Spam Journalism #69

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article.

The Herald on Sunday continues it’s vendetta against Destiny Church. I have concerns about Destiny too, but this is now getting extremely silly:

Destiny fosters new converts

“A Destiny Church pastor working for a child-fostering organisation that gets $10 million a year of taxpayer money is placing vulnerable children with Destiny members of the congregation.

“New Plymouth Destiny pastor Robyn Edmonds oversees foster placements as the Taranaki branch manager of the Open Home Foundation, which helps “disadvantaged and hurt” children.

“The foster kids are expected to attend Destiny’s controversial services each Sunday.

“The link with Destiny has caused concern at the highest levels of the foundation.”

Now this is simply plain stupid. There are hundred of churches who actively encourage members of their congregation to foster children. Open Home Foundation itself is a Christian organisation. Most assuredly, any social worker dealing in foster care, who is a churchgoer, will encourage church members to foster. They usually know these people well and can be certain that the foster child will get the care s/he needs. It is far better than simply fostering to an unknown couple. This is not to suggest that non-christian couples cannot take good care of children. But if the social worker has personal knowledge of the foster family, so much the better.

It is therefore unsurprising that Robyn Edmonds is keen on Destiny church members fostering children. In particular, Destiny has a strong social ministry to it’s community, so foster care would most certainly be seen as part of this. There are many churches with similar concerns, including the Salvation Army, whom I have heard foster more children than any other church (I don’t have any official stats on that, though).

Then the HoS article loses the plot entirely:

“Another member said the extra children meant a greater income and higher tithes. However, he said the appeal was fresh membership.”

I don’t know where the journalist found the “member”, but only a complete moron could think that this is a way for Destiny to generate more income. The allowance given to foster parents barely covers the basic necessities and the vast majority of foster parents dig deep into their own pockets for these children. To suggest that this is a money-making venture is a piece of scurrilous trash spouted by some embittered person and brazenly repeated by the “journalist”, David Fisher, who should be deeply ashamed of himself for repeating such nonsense. He does not seem to realise that this sort of reporting unfairly casts doubt on the motives of  all foster care parents. The HoS and Mr. Fisher should be printing an abject apology for this insulting balderdash next week. Make it a front page item, please.

To also suggest that this is some bizarre attempt to drum up membership is even more absurd. Most of these children are babies and infants and foster care is usually quite temporary. They are unlikely to be growing up in this environment, anyway, even if they are old enough to comprehend what is going on. Had the reporter in question bothered to do any research into foster care, he would have known that placements are reviewed every 6 months for children under the age of 7 and every year above this age and that it is rare for placements to be more that a couple of years (most are much shorter). Long-term placements are usually made with relatives. Of course, it would be rather too much to expect a journalist to type “foster care New Zealand” into Google, wouldn’t it?

This is the worst sort of spam – vindictive spam. This is just another murky article in the Herald’s campaign against Destiny.

However much you may dislike Brian Tamaki and his posturing, there is no doubt that Destiny does one thing superbly – and that is social outreach. The church has made a difference in many people’s lives, including the lives of young foster children. Whereas I don’t really expect a newspaper to focus on the good things Destiny does (“good” does not sell papers), I don’t believe it is right to attempt to make the good things they do into bad ones. That sort of demonising does no-one any good and simply makes the Herald look spiteful.

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