Topic: WorldNetDaily
Oh, here's a shock: WorldNetDaily has apparently hooked up with another hate group to smear one of its declared enemies -- and the editor's daughter was enlisted to do it.
A March 16 WND article by Kathleen Farah -- a daughter of WND editor Joseph Farah -- claimed that "the World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides held a no-adults-welcome panel at the United Nations in which Planned Parenthood distributed a brochure entitled 'Healthy, Happy and Hot,'" which "targets young people and contains graphic details on sex. It also encourages casual sex in many forms." But Farah offers no evidence to support her claim, nor does she quote anyone in her article substantiating it. Farah also made no apparent effort to contact the Girl Scouts, Planned Parenthood, or the United Nations for a response.
Apparently, Farah lifted her claims from the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), a right-wing group that was created by Human Life International, an anti-abortion group with a history of anti-Semitism -- it once blamed Jews for the abortion-rights movement. At no point in her article does Farah credit C-FAM as the source of the information she cribbed.
It's not until a March 19 WND article by Drew Zahn that an actual source is provided for the claim -- a representataive of the right-wing group Family Watch International. Again, C-FAM's apparently contribution is curiously omitted; then again, if we took information at face value from a hate group, we'd try to hide it too.
It's also the first time there's a statement (albeit buried in the 10th paragraph) from the Girl Scouts, which states that the pamphlet was not distributed to the girls but left on a table from a previous presentation.
Zahn, however, ignored that the Girl Scouts also stated:
The Girl Scouts of the USA was not contacted by Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) regarding its initial story to discuss the facts of this event. Had they applied these basic journalistic standards, perhaps the true details of this event would have been reported.
Nevertheless, Zahn began his article by falsely asserting that the Planned Parenthood "teen-sex promoting guide" was "provided for Girl Scouts in attendance."
Zahn does concede that the brochure was "produced by the International Planned Parenthood Federation for young people with HIV." As Right Wing Watch points out: "Honestly, does the right-wing claim even seem plausible? Are we really supposed to believe that Girl Scout leaders kicked all the adults out of the room so that Planned Parenthood could distribute a brochure to a group of young girls about how to lead sexually fulfilling lives while living with HIV?"
It seems that Joseph Farah has infected another daughter with his shoddy journalism standards; we've detailed how daughter Alyssa Farah has similarly engaged in shipshod writing for WND.
