The Tide Is Biased, Part 2: Justifying the Lie

WorldNetDaily finally tells its readers the truth about the Heinz endowments -- then decides the truth is irrelevant.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 8/17/2004

It has taken six months, but WorldNetDaily has finally gotten around to balancing the story about the Heinz endowments.

If you'll recall, back in February, WND ran a story which claimed that the Heinz family endowments, controlled by Teresa Heinz Kerry, donated millions to "radical, anti-American groups" through an organization called the Tides Center. Editor Joseph Farah himself got into the act as well, writing a article the following month making a similar claim. This was followed by a Farah column in April criticizing "Teresa Heinz Kerry's nonprofit Tides Center" and a July story peddling a modified version of the claim and another Farah column in which he claims that "Teresa Heinz Kerry was behind the funding of radical causes including Act-Up, Islamist jihadists, anarchists who disrupted the Seattle World Trade Organization meeting and communist front groups" as well as groups "at the forefront of planned demonstrations and disruptions at the Republican National Convention later this summer."

One little problem, as ConWebWatch has previously documented: It's a lie. But WND readers never knew because in all of those stories over six months, WND and Farah did not print what the Heinz endowments and the Tides Center had to say in response -- that Heinz endowment money given to Tides is earmarked for specific purposes, none of which involve those "radical, anti-American groups" Farah keeps ranting about.

So, when an Aug. 10 WND story once again accuses Heinz Kerry of funding yet another wacko leftie cause (this time, Internet service in Cuba), the big surprise was that the story actually included the other side for the very first time.

Of course, it's done in an ingenuous fashion to cover up the fact that WND has ignored the other side for lo these many months. For example, it states that "The Heinz Foundation is doing its best to spin the connections as tenuous" and treats the response from the head of the Heinz endowments as recent when it was actually made months ago.

But once WND has broken down and told the truth, it declares the truth irrelevant. According to the story: "However, donors to the Tides Foundation pay approximately 10 percent above and beyond the amount grant recipients get for administrative fees and overhead to Tides. Therefore, critics say, it is accurate to say that donors to Tides are indeed supporting all of its causes."

That's a logical distortion so grotesque that the only proper response is to apply it to one of those "critics" -- WorldNetDaily.

As ConWebWatch has documented, WND has had a business relationship over the years with News World Communications, controlled by Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his Unification Church: a content-sharing agreement with Insight magazine (the print version of which is now defunct) and the appearance of Farah's syndicated column in the weekly edition of the Washington Times.

By the standard WND has established in its criticism of Heinz Kerry, the existence of this relationship means that WND supports all of the activities of the Unification Church -- including the crowning of Moon as "messiah" in a ceremony held at a federal office building.

What, you say? Farah has editorialized against that event? Irrelevant. If there was hard cash exchanged in that business relationship, who can say that that some of it didn't go toward a rhinestone or two in Moon's crown?

As long as WND sticks to its story about Heinz Kerry and the Tides Center -- which it appears clearly intent on doing; an Aug. 16 story spreads the lie once more that groups objectionable to WND "get funding from a foundation chaired by Teresa Heinz Kerry" despite the fact that Heinz Kerry is nowhere to be found on the Tides Center list of officers and directors -- we'll stick to our story about WND and the Unification Church.