Is it possible that the media — both news media and bloggers — are having a positive effect by bringing dirt out into the sunlight?
Three items this week seem to point to the possibility. First, there was the noxious legislation proposed here in Virginia that would make it a crime to not report a miscarriage immediately to the police. That caused quite a buzz in the blogosphere… and it was dropped.
The ridiculous anti-evolution stickers on Georgia textbooks were challenged and ordered removed.
And now today, the other story of the week — the plans of a missionary group to raise hundreds of Muslim orphans as Christians — has ended:
The Virginia-based missionary group WorldHelp has dropped its plans to place 300 Muslim “tsunami orphans” in a Christian children’s home, the group’s president, the Rev. Vernon Brewer, told news agencies yesterday.
The children were still in the Muslim province of Aceh and had not been airlifted to Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, according to an e-mail under Brewer’s name circulating yesterday among his supporters.
In an interview Tuesday for an article published in yesterday’s Washington Post, Brewer said that the children already had been airlifted to Jakarta and that the Indonesian government had given permission for them to be placed in a Christian children’s home. Brewer did not return calls from The Post yesterday to his home, office and cell phone to address the discrepancy.
In the e-mail, as well as in statements given to Reuters and Agence France-Presse, Brewer said WorldHelp had raised $70,000 to place 50 of the children in a Christian orphanage but had halted its efforts when it learned on Wednesday that the Indonesian government would not allow it.
… “It was our understanding that this was done with the permission of the Indonesian government,” Brewer’s e-mail said. But because of “a huge backlash from the Islamic community in Aceh, the government of Indonesia is now refusing to allow the orphaned children to be placed in any non-Muslim homes,” the e-mail said.
Maybe the system is working? Somewhat?
