AFTAH exclusive: FOX, CNN, NBC, CBS, ESPN fund conference where mainstream journalists heard highly partisan, pro-“gay” presentations

Recruiting Homosexual Journalists: Fox News’ recruiting table at homosexual journalists (NLGJA) convention, at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel in Chicago. The event featured one-sided presentations by speakers in favor of “gay rights,” with no countervailing advocates of traditional morality. To read Peter LaBarbera’s in-depth 2013 report for America’s Survival, Inc., on the NLGJA’s long record of advocacy and Fox News’ emerging pro-“gay” bias, go HERE. Click on photos to enlarge. Credit: AFTAH.org

_______________________________________

By Peter LaBarbera

CHICAGO–As it has year after year, Fox News Channel served as a major sponsor of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association (NLGJA), providing a $10,000 grant for its 2014 annual convention, which recently concluded here (August 21-24). The conservative-leaning network also recruited at the homosexual journalists event.

Fox signed on as a “Feature Sponsor” for the convention–which included several one-sided presentations in favor of homosexual and transgender activist goals, and zero speakers advocating against LGBT goals such as the legalization of same-sex “marriage.” I attended a day and a half of the three-day conference, which was held at the swank Palmer House Hilton hotel in the downtown Loop. As in the past, NLGJA organizers allowed me (a critic, and not a homosexual journalist) to attend, but only after paying a “non-member” registration fee ($330/day).

Other media and corporate sponsors of the event included: CNN; CBS; ESPN; Comcast-NBC; Bloomberg; Gannett; Coca-Cola (the largest sponsor at $25,000); JetBlue airlines; Eli Lilly & Co.; Toyota; Nissan and the homosexual lobby organization Human Rights Campaign.

A natural bias?

Proud ‘Gay’ Christianity? Openly homosexual Lutheran (ELCA) Bishop Rev. Dr. Guy Erwin (far left) and former Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson (second from right) pose for photos following their joint presentation at the NLGJA convention. Robinson, who gained international fame as the first openly homosexual bishop of a major Christian denomination, criticized Christians who do not wish to participate in homosexual “weddings.” He said there is something “profane and sacrilegious” about “religious people arguing for the right to discriminate.” No opposing orthodox Christian viewpoint was included on the homosexual journalists association panel.

What I found at the Chicago conference is what I have observed at every other NLGJA convention I have attended in the last two decades: the natural bias that one would expect from an organization whose members view homosexuality personally and mainly through a “civil rights” prism.

The prevailing viewpoint at the conference–surely shared by most secular media professionals these days–is that “gay, lesbian and transgender” journalists are a legitimate sexual (or gender) “minority,” not unlike racial and ethnic minorities, deserving solicitous attention in newsrooms. That would include allowing LGBT journalists to guide coverage on homosexual-bisexual-transgender stories in culture and politics.

Even the NLGJA panel on religion and “gay rights” was bereft of a traditionalist perspective, while the two openly homosexual speakers—former Episcopal Church bishop V. [Vicky] Gene Robinson and new Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ECLA) Bishop Rev. Doctor Guy Erwin—were heralded in the program as leaders of “this next wave of the civil rights movement.”

Both Revs. Robinson and Erwin compared opposition to homosexuality and Christian businessmen’s principled refusal to participate in “gay weddings” to racist bigotry (see below).

Perhaps it is asking too much of “mainstream” journalists who consider homosexuality part of their intrinsic identity (“who they are”) to cover LGBT-related issues impartially. Nevertheless, intellectual diversity and ‘opposing’ viewpoint inclusion—the watchwords of this conference and pro-LGBT advocacy in general—were in short supply at the NLGJA convention. That is a peculiar and glaring deficit for a profession that ideally is supposed to cover “both sides” of controversial issues.

To quote the famous Fox News’ slogan: the NLGJA religious panel was hardly “Fair and Balanced” regarding the controversial question of (pro-) “gay Christianity”: who could argue that openly homosexual bishops advocating for rights based on homosexuality is not a divisive issue?