SPLiCing the Facts

Campus Report ^ | May 8, 2009 | Bethany Stotts

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SPLiCing the Facts

by: Bethany Stotts, May 08, 2009

The mainstream media should reevaluate where it gets its source material on hate crimes, and soon.

In my article, “Right-Wing Extremism Explored,” I wrote that the oft-criticized Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report was “influenced by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).” David E. Smith, Executive Director of the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), asked this correspondent what role the SPLC played in such profiling, since his own organization was listed as a “hate group” by the SPLC for being “anti-gay.”

While the SPLC may be embraced by mainstream media outlets such as CNN and the New York Times, its research is of questionable scholarship. In 2003, Chip Berlet wrote for the SPLC’s Intelligence Report that “an array of right-wing foundations and think tanks support efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respected.” He categorized the American Enterprise Institute, the free-market Ludwig von Mises Institute and the Free Congress Foundation, among others, as bigoted because of their policy stances.

(The late Paul Weyrich headed the Free Congress Foundation at the time of Berlet’s writing).

The left-wing SPLC’s “hate groups map” lists conservative organizations such as IFI, the DC-based Traditional Values Coalition and Catholic Family Ministries, Inc. as hate groups alongside Ku Klux Klan chapters and the New Black Panther Party. The only differentiation between them is their particular “hate” category, and labels on this can range from “Christian Identity” to “Black Separatist,” “Ku Klux Klan,” “Radical Traditionalist Catholic,” “Antigay,” and “General Hate,” among others.

Recently SPLC’s founder Morris Dees praised the aforementioned DHS report, saying the results “sync up pretty much.”...