The Oprah Winfrey Network did a sub par job addressing the “ex-gay” issue last night. Truth Wins Out offered to help get accurate information to reporter Lisa Ling for her “Pray the Gay Away” one-hour show. Unfortunately, Ling declined and the result was a series of errors and misreporting of the real story.
A perfect example is the way Ling threw around the word “lifestyle”. No decent reporter has used this term since the 1980’s. Yet, it somehow made its way into the segment, despite all the star directors and producers that work for “The Big O” and her network. Ling tried to spin her ignorance by saying that the term came up in the context of a conversation with Alan Chambers.
However, Ling clearly initiated the use of the term during an interview with anti-lesbian activist Janet Boynes, who runs a failed “ex-gay” ministry in Minneapolis. This is what we’d expect from an intern at FOX News. This is not the quality we’d expect from a first-rate journalist.
