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<\/a>Photo by: BARBARA L. SALISBURY
A security guard was shot at the Family Research Council building in Washington on Aug. 15, 2012. Floyd Lee Corkins told authorities that he wanted to kill as many employees as possible after finding the group on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map.”(The Washington Times\/File)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n
By Valerie Richardson – The Washington Times<\/p>\n
Brad Dacus was thousands of miles away in California last weekend when the\u00a0Charlottesville<\/a>\u00a0protest erupted, so he was flabbergasted when CNN labeled his Pacific Justice Institute a \u201chate group.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHere are all the active hate groups where you live,\u201d said the CNN wire story headline on Chicago\u2019s WGN-TV website.<\/p>\n The article listed the 917 organizations on the Southern Poverty Law Center\u2019s much-disputed \u201chate map,\u201d which names racist groups like the Aryan Nation alongside mainstream conservative organizations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council.<\/p>\n Mr. Dacus\u2019 conservative Sacramento-based institute, which specializes in religious-liberty cases, was featured on the CNN list right below the Pacific Coast Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy is the Southern Poverty Law Center doing this? It\u2019s simple. They want to vilify and isolate anyone that doesn\u2019t agree with their very extremist leftist policy and ideology,\u201d said Mr. Dacus. \u201cThis isn\u2019t about defending civil rights; this is about attacking civil rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Other conservative groups blasted CNN and called on the cable network to retract the article.<\/p>\n \u201cI am shocked that CNN would publish such a false report on the heels of the\u00a0Charlottesville<\/a>\u00a0tragedy,\u201d said Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel\u2019s founder and chairman. \u201cTo lump peaceful Christian organizations, which condemn violence and racism, in with the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists is offensive. This is the epitome of fake news and is why people no longer trust the media.\u201d<\/p>\n Conservatives have repeatedly called out media outlets this year for uncritically repeating the SPLC\u2019s \u201chate group\u201d label, calling it inaccurate and arguing that it has put their organizations at risk for violence.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not hypothetical.<\/p>\n In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins shot and wounded a Family Research Council security guard and later told authorities that he wanted to kill as many employees as possible after finding the group on the SPLC\u2019s \u201chate map.\u201d<\/p>\n Tom McClusky, former vice president of government affairs at the Family Research Council, took to Twitter to say, \u201cThanks for the reminder @CNN of this inaccurate map. Last time I saw it one of my friends got hit with a bullet. Real responsible reporting.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. McClusky, now executive director at March for Life Education and Defense Fund, noted in another tweet that \u201c@CNN decides to reprint map that guided shooter to try to kill me & my colleagues because of our view on marriage.\u201d<\/p>\n In June, Liberty Counsel sued the charity tracker GuideStar for defamation for adding the SPLC tag to its list of nonprofits. GuideStar later removed the labels from its listings but said the information would be available upon request.<\/p>\n \u201cUsing the Southern Poverty Center as a source for information shows that CNN is not interested in reporting news but rather creating scandal and security threats,\u201d said Mr. Staver. \u201cIt is well known that the SPLC label against peaceful, nonviolent people and organizations has motivated some unhinged people to commit violence. This is no time to exploit the tragedy of\u00a0Charlottesville<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n CNN did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday but did add an editor\u2019s note to the story saying that the headline was changed to make it clear that the information came from the SPLC.<\/p>\n The new headline said, \u201cThe Southern Poverty Law Center\u2019s list of hate groups.\u201d In addition, CNN said it had replaced the list of 917 \u201chate groups\u201d with links to the SPLC website.<\/p>\n \u201cSome critics of the SPLC say the group\u2019s activism biases how it categorizes certain groups,\u201d said the CNN story. \u201cBut since the FBI doesn\u2019t keep track of domestic hate groups, the SPLC\u2019s tally is the widely accepted one.\u201d<\/p>\n That \u201chate group\u201d listing may be widely accepted on the left, but it\u2019s widely rejected on the right.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the Philanthropy Roundtable\u2019s Karl Zinsmeister called the SPLC a \u201ccash-collecting machine,\u201d pointing to its $50 million in contributions in 2015 and $334 million in holdings. In May, the Federalist\u2019s Stella Morabito called it a \u201cbig-money smear machine.\u201d<\/p>\n The Alabama-based center added to its coffers Wednesday with a $1 million donation from Apple CEO Tim Cook, who also said he would match 2-1 donations to the SPLC as well as a list of other designated groups until Sept. 30, citing the\u00a0Charlottesville<\/a>\u00a0clash.<\/p>\n \u201cApple has been at the forefront of the fight against hate in the tech industry, and we are truly humbled by its support of our work,\u201d the SPLC said in a Thursday statement.<\/p>\n Organizations can land on the SPLC\u2019s \u201chate map\u201d for a variety of reasons not limited to racism. Categories include being \u201canti-immigrant\u201d or \u201canti-Muslim,\u201d as well as being \u201cracist skinhead,\u201d \u201cneo-Nazi\u201d or \u201cneo-Confederate.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of the conservative groups fall into the SPLC\u2019s \u201canti-LGBT\u201d category for their opposition to, for example, same-sex marriage or transgender bathroom laws.<\/p>\n \u201cOpposition to equal rights for LGBT people has been a central theme of Christian Right organizing and fundraising for the past three decades \u2014 a period that parallels the fundamentalist movement\u2019s rise to political power,\u201d the SPLC said on its website.<\/p>\n The ADF this week called out Phoenix news outlets that relied on SPLC\u2019s \u201chate map\u201d for post-Charlottesville<\/a>stories, including a report on the NBC-TV affiliate 12News headlined, \u201cWhat are Arizona\u2019s hate groups?\u201d<\/p>\n ADF spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said most news outlets may not realize that the SPLC is not politically neutral but rather avowedly anti-right.<\/p>\n On its \u201cHatewatch\u201d page, for example, the SPLC states that it \u201cmonitors and exposes the activities of the American radical right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that most news organizations that SPLC states on its website that it only goes after groups on the right,\u201d said Ms. Kupec. \u201cThey only target people on the right.\u201d<\/p>\n Last month, the ADF blasted ABC and NBC for using the \u201chate group\u201d designation on a story about a no-press speech by Attorney General Jeff Sessions at an ADF conference in Dana Point, California.<\/p>\n