Fox News‘ Laura Ingraham last night on Bill O’Reilly‘s “O’Reilly Factor” hosted a segment that portrayed the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a fundraising machine whose goal is to shut down national debate. Ingraham moderated a dishonest and one-sided (so much for “fair and balanced”) segment that actually used NAMBLA, a heinous and essentially defunct —  but hot-button dog whistle to radical right wing conservatives — group in an attempt to paint the venerable Southern Poverty Law Center as dangerous and un-American.
Not once did Ingraham, who claims the SPLC just wants to “demonize good people who just happen to have a different point of view,” educate her viewers on what the Southern Poverty Law Center does, the rigorous investigations they perform, or even (God forbid!) the actions an organization must take in order to be labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In short, Ingraham performed journalistic malpractice, in my opinion, something she has built her career on doing.
Some of the “good people who just happen to have a different point of view” the Southern Poverty Law Center tracks:
Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council: The Southern Poverty Law Center writes:
The FRC regularly portrays LGBT people as sick, evil, perverted, and a danger to the nation. It talks about their “dark, perverse†ways and their “sordid sex lives.†It attacks their “transient, promiscuous and unfaithful relationships,†and insists that gay people are “fundamentally incapable†of providing good homes for children — a claim flatly contradicted by virtually all relevant scientific authorities. Gay rights activists, Perkins said in 2011, are “intolerant,†“hateful†and “vile,†and are pursuing an “agenda†that “will destroy them and our nation.†An FRC official has said he wanted to “export homosexuals from the United States.†That same official, speaking on national television in 2010, advocated the criminalizing of gay sex.
Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association: The Southern Poverty Law Center offers these quotes from Fischer:
“Homosexuals are rarely monogamous and have as many as 300 to 1,000 sexual partners over the course of a lifetime. … [T]he risk of sexual abuse in a homosexual household is much greater than in a heterosexual household.”
– Bryan Fischer Web post, “The Truth about Gay Marriage and Civil Unions,” 2006“It is time, I suggest, to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military. The reason is simple: the more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security.”
– Bryan Fischer Web post, “No More Muslims in the U.S. Military,” 2009“Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.”
– Bryan Fischer Web post, “Homosexuality, Hitler, and ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,'” 2010“[T]he most compassionate thing we can do for Americans is to bring a halt to the immigration of Muslims into the U.S. This will protect our national security and preserve our national identity, culture, ideals and values. Muslims, by custom and religion, are simply unwilling to integrate into cultures with Western values and it is folly to pretend otherwise. In fact, they remain dedicated to subjecting all of America to sharia law and are working ceaselessly until that day of Islamic imposition comes.”
– Bryan Fischer Web post, “Time to Restrict Muslim Immigration to the U.S., Send Them Back Home,” 2010“Many of the tribal reservations today remain mired in poverty and alcoholism because many native [sic] Americans continue to cling to the darkness of indigenous superstition instead of coming into the light of Christianity and assimilating into Christian culture.”
– Bryan Fischer Web post, “Native Americans Morally Disqualified Themselves from the Land,” 2011
There are so many more. Literally, over a thousand. But to Laura Ingraham, apparently these are just “good people who just happen to have a different point of view.”
Ingraham hosted former FBI agent and Bob Hamer” target=”_blank”>author Bob Hamer, who admitted he knows nothing about the SPLC in the segment. Hamer then immediately introduces the pro-pedophile group NAMBLA, the North American Man/Boy Love Association, into the segment as an example of “real hatred.”
Ingraham’s other guest, hate group leader Bob Dane, Communications Director for the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
The SPLC notes that FAIR is closely associated with white supremacist and white nationalist groups, and offers these quotes from its leaders:
“As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?”
— FAIR founder and board member John Tanton, Oct. 10, 1986“I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”
— John Tanton, letter to eugenicist and ecology professor Garrett Hardin (now deceased), Dec. 10, 1993“I blame ninety-eight percent of responsibility for this country’s immigration crisis on Ted Kennedy and his political allies, who decided some time back in 1958, earlier perhaps, that immigration was a great way to retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance and hubris, and the immigration laws from the 1920s were just this symbol of that, and it’s a form of revengism, or revenge, that these forces continue to push the immigration policy that they know full well are [sic] creating chaos and will continue to create chaos down the line.”
— FAIR President Dan Stein, “Oral History of the Federation for American Immigration Reform,” interview of Dan Stein by John Tanton, August 1994.“Do we leave it to individuals to decide that they are the intelligent ones who should have more kids? And more troublesome, what about the less intelligent, who logically should have less? Who is going to break the bad news [to less intelligent individuals], and how will it be implemented?”
— John Tanton, letter to eugenicist Robert K. Graham (now deceased), Sept. 18, 1996“Immigrants don’t come all church-loving, freedom-loving, God-fearing … Many of them hate America, hate everything that the United States stands for. Talk to some of these Central Americans.”
— FAIR President Dan Stein, interviewed by Tucker Carlson, Oct. 2, 1997
At issue is that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls groups “hate groups” after they have consistently documented those groups disseminating lies repeatedly. Also, the Southern Poverty Law Center adds:
All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.
But Ingraham’s viewers will never know any of this, because she has no intention of shedding light on anything that would destroy her ugly world view.
Perhaps what’s truly vile about Ingraham’s brand of “journalism” is the information it restricts from her viewers. The SPLC produced an important and disturbing report about the rise of hate groups in America, militant so-called “Patriot” groups that are planning attacks against Americans, that are creating lies, conspiracy theories, and promoting hate of America’s first black President.
The Southern Poverty Law Center notes “the Patriot movement… generally believes that the federal government is conspiring to take Americans’ guns and destroy their liberties as it paves the way for a global “one-world government.†From a mere 149 organizations in 2008, the number of Patriot groups shot up to 512 in 2009, jumped again to 824 in 2010, and then skyrocketed to 1,274 in 2011 before hitting their all-time high last year.”
Now, in the wake of the mass murder of 26 children and adults at a Connecticut school and the Obama-led gun control efforts that followed, it seems likely that that growth will pick up speed once again.
Fox News viewers will never know the deep-seated danger to their own way of life, because Laura Ingraham has an agenda that does not include fair and balanced.
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Hat tip: Mediaite