by Chad Groening
(AgapePress) – The chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition is calling on people of faith to push for passage of an amendment that would protect the Boy Scouts from potential child molesters.
Lou Sheldon is in full support of an amendment proposed by North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. As part of the Senate education bill (S.R. 1), it would prohibit federal funds from going to any government agency that denies the Scouts the right to use public facilities for meetings on an equal basis with other groups.
An identical amendment is being proposed in the House, but Sheldon wonders with the new power shift in the Senate, if Senate Democrats will be the tools of the North American Man-Boy Love Association or if they will defend the Boy Scouts.
The TVC chairman believes there are already NAMBLA homosexuals hiding out in the Boy Scouts, and that doors should not be opened to more of them. Sheldon says instead of punishing the Scouts for so-called “discrimination against homosexuals,” communities and groups like the United Way should applaud the Boy Scouts’ leadership in its efforts to protect boys from child molesters.
Meanwhile, in West Palm Beach, Florida, the Boy Scouts of America has made a final decision to put principle ahead of money. Yesterday, the local scouting organization announced it would not sign a United Way document demanding that it end its opposition to homosexual leaders.
In response, the United Way of Palm Beach County said the Scouts will no longer get the agency’s annual contribution of close to $121,000. According to the Palm Beach Post, Scout leaders in the area hope to make up the loss by finding more corporate sponsors and major donors.
Veteran Reporter Alleges Bias Among Press Corps
by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
(AgapePress) – A veteran Washington reporter says his colleagues in the secular press are almost uniformly left-leaning, despite denials from many high-profile journalists.
CBS News anchorman Dan Rather has been on the talk show circuit promoting his new book, and denying that he is a liberal. But Bill Sammon, chief White House correspondent for The Washington Times, says he is personal friends with many of those who report the news from the nation’s capitol.
“I spend my day with the national press. Everyday, I’m at the White House, I’m on the campaign plane, I’m on the bus, I’m on Air Force One, Air Force Two,” Sammon says. “They’re the greatest bunch of people you could ever want to be around — they’re funny, they’re irreverent, they’re a little cynical, sarcastic and they’re great dinner companions.”
However, Sammon says most of the Washington press lean to the left. “Let’s just get real here — they’re liberals,” he says. “I know them, I like them, but they happen to have a certain political persuasion. There’s a few conservatives in there, but by and large, they are liberals and it comes across institutionally. Sometimes it’s not even conscious, it’s this institutional bias that’s built into it because the press is basically dominated by the left.”
Sammon is author of the best-selling book At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election.
Bill Sammon is not alone in his opinion on media bias. In a commentary today, Eric Burns of FOX News says it is more than just his opinion that there is a liberal bias at the three major networks.
Burns writes that between his current stint with FOX and working for NBC, he hosted a series of cable programs that were produced by a former ABC employee — someone Burns describes as “one of the most highly-esteemed figures in the history of TV news.” In the commentary, Burns relates how that person tried to dictate what Burns should say in a commentary about a major news story that had just broken. When Burns told him he did not agree with that approach to the story, the producer — after looking shocked that Burns would not agree with him — insisted on writing the commentary himself.
Upon relinquishing the typewriter to “this resident of the broadcast news pantheon,” Burns says he found himself wondering “how many times [the producer] had done the same thing at ABC … how many times had this man, who would have railed at the charge of bias, slanted the news or jiggled the commentary.”
Burns does not identify who that individual was.
(This update courtesy of Agape Press.)
