ABC Gives Disgraced Pastor Platform to Bash Religious Right

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4415

By Erin Brown

On Feb. 1, “World News Sunday” helped shamed former-pastor Ted Haggard take shots at the Christian conservatives who he says “shunned him.”

Reporter Dan Harris introduced the piece by qualifying Haggard as a former “insider, a powerful pastor at the highest levels of the Christian conservative movement.”

Haggard, who made headlines two years ago for getting caught in a gay sex scandal, is now offering advice to the Christian conservative movement; and ABC gave him the megaphone. Here is a portion of Harris’ interview with Haggard:   HARRIS: But now, two years after he was fired in a sex and drug scandal, Haggard is back with some frank criticism of a movement he now says is off course. In his first broadcast news interview since he was brought down by a gay sex scandal, Ted Haggard says the movement he once helped lead has gone too far to the right.

           HAGGARD: I think the religious right is increasingly impotent right now in America. And that it’s going to have to return to the gospel in order to regain strength.

          HARRIS: How is it impotent? Because —

          HAGGARD: Well, this last election demonstrated that the only thing it did that it’s proud of is proposition eight in California. And that’s not much to be proud of.

Harris offered no follow up question regarding Haggard’s ironic statement that the movement, and not Haggard, is the one “off course,” or how a statewide majority passage of proposition eight is “not much to be proud of.” Instead, Harris allowed Haggard to continue preaching about the “mistakes” of the church.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/erin-brown/2009/02/02/abc-gives-disgraced-pastor-platform-bash-religious-right

2009-02-02