American Values president Gary Bauer on Monday said the audience at ABC's "Holy War" special edition of "This Week" was stocked with people that support radical Islam and the building of the Ground Zero mosque.
As NewsBusters reported after Sunday's program, host Christiane Amanpour presented a tremendously skewed view of so-called American Islamophobia cueing up advocates of the premise while attempting to discredit skeptics.
One of those in attendance was Bauer who in a radio interview with WOR's Steve Malzberg the following day said the audience was also stacked to support the Islamophobia view (audio follows with transcript and commentary):
GARY BAUER: When we got there, we had all been told we can bring guests. So we ended up getting there, and our guests didn't get in. But when Daisy Khan, the wife of the Imam planning the Ground Zero mosque, walked into the room where the audience was, this raucous cheering broke out. When Franklin Graham and myself and those on the other side walked into the room, there was stony silence. So in a city, New York, where 70 percent of the public is against the mosque at Ground Zero, they had managed to put together an audience where 90 percent of the audience was on the side of radical Islam and the side of building the mosque.
STEVE MALZBERG, HOST: So you're telling me that your guests and other guests who were on your side of the issue were not permitted in. What did they say?
BAUER: Well, what ended up happening was that the audience just, the audience they had in there filled the seats very early on, so...
MALZBERG: The pro-Islamic, the pro-Islamic audience.
BAUER: Yes, exactly. And I know that there were some 9/11 families that were told they would be able to attend as guests of the one gentleman that had lost his son at Ground Zero. You know, they didn't get in. There were a few other 9/11 families there, but not the others.
The producers of this show and everyone at ABC News should be ashamed of themselves for this despicably biased presentation.
That our media are once again not only on the opposite side of the American people on a key issue facing the nation, but would also do whatever they could to alter public opinion should go counter to the basic tenets of journalsim.
Sadly, this entire episode has demonstrated the unashamed advocacy so prevalent at so-called news outlets today.
It's a wonder that anything truly American is at all reflected on the airwaves at this moment in history.
