Ted Turner Defunds Pro-Abortion Website

Ted Turner must have promised funding to RH Reality Check for only five years. Either that or he’s not happy with the product.

Or perhaps he has decided to stop promoting abortion, which would be the best news of all.

For whatever reason, Turner’s United Nations Foundation is dropping the abortion-pushing website he launched in 2006 from his list of “Campaigns and Initiatives” as of December 31.

Beginning January 1, 2012, RH Reality Check will join the ranks of the unendowed and have to make it on its own, just like the rest of us ideologues without a sugar daddy.

Surprising to learn was that RH Reality Check plans to convert into a “fully independent 501 c3 organization” – a nonprofit, charitable, tax exempt group. This is the same IRS designation your church, the Salvation Army, and the Boy Scouts enjoy, and the benefits are huge.

To qualify, a nonprofit group must be “operated exclusively for charitable, religious, scientific, or educational purposes,” according to the IRS.

But there is a huge no-no: politicking, no endorsing candidates. More than that, a 501(c)3 cannot even "favor one candidate over another [or] oppose a candidate in some manner."

RH Reality Check says it provides, “News, Analysis & Commentary.”

Campaign Finance understands that a 501(c)3 designation “would essentially make it impossible for newspapers to do any political reporting. After all, an article that is critical or supportive of Congressman Barney Frank or Senator John McCain could easily be interpreted as an attempt to influence their next elections.”

Exactly. which is what RH Reality Check was doing in its December 9 disdainful (and vulgar) tweet about pro-life presidential candidate Randall Terry and in December 5 ad hominem attack against then-presidential candidate Herman Cain, to name just two breaches.

RH Reality Check and I got into a tweet tussle on this topic Saturday…

Despite its bravado, RH Reality Check must have actually checked with its “actual lawyers,” because the obviously politicized headline I was tweeting in reference to…

was changed yesterday…

No worries. I obviously kept a screen shot. And a few more.

[Photo of Turner via Zimbio.com]