When ‘Balanced’ Journalism Is Bad

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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.

 

113 comments

  1. Kaitlyn is dead inside she had no remorse for the cruel and manipulating phone messages she sent to her victim.

  5. Someone taped it on their cell and posted it She comes across really creepy an emotional flat-liner

  6. I am extremely disappointed in this plea deal…

    After all St Kate’s shenanigans after her initial arrest, and two previously refused plea deals, they authorities in Florida still show her leniency: No “sex offender” status. No felony record. And the worst blow of all is that, after her release on December 20, she can waltz out of Florida a free woman, and none of the proposed strict monitoring and supervision to which she would otherwise be subject will necessarily apply outside of Florida!

    We should heed Kate’s attorney’s and her parent’s remarks about her plans for continued activism, because now Kate has all the right credentials! All those organisations that had upto now silently distanced themselves from her are ready to embrace “Kate’s Fight” anew! Their poster girl has been crucified and risen again vindicated!

    Now that all is (almost) said and done, Kate and her “katers”, and the rest of homosexual pederast gay rights movement has won! And the last laugh is on us, I’m afraid…

  7. The ‘balanced’ network just fired their last unabashedly conservative commentator from Stephanopolous’ Sunday infomercial for ADM…

  8. Oh, and btw, I denounce myself for my heretically defeatist attitude, for what’s that’s worth…

  9. It simply goes to show that all the prosecutors ever wanted for Kate to cop a plea, which is standard procedure in such cases. That’s what has angered me about this case from the beginning. Hundreds of people in Florida have been charged under this statute, in quite similar circumstances, but we never even hear about those cases for the simple reason that the guilty defendant takes the plea deal, so it’s never more than a brief item in the local newspaper. Yet, specifically because they thought the gay movement would support them, the Hunts tried to turn this into a civil-rights case. And the dangerous possibility of a legal precedent that undermined all age-of-consent statutes was more real than even most conservatives believe. If you look at the arguments in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling , and if you know that Canada and some other countries have moved toward greater leniency in regard to underage sex . ….

    Well, this was dangerous and evil, and I am not ashamed to speak the blunt truth about it.

  10. I do recall that when this case first broke and reported in the sidebar on a few sites (Breitbart, e.g.), I believe you were virtually the only one taking notice to what was really happening and reporting the truth…

  11. Well, looky here, in my link at the sole comment by “Guest” with the “Gay Zombie Clown” avatar…

    I used to know that guy! IIRC, he called himself “Freddy At Night”…

  12. Normalizing sexual contact between adults and youths is going to require considerable legal legerdemain so will take the Regime perhaps twenty years. You have two competing constituency groups: girl power and the gay lobby.

    1. The threat of an accusation against a father is a useful tool for women who wish to convert a domestic economy based on marriage to one based on child-support payments. Ergo, resistance to the normalization of adult-child sex.

    2. The current cultural climate discourages men from careers which put them in the proximity of youth. Some people like it that way. Ergo, resistance to normalization.

    3. Residential child care is the redoubt of the social work industry. They need clients and a raison d’etre. Ergo, resistance.

    4. A large fraction of the homosexual population would like to get their hands on the goodies. Ergo, promotion.

    —

    Your going to have to work it so that pederasty is normalized but coitus between adult men and adolescent girls remains defined as pathological. It is going to take the purveyors of mass entertainment and the social work and mental health trade some time to thread that needle and then sell it to vapid jurists like Anthony Kennedy.

  13. After working years with teens, many of whom were diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder, I made the same observation.

    I believe this girl needs to learn to understand boundaries or she will be a menace to many for a long time.

  17. “the movement to normalize pedophilia”

    I would posit that the War on Pubic Hair is part of this.

  18. Oh, don’t worry. When she gets out, she and her putative paramour Latasha Thomas will teach each other many lessons about “boundaries” during their future visits to domestic violence court.

  19. Projection. You’re dead inside. Seriously, what kind of person goes on a moral crusade over such a trivial matter and spends the rest of her wasted life figuring out ways to demonize homosexuals?

  20. Hell is in the mind. If you don’t get bogged down with guilt over being amoral then you’re home free. Most hedonists are actually pretty happy people.

  23. Hmmm … exact same words from the troll “Joey (and variations after banning)” every time you post my dear. It appears RCZ and the #KaterHateGestapo have you targeted …

  24. Yeah, but joey’s serious this time. He even made up a bad ass sounding internet name for himself….”cold fury”, sounds scary! I’m guessing that Rambo was already taken? :-

  26. She? THAT’S even more badass.
    Wonder if she wears a crew cut , has her wallet on a chain and the prerequisite bumper stickers on her Forester?

  27. There may be happy hedonists at 20, when other hedonists find them attractive and accommodating. By 40, not so much, by 60 just sad and possibly a danger to themselves and others as they keep trying to reclaim the corporal joys they’ve outgrown.

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