Once Again, New York Times Misrepresents WCF Moscow Demographic Summit

WASHINGTON, July 22, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Living up to its reputation of printing all of the news that fits its political agenda, The New York Times is once again misrepresenting the June 29-30 "World Congress of Families Moscow Demographic Summit: Family and the Future of Humankind," while refusing to even mention the name of the conference.

A story in its July 15 edition on Russia adopting restrictions on abortion (Russia Enacts Law Opposing Abortion), describes the WCF Moscow Demographic Summit, sponsored by Russia's largest university and attended by more than 500 scholars, leaders and activists from two dozen countries, as a "conference last month in Moscow [which] brought together abortion opponents from Russia, the United States and Eastern Europe.  It also resulted in a declaration condemning what it called other 'social deviations' including 'refusal of marriage and childbearing.'"

World Congress of Families Managing Director Larry Jacobs responded: "In an article in the June 10 issue, The Times characterized the Summit as 'an international anti-abortion meeting.' At that time, we informed the paper that the Moscow Summit was about the dramatic worldwide decline in birthrates, not just abortion.  But that reality didn't fit the paper's paradigm.  So it continues its misreporting."

Jacobs noted that the WCF Moscow Demographic Summit included presentations on: The Demographic Potential of Russia, Family Policy in the European Union, Global Fertility Decline, The Cultural Roots of Demographic Winter, How to Create A Russian Baby-Boom, The Dignity of Women, Battling Population Control, The Influence of Radical Feminism, Parents As the Primary Educators of Children, The Interplay of Family, Population and Technology, and Family Issues At the UN.

Speakers included demographers, economists and other social scientists, as well as business, religious, education and political leaders, among them the former leader of the Philippine Senate, members of the E.U. Parliament, the Council of Europe and the head of the Russian State Social University.  Click here for a complete list of speakers and topics.

Click here for the World Congress of Families' June 10 press release, "New York Times Gets It Wrong – Moscow Demographic Summit is About Declining Birthrates."

For more on the Summit, go to www.worldcongress.ru or www.worldcongress.org.

To schedule an interview with WCF Managing Director Larry Jacobs contact Don Feder at 508-405-1337, [email protected], or Lisa Youngblood at 815-964-5819, [email protected].

 The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60  countries that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society (as found in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948).  The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois.  To date, there have been five World Congresses of Families – Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004), Warsaw, Poland (2007) and Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2009).  World Congress of Families VI will be held in Madrid, Spain in May 25-27, 2012.

SOURCE World Congress of Families