Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Dec. 16 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh uncritically repeats allegations made by a Utah woman who homeschools her children, telling only her side of the story without any apparent effort at verification or giving state officials a fair opportunity to respond.
Unruh reported that Denise Mafi claimed that a judge issued a "threat" that the state "would order her children taken away from her" over a homeschooling dispute purportedly centering on a paperwork issue. Unruh offers no evidence that he verified Mafi's claims; he merely notes that "A WND call to the prosecutor in the case did not get a response, nor did other judicial officials respond to inquiries about the situation." In other words, Unruh did not bother to wait until officials were available to tell their side of the story before publishing his one-sided article.
Unruh went on to liken these state officials to Nazis, stating that "such threats are becoming more and more common in Germany, but that nation still lives by a Nazi-era law that makes homeschooling illegal." This is in reference to a German case in which, as we detailed, Unruh similarly denied officials a fair opportunity to respond and treated homeschoolers' claims as unassailable fact.
Unruh has a history of this kind of unbalanced, unfair reporting, particularly on the issue of homeschooling; Unruh's own children are homeschooled, which makes him clearly biased on the subject (and apparently prone to likening anyone who disagrees as Nazis).
