Christians' whole truth hidden on page 8A

Remember all the front page “news” stories that tried and convicted the conservative American Christians in Haiti at the time of the January earthquake of kidnapping?

Turns out Haitian justice is more committed to U.S. Constitutional values than the First Amendment protected American press corps.

The last of ten Americans held for trying to take 33 legally adopted children to a safe haven in the Dominican Republic in the aftermath of earthquake devastation, was freed by a Haitian judge yesterday:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The last of 10 Americans detained while trying to take 33 children out of Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake was freed Monday when a judge convicted her but sentenced her to time already served in jail.

Laura Silsby, the organizer of the ill-fated effort to take the children to an orphanage being set up in the neighboring Dominican Republic, returned to her cell briefly to retrieve belongings before quickly heading to the Port-au-Prince airport.

“I’m praising God,” Silsby told The Associated Press as she waited for a flight out of Haiti.

AP investigation later revealed all the children had at least one living parent, who had turned their children over to the group in hopes of securing better lives for them.

Silsby and others in the group, mostly members of the same Baptist church in Idaho, insisted they had only come to Haiti to help.

Funny how I missed the release of the first nine. I suppose the USA Today’s other such stories, if covered at all, were hidden in the classifieds.

Maybe the worst sins of the press are in what they don’t report or under report. Shouldn’t the main lesson of the story be its outcome, rather than all the hype surrounding the false allegations?

I think so.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Atlanta Journal-Constitutionand Examiner.com columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson