When ‘Balanced’ Journalism Is Bad

Posted on | October 4, 2013 | 113 Comments

As what point does journalistic objectivity shade into the “who are we to judge” posture of moral relativism? Do journalists have an obligation to call evil by its right name? These questions crossed my mind as I watched an ABC Good Morning America segment about Kaitlyn Hunt, who copped a plea Thursday on felony charges involving her sexual affair with a 14-year-old girl.

The brief segment — a teaser of a longer 20/20 story that will air tonight — was balanced. It wasn’t a one-sided puff piece, the kind of gay victimhood celebration the mainstream media were doing back in May when this story first went national.

Our jug-eared hero Detective Jeremy Shepherd was interviewed, as was Jim Smith, the father of the underage victim in the case. But I was uneasy as the segment closed with George Stephanopoulos on the Good Morning America set with ABC’s legal expert, Dan Abrams, who said sex with a 14-year-old is a crime “as a technical legal matter.”

One quick takeaway: Kaitlyn’s mother Kelley Hunt Smith has “crazy eyes.” If you see the 20/20 segment tonight, watch her closely during the interview segments and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

The ABC News segment did not mention that the “Free Kate” phenomenon has been supported by the movement to normalize pedophilia. Whatever the specific legal considerations of Kaitlyn Hunt’s case, it is her status as a jailbait sex “poster girl” that has concerned me from the start, because I’ve been reporting about this movement for more than a decade. (See, “Promoting pedophilia: Attempts to legitimize adult-child sex on rise,” April 2002.) Nor am I the only one concerned about this problem. See Matt Barber’s September 2011 report, “Sexual Anarchy,” see Rush Limbaugh’s January 2013 monologue, “Don’t Pooh-Pooh the Left’s Push to Normalize Pedophilia,” and the article that inspired that monologue, Wesley J. Smith’s National Review item, “Normalizing Pedophilia.”

If you think this movement doesn’t exist, you’re not paying attention. Just this week, in fact, Martha Kempner published an article at RH Reality Check with the headline, “Should a 13-Year-Old and Her 12-Year-Old Partner Really Be Considered Sex Offenders?”

It is in this context that we must view the decision by ABC News to feature the Kaitlyn Hunt story in a “balanced” way. What is the value of reporting about a sex offender and giving “both sides of the story,” if not to inspire debate about the legitimacy of age-of-consent laws?

Because that’s what this is really about: Florida establishes the age of consent at 16. Kaitlyn Hunt was 18; the vicitim in the case was 14; and the law categorizes sex with a 14-year-old as a felony.

This was an open-and-shut case and Kaitlyn Hunt should have taken the first plea bargain the prosecutors offered. It only became a national news story because the Hunt family figured they could get gay-rights activists to support them, and get sympathetic coverage from the liberal media — and they were right. Both the state’s largest gay rights group, Equality Florida, and the state chapter of the ACLU came out in support of the “Free Kate” crusade, as did Chris Hayes of MSNBC and other left-wing advocacy journalists who, evidently, view sex with kids as the next frontier of their “liberation” campaign.

People need to wake the hell up. These people are evil.

And that’s just a Neutral Objective Fact.

Category: ABC, Kaitlyn Hunt, Media Bias, Sex

Comments

113 Responses to “When ‘Balanced’ Journalism Is Bad”

BredRightAndTrue
October 4th, 2013 @ 3:26 pm

Of course you have disdain for Jeanette. Jeanette, and many others just like her, live a life committed to supporting morality and exposing truth.

Evildoers, and those who support and cheer their evil acts (see: ColdFury, RCZ, etc.), are filled with rage when they are inevitably exposed for the vile and soulless animals they are… courtesy of the Jeanettes of this world. Evil despises light. Hence, you despise its disinfecting ability.

Adults sexually molesting children is far from being a “trivial matter.” It is about as disgusting and evil as it gets. The sooner your sick-and-twisted mindset and agenda are duly and fully exposed for all the world to see… the better. You, and your ilk, had best pray for God to have mercy on you–because there are many, many of us out here who never will, and we are more than prepared to fight against the depraved and the wicked.

Revelation 21:8
Dana
October 4th, 2013 @ 3:53 pm

I’ll say it again: Florida does not want Miss Hunt as a registered sex offender because that turns her into a permanent welfare case. This deal allows her, if she can make it through her probation with her ~~fingers~~ nose clean, to have no felony record and not be on the offenders list. She can still go to college, and she can still get a job.

Or she can make license plates for a few years and then be a welfare drone; that choice is up to her.
JadedByPolitics
October 4th, 2013 @ 4:03 pm

When ‘Balanced’ Journalism Is Bad http://t.co/MQzyVcwFcZ “People need to wake the hell up. These people are evil”
Jeanette Victoria
October 4th, 2013 @ 4:04 pm

Rachie is that you?
rmnixondeceased
October 4th, 2013 @ 4:09 pm

Heh. She has crazy eyes …
Mm
October 4th, 2013 @ 4:20 pm

Now, incest: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/10/sick-new-iranian-law-allows-fathers-to-marry-their-13-year-old-adopted-daughters/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Mm
October 4th, 2013 @ 4:22 pm

I don’t think so. This one can spell.
Professor_Why
October 4th, 2013 @ 4:31 pm

When ‘Balanced’ Journalism Is Bad http://t.co/wQ2f30Vnov
K-Bob
October 4th, 2013 @ 4:34 pm

Which explains all the desperate attempts to find newer and better pleasures, I presume.
K-Bob
October 4th, 2013 @ 4:35 pm

Or as Mm points out, they could just institute sharia and do it pretty much overnight.
K-Bob
October 4th, 2013 @ 4:37 pm

It ain’t the cost of her being on welfare that drives this at all. It’s her being the poster child for something far worse.
K-Bob
October 4th, 2013 @ 4:40 pm

Troll thinks distraction is a new tactic.

Gotta love the newbies.
AKIraA
October 4th, 2013 @ 5:38 pm

The viralread article you linked to on the other Hunt post says this:

“The younger girl’s age made her too young legally to have sex, but no one disputed that she was a willing partner for Hunt, who was 18 when their sexual involvement began in late 2012. An arrest affidavit said that in December the freshman sent text messages to Hunt, arranging to meet in a school restroom toilet stall, where the girls “started kissing.”

Looks like the younger girl was the initiator of the bathroom meet.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
October 4th, 2013 @ 5:38 pm

You seem to have some issues. I have no interest demonizing homosexuals. I do have an interest in seeing adults who recklessly and intentionally engage in sexual relations with underaged persons be prosecuted. Kate Hunt was warned repeatedly to stop what she was doing and she kept doing it.

Now she is paying the price for engaging in that behavior.
Steve Skubinna
October 4th, 2013 @ 5:48 pm

No wonder she’s the poster girl for the movement.

Kaitlyn is a NAMBLA wet dream… or would be if they swung that way. It’s really hard to present pedophiles as anything other than creepy stalkers no normal person wants anywhere near children. The cute cheerleader makes much better copy than the pudgy fiftysomething guy hanging out at the bus terminal looking for runaways.
Art Deco
October 4th, 2013 @ 5:51 pm

People cannier than the NAMBLA crowd will figure out ways to leverage cases like this. Been done.

http://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Evil-Pseudo-Experts-Corruption-Disguised/dp/1581824599/ref=la_B001JRYOEQ_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380923390&sr=1-1
Matthew W
October 4th, 2013 @ 5:55 pm

Crazy chicks have great knockers !!!

I’m good with crazy !!
Quartermaster
October 4th, 2013 @ 6:09 pm

Precisely! Besides, he’s an Alabama fan too.
Jack
October 4th, 2013 @ 6:41 pm

Sounds like a book written by a Nazi. They were socially conservative too.
thatMrGguy
October 4th, 2013 @ 6:58 pm

When ‘Balanced’ Journalism Is Bad http://t.co/4nzpz5qgIs
Mike G.
October 4th, 2013 @ 7:04 pm

Yeah, especially that…Go Clemson Tigers!
tlk244182
October 4th, 2013 @ 7:16 pm

Yes, but it doesn’t last.
cmdr358
October 4th, 2013 @ 7:33 pm

Then she’s probably one of those “women” who have a crew cut, wear a wallet with a long chain and have all the prerequisite bumper stickers on their Subaru Foresters.
LN_Smithee
October 4th, 2013 @ 8:49 pm

The kind of person who knows that if she says nothing when people go on immoral crusades, the immoral crusaders win.

