The Pink Paper: Shameful, Dangerous, Alarming

I could fill Fagburn on a daily basis with examples of how piss-poor Pink News and PinkPaper.com are.
The main reason I don't is that I hope it must be obvious - and I'd just end up boring myself and you, dear reader.
But occasionally one of them prints a story so outrageous and noxious it really needs a comment.
'Actor Welcomes LGBT Centre's U-turn On 'Anti-semitic' Event' 'Gay actor and Advocate.com columnist, Michael Lucas, has welcomed news that a US LGBT Centre will no longer host an event by a so-called anti-semitic organisation.'
This "story" - dated February 28th 2011 and "written" by Peter Lloyd - is a textbook example of so much that is wrong with the UK's Pink media.
They get sent a press release - or pull a story off the internet - and cut and paste it, printing it pretty much verbatim, without checking its validity or bias, and without adding a word of comment or balance.
This is something not seen in the gay press alone.
It has a name "Churnalism"; a new website has just gone live where you can check "news stories" for how closely they resemble press releases - churnalism.com (It's early days yet and there's next-to-no gay content yet...)
Back to Pink Paper's story; "Gay actor and Advocate.com columnist, Michael Lucas, has welcomed news that a US LGBT Centre will no longer host an event by a so-called anti-semitic organisation."
"Last weekend, Lucas called on New York's LGBT Center to cancel a party by Israeli Apartheid Week, scheduled for 5 March."
How about telling us something about who Lucas actually is - the "actor" is a gay porn star and porn producer.
How about spending two minutes looking on the internet to find out something about his politics - and if he has form on this issue?
Surely if a journalist is sent a press release about anything related to Israel/Palestine alarm bells must go off?
Peter Lloyd is not some poor kid on work experience learning the ropes - he is News Editor of The Pink Paper.
Does he not know that Lucas is - to put it politely - somewhat controversial?
I don't have to pretend to be impartial and will happily say that I think Michael Lucas is fucking evil.
Lucas is a right-wing Republican - yup, a gay Neo-Con!!!
He's also an extreme Zionist, with a long history of defending any actions committed by the Israeli thug state.
He's also written a number of articles about Muslims that have been slammed as racist.
Lloyd is literally incapable of doing any of this - or more tragically of actually knowing any of this.
Instead he thinks it's acceptable to cut-and-paste some quotes from Lucas, without even a word of comment, or checking for validation from anyone from the New York LGBT Center or Israeli Apartheid Week.
Or how about explaining what Israeli Apartheid Week stand for? Their statement on the ban is here.
Have a read of Lloyd's piece and compare it to how New York's Gay City News covered the story; 'Firestorm Over LGBT Center Jettisoning Critics of Israel'
"The February 22 decision by New York’s LGBT Community Center to cancel a party planned to mark Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), an annual international mobilization by critics of the Jewish state’s treatment of the Palestinians who live in the territory it controls, has sparked outraged response from many LGBT New Yorkers, including a good number of prominent Jewish lesbian and gay activists — but has also won support from other progressive Jewish gay leaders and journalists.
"At the center of the controversy, however, is someone who has never been shy about voicing his disconnect from Western progressive circles — gay adult film producer Michael Lucas, a self-described atheist Jew who is also an unabashed booster of Israel.
"It was Lucas’ letter to the Center’s executive director, Glennda Testone — accompanied by a threat to organize a boycott of major donors — that within a day resulted in the Siege Busters, a group working to raise funds for a new flotilla to challenge the Israeli navy’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, learning that its March 5 Party to End Apartheid! could not be held at the Community Center, and that, in fact, it could no longer meet there as it had been doing since last summer..."
The GCN story continues, but how much is in the first few opening paragraphs that is absent from the Pink Paper's story?
Why are the UK's two main gay news sources written almost entirely by lazy, ignorant, apolitical, hopeless fuckwits?
Whenever a journalist is writing a story, his instinct should always be to ask; "Is this true?"
These people just go; "This will do."
I find it shameful, dangerous and alarming.