Fox News Channel, which owes its No. 1 cable news rating to its immense popularity with conservatives, is donating $10,000 to an organization of homosexual journalists.

Fox News tells viewers "We Report. You Decide." But it has made the donation to "connect with" the estimated 650 journalists who are attending a National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association event at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel this weekend.

The company has joined with the Miami Herald, McClatchy Co., CBS, CNN, Hearst Corp., US Newswire, ESPN, Bloomberg, ABC News, The Los Angeles Times, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Washington Post and Tribune Co. in sponsoring the event for the organization that claims 1,300 members nationwide.

"By sponsoring the 'Out in the Sunshine,' you gain a direct link to top media professionals from across the country and around the globe. The various levels of sponsorship allow you increased visibility, and access to influential members of the mainstream and LGBT media," said the convention website.

A message left with Fox News seeking comment was not returned immediately, but an activist group had a contribution ready for the debate.

Americans for Truth essentially asked Fox News to live up to its own words, or eat them.

Peter LaBarbera

In a letter e-mailed yesterday from AFT chief Peter LaBarbera to Fox News Channel President Roger Ailes, LaBarbera said the network's "fair and balanced" reputation is on the line.

"Roger Ailes must know that this is folly," LaBarbera told WND. "I want to make him defend it. If they want to try to tell us they can fund extremist homosexual activists posing as journalists, then the public needs to know."

There isn't any "fairness" or "balance" when a news agency such as Fox provides "large grants to a special interest group like the [NLGJA] that demonizes religious conservatives and, worse, seeks to influence the media nationwide to exclude conservative critics of the homosexual political/cultural agenda from gay-related stories," he said.

"A balancing grant to AFT or a like-minded pro-family organization would signal that Fox News Channel is committed to living up to its credo and not taking sides in the Culture War. It would also … show respect for the tens of millions of Americans who do not deserve to be likened to the KKK simply for adhering to historic Judeo-Christian beliefs."

LaBarbera especially was upset over claims NLGJA members have made that pro-family groups and individuals can be compared to "white supremacists."

Eric Hegedus, the president of the NLGJA, has posted website comments addressing the need for reporters to seek balance when reporting on controversial issues. But he denies the need to seek comment from pro-family organizations when the homosexual agenda is the subject of the report.

"Specifically," Hegedus wrote, "how appropriate is it to quote interviewees whose ideas could be considered homophobic?

"Certainly, news organizations have written extensively about white supremacists and other hate groups. For instance, in October we saw a flurry of stories about 13-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede, who use entertainment to promote the supremacist movement … But I doubt that any journalist is adding them to a source contact list for bringing 'balance' to future stories about reparations, interracial marriage, the Holocaust or immigration.

"That same ethic needs to extend to LGBT coverage, too," he said.

He said that journalists will have to start choosing those they interview by "rethinking the appropriateness of both questions and answers."

LaBarbera said the NLGJA calls itself a professional organization for journalists, but still campaigns that covering "both sides" of homosexuality-related issues is like quoting the KKK on stories about race.

"Their obsession is societal approval," LaBarbera said. "Whatever institution they're at, they want approval. They say they're objective journalists but their leaders are comparing pro-family people to the KKK. The people are deluded if they think of themselves still as journalists first."

The idea that Christians and the KKK equate isn't going to fly, he said.

"I believe society is still not that far gone. There's still a lot of common sense in the country," he said.

Also on the list of contributors was Wal-Mart, which recently confirmed to WND that it has joined the "gay and lesbian" chamber of commerce.

Hegedus, in his online writings, also took a shot at WND, whose managing editor, David Kupelian, wrote "The Marketing of Evil," in which he documents the "gay rights" agenda and campaign in America.

Hegedus noted that the book concludes that the mainstream press has contributed to the "gay-ing" of America by working in tandem with the movement's public relations machinery.

"To that, I say nonsense," Hegedus wrote.

LaBarbera also had another reaction, too.

He noted that there have been almost $500,000 in contributions for a convention that is expected to attract about 650 journalists. He said he wondered where the money was going.

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