Fox News Bias: crying over spilt cults
Posted by: Neocon in Religion, What?!?, tags: academic question, ammo, anchor, bias, biases, brainwashed, child abuse, crimes, doings, ed morrissey, flds sect, fox, hot air, last names, news presenter, origins, producers, sorry ladies, texas officials, young girls(via Hot Air) This clip is getting a lot of coverage.
Sorry ladies, but maybe you should have at least kept the kids’ last names before you start complaining about treatment from the authorities. There is no way that Texas officials could properly sort through all this mess without removing the kids from your custody. They couldn’t even choose who to isolate if they thought it was only a certain group of young girls being abused because you’ve been raising them with community mothers and a lack of any documentation showing their real origins or families. They don’t want to discuss the private doings of their church or the charges against them. All they want to do is crank up the public pity. I hope they find the public’s reaction lacking.
Here’s an article with some background on how the Texas police are justifying themselves.
State officials Tuesday defended their decision to suddenly separate mothers from many of the children taken in a raid on a polygamist ranch in West Texas.
Texas Children’s Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said the separation was made Monday after they decided that children are more truthful in interviews about possible abuse if their parents are not around.
When state troopers and child welfare officials seized 416 children from the compound, 139 women accompanied them on their own and had been allowed to stay with the children until Monday, when they were driven back to the compound.
Only women with children under 5 could stay at the San Angelo Coliseum where they were being held.
Meisner said the decision was made after much discussion with experts.
The mothers have complained the state deceived them, but Meisner said the situation was explained and, while there were tears, the operation went smoothly.
“I can tell you we believe the children who are victims of abuse or neglect, and particularly victims at the hands of their own parents, certainly are going to feel safer to tell their story when they don’t have a parent there that’s coaching them with how to respond,” Meisner said.
Although Meisner called the decision typical in any case her agency works “every single day,” she also ticked off a list of obstacles making the seizure of more than 400 children from a polygamist sect anything but typical.
As for the Fox anchor… Get a grip. Ed Morrissey puts as good as I could hope to.
Even if this was entirely authentic, and there isn’t any reason to suspect it isn’t, is it really appropriate for a news presenter to weep on camera when hosting an interview?It isn’t just an academic question. The FLDS sect stands accused of some pretty heinous child-abuse crimes. If those charges are substantiated, then the women Fox interviewed are either complicit in those crimes or brainwashed by sect leaders. A little emotional distance would seem more appropriate than to act out in the manner shown here, which biases the presentation rather strongly in favor of the women. The show’s producers brief their hosts on the subjects that will arise in the interview, and someone at Fox should have determined whether the host should have been reassigned.
So critics now have some ammo for the Fox bias arguments… it just comes from an unlikely angle.
