A family-values advocate long critical of homosexual political activists is scheduled to make a groundbreaking presentation to 500 homosexual media professionals today, urging them “to avoid the temptation to be ‘gay advocates’ on the job.”
Peter LaBarbera, senior policy analyst for Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America, will address the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association conference in Dallas.
The homosexual journalists’ organization “works from within the news industry to foster fair and accurate coverage of lesbian and gay issues and opposes newsroom bias against lesbians, gay men and all other minorities,” according to its website.
Currently, pro-homosexual media bias in the “mainstream media” is “out of control,” said LaBarbera, who added that he hopes the panel will be a first step toward regaining balance in media coverage of the controversial issue.
“Too many in the media are allowing their story content to be dictated by GLAAD [Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation] and other vocal homosexual groups,” he said.
In fact, as WorldNetDaily.com reported, at last year’s convention in San Francisco participants and speakers openly questioned the necessity of bothering to seek comments and viewpoints of those opposing the homosexual political agenda.
In a panel featuring top news executives at that event, Michael Bradbury, managing editor of the Seattle Gay News, asked, “We have a tendency to always seek an opposing point of view for gay and lesbian civil rights issues. … How does the mainstream press justify that?”
The session’s moderator, CBS correspondent and NLGJA member Jeffrey Kofman, jumped in: “The argument (is): Why do we constantly see in coverage of gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues the homophobes and the fag-haters quoted in stories when, of course, we don’t do that with Jews, blacks, et cetera?”
Asked for her opinion, panelist Paula Madison, vice president of diversity at NBC and news director for the NBC’s New York City affiliate WNBC, responded: “I agree with him. I don’t see why we would seek out … the absurd, inane point of view just to get another point of view.”
Kofman said: “All of us have seen and continue to see a lot of coverage that includes perspectives on gay issues that include people who just simply are intolerant and perhaps not qualified as well.”
Commenting on today’s session in Dallas, LaBarbara says: “If Americans are going to regain their trust in the media, the producers of the news will have to start playing it down the middle.
“There is a vibrant debate over homosexuality in our culture, yet many articles and broadcasts look like they were composed by homosexual pressure groups rather than impartial journalists. That must stop, or citizens will continue to dismiss the media as elitist and out of touch with their concerns,” he added.
Joining LaBarbera on the panel, which will debate the question of whether homosexual journalists treat critics of “gay rights” fairly, will be ex-homosexual Michael Johnston of Kerusso Ministries and Parents Rights Coalition founder Brian Camenker, as well as two homosexual journalists. Former Washington Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser will moderate the panel discussion, which is scheduled to run from 3:30-5 p.m. at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas.
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