The NPR Debate

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO HEAVILY EDITED AUDIO FROM NPR

Today, I had the opportunity to talk about The Radiance Foundation’s pro-life/pro-adoption themed TooManyAborted.com campaigns on NPR’s “Tell Me More” with Michel Martin.  Today’s show should’ve been called “Tell Me Less” as a significant portion of my words were cut from the interview. I debated the Rev. Carlton Veazey of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Sadly, NPR couldn’t resist the bias. Feeling great after the debate, I soon realized, after listening to the aired interview, that only parts of what I said were kept intact, while Rev. Veazey’s words were unedited, kept in full.

Not so unbelievable. This is NPR, of course.

Michel Martin comes across fair-minded, and she’s not a flame thrower, but axing my key points, especially during my closing thoughts, was typical liberal bias. They completely eliminated any reference I made to “Title X” clinics, purging even the words “Title X”. I elaborated extensively on what those clinics provide, the taxpayer funding, and how “Planned Parenthood is not the savior of the community”.  All axed.  It doesn’t fit their narrative to have a prolife individual address the existence of Title-X funded clinics. Host Martin was also temporarily confused, referring to Title-X clinics as religious organizations. They cut out that entire line of confusion as well.

In my closing thoughts, I was speaking about how the abortion industry is all about money. I talked about how Planned Parenthood had a $1 billion budget and nearly $1 billion in assets. That’s where they cut, leaving me 15 seconds to his near 2 minute rant. They eliminated my explanation as to how abortion is all about money by challenging Rev. Veazey about his $183K annual salary by working, according to his own organization’s 990 IRS form, 5 hours a week! He denied it up and down, and I just reminded him that his organization filed the 990; I was just repeating information from it. In fact, you hear me saying: “I assume you filed it honestly.” NPR’s incomplete transcript of the show, with major sections removed, claims my word ‘filed’ was “UNINTELLIGIBLE”. NPR moved to protect him and struck all of those comments. See the relevant page from the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice’s 990 below:

The Rev. Carlton Veazey, President of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (a nationwide group of religious abortion apologists) has called abortion, not only a constitutional right, but a “God-given right”. His organization, which claims Christianity justifies killing innocent unborn children, has even less of an issue lying about The Radiance Foundation and our campaigns. They claimed, for instance, that our first campaign in January 2010 was “so inflammatory, it was taken down.” CBS Outdoor would beg to differ! None of our campaigns have ever been removed. That particular campaign actually remained up, on many boards, for weeks following the actual expiration of the contract. If one can justify killing, lying isn’t much of a stretch.

Despite mainstream media’s penchant to distort the truth and protect propagandists like Rev. Veazey, we are succeeding in exposing pro-abortion myths.

We do what we do because of love. Our passion for people to know and feel hope is why we try to reach hearts and minds with the truth. And no matter how painful, the truth, always, sets us free.