Topic: NewsBusters
A July 20 NewsBusters post by Michael M. Bates offers a misleading defense of Mitt Romney's bashing of Barack Obama's support of age-appropriate sex education by misleadingly attacking a Chicago Sun-Times column and hiding details about Obama's plan.
Bates referred to the July 20 Sun-Times column by Lynn Sweet, which asserted that Romney "is twisting benign comments Obama made about sex education." Bates wrote: "Ms Sweet notes that Obama emphasized that sex education needs to be "age appropriate." Left unstated is what exactly that means." Bates later asked: "What about parents who don't want schools teaching these concepts? How easy would it be for them to opt out and would their children be stigmatized if they did?"
In fact, Sweet did explain what "age appropriate" sex education is: "Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Obama backs teaching youngsters about inappropriate touching by strangers. And Obama would let parents opt out of a sex education course."
Bates concludes: "Ms Sweet is wrong about how benign all this is." And Bates is wrong in failing to report all the facts in his attack on Sweet and Obama.