Duh.
rmnixondeceased
October 4th, 2013 @ 9:05 pm

No, they were totalitarian assclowns. Rather like you.
Steve Skubinna
October 4th, 2013 @ 10:09 pm

Socially conservative? With the universal health care, government education, and total party control of all leisure and sporting activities?

Or did you mean social as a riff on the national Socialist German Worker’s Party?
cmdr358
October 4th, 2013 @ 10:30 pm

Watching 20/20……..still waiting for the so-called journalist to ask the Hunts about the lies they used to get the gay community behind them when this all started ……or since Steven Hunt is a former LEO and as such presumably knows the law, why he didn’t warn his daughter off…..or about Mr. Hunt’s violent threats of gracious bodily harm against individuals online…..still waiting……
cmdr358
October 4th, 2013 @ 10:31 pm

….maybe on next weeks show?
ChandlersGhost
October 4th, 2013 @ 11:07 pm

We heard you the last time you posted this exact same comment and no one paid attention.
cmdr358
October 4th, 2013 @ 11:08 pm

It doesn’t matter. Kaitlyn Hunt, as an 18 year old, broke the law.
Some people just need to stop making excuses, creating false justifications and shilly-shallying.
It is against the law in the State of Florida for an adult to have sex with a 14 year old.
End of discussion.
Mjolnir Hammerschlag
October 4th, 2013 @ 11:09 pm

Oh the various criminal psychoses, those compelled to commit child sexual assault have proven nearly universally non-responsive to therapy. In other words, the recidivism is extremely high.

This looks like it may be one of those cases.
Mjolnir Hammerschlag
October 4th, 2013 @ 11:14 pm

Kinda like Sandusky. He intimated that he had done nothing wrong.

That’s why it’s called a mental illness, but the APA, which was hijacked by extreme Leftists in 1973, is trying to ‘normalize’ pederasty, along with many other paraphilias, like they did homosexuality.

Look up, for instance, the RIND Study of 1998, and before that, the article by Dr. Satinover:

THE TROJAN COUCH.
Bob Belvedere
October 5th, 2013 @ 12:52 am

I’d like to give Mike Hendrix, the proprietor of the blog Cold Fury, five minutes with a pedophile-lover like you.

http://coldfury.com/
Bob Belvedere
October 5th, 2013 @ 12:56 am

THIS.
ChandlersGhost
October 5th, 2013 @ 12:59 am

Godwin’s Law proved three comments into a thread. What a genius.
Fareedi al Laayla al Qakhaul
October 5th, 2013 @ 1:23 am

Actually I’m not “extremely disappointed”, I’m damn near apoplectic over this turn of events!
Fareedi al Laayla al Qakhaul
October 5th, 2013 @ 1:35 am

You know, the lickspittles and trucklers in the Florida State’s Attorney’s Office know exactly what they’re doing here!

St Kate gets a few months in the hoosegow, so the folks in Indian River County get their justice and are satisfied, then they pretty much kick the bitch out of Florida and out of their hair forever, only to turn her and her army of miscreants loose on the rest of the country!
Kaitlyn Hunt-Media: ‘Is 12 the New 18?’ | Regular Right Guy
October 5th, 2013 @ 4:07 am

[…] The Other McCain posted an article today that raises ugly suspicions about the MSM’s objectivity in the question of underage consent laws across the nation. […]
rmnixondeceased
October 5th, 2013 @ 7:52 am

😉
rmnixondeceased
October 5th, 2013 @ 7:53 am

+1 for vocabulary …
Alessandra
October 5th, 2013 @ 9:44 am

Stephanopoulos learned his way of thinking from Bill Clinton… ‘nough said!
Alessandra
October 5th, 2013 @ 9:49 am

“Homosexuality down your throat” Ernst Rohm was a socially conservative? You don’t know what kind of people were the Nazis

http://alessandrareflections.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/blogsome-nazis-hitler-rohm-and-homosexuality/

http://alessandrareflections.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/blogsome-nazi-homosexuals-an-inconvenient-reality-for-liberals/
Alessandra
October 5th, 2013 @ 9:50 am

