaid, and pushed by One News Now, that Manning is an angry gay activist who leaked information because he was angry at the military's policy on gays in the military. This was from the One News Now article from a couple of days ago:

The British newspaper Daily Telegraph first reported that Private 1st Class Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, was not only openly homosexual but also considering a sex change. Manning could face more than 50 years in prison for passing secret documents to WikiLeaks, whose founder Julian Assange has an anti-American and anti-military bent.

But the Daily Telegraph never reported that Manning was seeking a sex change operation.

The claim about the sex change, as well as the entire narrative of Manning being "an angry gay soldier who leaked documents because he is mad at military's policy on gays and lesbians" is a concoction of Kincaid.

Today has been a slight change to One News Now's pushing of the article:

Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival and editor of Accuracy in Media is concerned about reports that Manning had been blatantly open about his homosexuality for more than a year and apparently held a grudge against the U.S. military because of its ban on homosexual military service. He thinks the military should have recognized that Manning was a security risk.

There is no mention of a "sex change" operation and no claim that the "Bradley Manning is an angry gay activist" narrative is being pushed by the Daily Telegraph. Nice change, but the inaccurate narrative of Manning being an angry gay soldier, i.e. a security risk, is still present.

It's a shame that One News Now feels that truth and accuracy are allowable casualties when it comes to defending the so-called opinions of God.


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