Published: 18 October 2012
Country: US
American TV network CNN had given an airtime to Bryan Fischer, spokesman of American Family Association, anti-gay group calling for the boycott of Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Mix It Up at Lunch Day” project. Fischer spent four minutes on air making ridiculous and hateful statements about homosexuality over B-roll footage of schoolchildren eating lunch, reports Columbia Journalism Review (CJR).
SPLC “Mix it Up at Lunch Day” project has been designed to teach children tolerance and prevent bullying in schools by asking students to “connect with someone new” during lunch on October 30. But Fischer’s American Family Association declared that the decade-old lunchtime campaign pushed a “pro-homosexual” agenda, should be boycotted, and that concerned parents should pull their children out of school on October 30, lest they be forced to sit next to a gay classmate.
And, as reported by Columbia Journalism Review, the association’s cry for media attention worked. The New York Times covered the boycott on 14th of October and CNN Newsroom had spokesman Bryan Fischer call in to explain the group’s logic.
But Fischer’s track record on gay issues is well known to the public. It is enough to check his Twitter account where he called the SPLC a “pro-bullying hate group” and extolled the health benefits of white bread, reports CJR. Also New Yorker published a profile of Fischer after he launched the attack on Richard Grenell, a Republican foreign-policy expert who is openly gay.
In 4 minutes Fischer’s speech on CNN, anchor Carol Costello tried to challenge his assertions, including claims that both Hitler and his soldiers were gay. Then she gave up and said the interview was over and Fischer’s statements were “just not true,” reports CJR.
Good for Costello for cutting Fischer off before he could espouse more of his group’s rhetoric to a national audience. But it would have been better if she hadn’t given him any time at all; his claims are clearly and obviously false. If CNN Newsroom had to report on the story (at the very least to clear up the lies that may have caused some schools to drop out of Mix It Up at Lunch this year), it could have easily done so without including Fischer. Not every pundit deserves a platform, reports Columbia Journalism Review.