Seconded – why did she keep getting all this plea deals?
Alessandra
October 5th, 2013 @ 9:52 am

She can live off her parents for the rest of her life, and the state of Florida would be better off registering her as a crappy sex offender – that is what this crap of young woman is
Alessandra
October 5th, 2013 @ 9:53 am

The APA is a disgrace to society; when it comes to sexuality they are completely corrupt.
Alessandra
October 5th, 2013 @ 9:56 am

I’d like to prosecute the prosecutors for all these inane plea deals… jeesh
Fareedi al Laayla al Qakhaul
October 5th, 2013 @ 10:28 am

Because photogenic, articulate St Kate has great value to Gay Inc as a poster child and spokeslesbian for their cause and because she’s just a burden to Indian River County which is glad to get rid of her…
jack001
October 5th, 2013 @ 7:25 pm

“Anyone who thinks of homosexual *love* is our enemy. We reject anything which emasculates our people and makes it a plaything for our enemies, for we know that life is fight, and it is madness to think that men will ever embrace fraternally”
Heinrich Himmler, 14 May 1928

“I wish to explore a few ideas on the subject of homosexuality. Amongst certain homosexuals there exists the following point of view: “what I do is of no importance to anyone else, it is a personal and private matter”. Everything which touches upon sexual matters ceases to be private when the life or death of a nation depends on it. It is the difference between world domination or annihilation.

A nation with many children can gain supremacy and mastery of the wordl. A pure race with few children already as one foot in the grave; in fifty or a hundred years it will be of no significance; in two hundred years it will be extinct. It is essential to realise that if we allow this infection to continue in Germany without being able to fight it, it will be the end of Germany, of the Germanic world. Unfortunately this is not the simple matter it was for our forefathers. For them, the few isolated cases were simply abnormalities; they drowned them in bogs. Those who found bodies in the mire did not know that in 90% of the cases they found themselves face to face with a homosexual who had been drowned with all his belongings. This was not punishment, more the simple elimination of this particular abnormality. It is vital we rid ourselves of them; like weed we must pull them up, throw them on the fire and burn them. This is not out of a spirit of vengeance, but of necessity; these creatures must be exterminated.
Heinrich Himmler, 18 Feb 1937

He has the same mentality when it comes to homosexuals as you do. And try to remember Roehm was executed in 1937 and Himmler’s SS became the real Reich security.
jack
October 5th, 2013 @ 7:27 pm

I guess you’re a totalitarian assclown then.

Himmler’s take on gays sounds a wee bit too much like yours, dont you think?

“Anyone who thinks of homosexual *love* is our enemy. We reject anything which emasculates our people and makes it a plaything for our enemies, for we know that life is fight, and it is madness to think that men will ever embrace fraternally”
Heinrich Himmler, 14 May 1928

“I wish to explore a few ideas on the subject of homosexuality. Amongst certain homosexuals there exists the following point of view: “what I do is of no importance to anyone else, it is a personal and private matter”. Everything which touches upon sexual matters ceases to be private when the life or death of a nation depends on it. It is the difference between world domination or annihilation.

A nation with many children can gain supremacy and mastery of the wordl. A pure race with few children already as one foot in the grave; in fifty or a hundred years it will be of no significance; in two hundred years it will be extinct. It is essential to realise that if we allow this infection to continue in Germany without being able to fight it, it will be the end of Germany, of the Germanic world. Unfortunately this is not the simple matter it was for our forefathers. For them, the few isolated cases were simply abnormalities; they drowned them in bogs. Those who found bodies in the mire did not know that in 90% of the cases they found themselves face to face with a homosexual who had been drowned with all his belongings. This was not punishment, more the simple elimination of this particular abnormality. It is vital we rid ourselves of them; like weed we must pull them up, throw them on the fire and burn them. This is not out of a spirit of vengeance, but of necessity; these creatures must be exterminated.
Heinrich Himmler, 18 Feb 1937
jack001
October 5th, 2013 @ 7:31 pm

Universal healthcare and government education, not to mention 3% unemployment were the good parts of nazi germany and I suppose based in socialism though not Marxist, international socialism based on class. The bad parts: militarism, xenophobia, imperialism, nationalism, social conservatism, homophobia, and a hatred of modern art are all the right wing side and the side you have in common with Nazis.