NewsBusters, Matthew Sheffield, Media Research Center, Newsbusters.org Matthew Sheffield wrongfully targeted me for termination of my membership solely on the basis of my religious views. Alexandria Virginia

On July 10th 2008, Newsbusters' editor, Matthew Sheffield, announced a "policy change" that discriminates against those members who engage in religious speech via postings on the site either in comment threads or in the user forum threads.

The policy change announcement can be found here: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2008/07/09/forum-issues .

Media Research Center (MRC) is a Virginia Non-Stock (aka non-profit) Corporation and "a 501 (c)(3) non profit research and education foundation". Newsbusters is a fictitious name registered to MRC and operates a blog. Since no stock was issued for it, it is clear that it is publicly owned by the State of Virginia but governed by a board of directors. I believe the editor's new policy is in conflict with the 1st Amendment of the US (both the speech clause, and the free exercise clause) , and Sections 12 (speech) and 16 (religion) of the Virgina Bill of Rights. The Terms of Use policy is here:

http://newsbusters.org/legal/

which makes no mention of the new policy.

The next day I found that my user account access was denied and currently still is. I emailed the editor Matthew Sheffield for an explanation and he replied that I was banned. His reason was "Your attitude toward the policy was not acceptable. If you agree to follow it you will be reinstated." Several emails went back and forth between us (which I can provide copies of) and you can find most of my postings on the above mentioned "Forum Issues" link. As you can read on that page my "attitude" consisted of answering the question asked and several subsequent questions by other posters as to why I thought the proposed policy was too restrictive. Even though my input was initially welcomed, I soon found myself banned when it was clear that I disagreed with the proposed policy change. I was actually banned for something I said before the policy was even implemented (by Sheffield's sudden decree) later that day as evidenced by the timestamps on the postings. (Note: My user name in the postings is "Britcom").

I was banned from the Newsbusters blog as an approved user for defending religious speech when a new proposed policy would ban all religious speech by users on the site. I was not banned for any reason other than I am a Christian who doesn't think that I should be gagged on a public forum because the content of my speech may occasionally contain references to the bible and religious doctrine. If you check all of my comments on the blog (newsbusters.org) you will find that I haven't pushed anyone or insulted or abused anyone or made religious comments that are off topic, so that is not the reason I was banned. I was an authorized user for 1 year and 41 weeks and had never been banned or suspended or disciplined or even warned for any reason. Newsbusters even had a special forum just for religious topics that I occasionally commented in with no trouble.

The damages I suffer are that I have been publicly embarrassed and humiliated because of my religious beliefs by Sheffield and have been unfairly banned from a publicly owned forum for voicing my constitutionally protected religious beliefs when asked to comment on a proposed policy change that was to directly affected religious speech.

Below is a direct quote from Matthew Sheffield, Editor of NewsBusters:

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Forum Issues and Religious Wars
By Matthew Sheffield
Created 2008-07-09 16:01

Quick note: the NB forums are having some issues on the tech side so they are disabled temporarily.

That's coincidental given the huge flamewars we've seen develop on them over people arguing for/against various religions in forum posts. I don't like the divisiveness that we've had from this and am half-way thinking that perhaps we should just not have religion discussions here on NB considering the mission of the site is about media bias, not promoting or attacking various religions (or lack thereof).

Update 07-10 15:47. After giving an amount of time for those interested to comment. I've settled on the policy.

* Religion threads within the forum will not be allowed.
* Comments attacking particular religions/sects on blog posts addressing media bias against that religion/sect will not be allowed. Certain small, cultish groups including (but not limited to) Westboro Baptist Church and Scientology are still permissible to criticize.
* Since radical Islam is often a topic of discussion here, it will be OK to criticize it, however, extended disquisitions on how it is affiliated with evil supernatural powers is not OK.
* Persistent "calling out" of others within the forum will not be allowed.
* Persons who abuse the private messaging system to harrass other users who do not wish to talk to them will have their user privileges suspended upon first offence and revoked upon second.

We will not tolerate people attacking or promoting their religions on this site. Those who continue to do so will be suspended or banned as circumstance warrants.

This decision is final so those who don't like it can look elsewhere if they wish to talk about religion in different ways.

Source URL:
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-sheffield/2008/07/09/forum-issues

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As can be seen by the above, Sheffield thinks he has the right to suspend freedom of speech and freedom from religious discrimination, and freedom from the institution of a religious test for participation on a publicly owned forum.

Why do I say it is a public forum? Because as a non-stock corporation, the MRC (NewsBusters) is owned by the State of Virginia and is not a private corporation and because it is a 501(c)(3) organization under the U.S. Code, it must accept and operate under the federal constitution's rules as well as the State of Virginia.

Matthew Sheffield has publicly, and with his own words, insulted and discriminated against the deeply held religious beliefs of the Christian members of NewsBusters blog and instituted and enforced a policy that restricts religious speech and has had a chilling effect on those who stand up for religious liberty and freedom of speech. The MRC should immediately fire Sheffield for his unabashed religious bigotry and ugly and offensive policy against religious speech, and Christians who engage in, or stand up for religious speech. To ignore this blatant offense, or to sweep it under the rug, would be anti-Christian, anti-conservative, and patently un-American. Something the MRC claims it is not, and even claims it is against.

I did try to contact L. Brent Bozell, the president of the MRC and publisher of NewsBusters about this issue, but to date, I have received no reply.

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Here is my original comment:

I disagree with blocking religious speech

July 10, 2008 - 02:18 ET by Britcom

I have noticed that folks who live out on the libertarian West Coast and up in the North seem to be of the opinion that Politics and Religion are separable; in the South and the Mid-west they never have been separate, and are not separate to this day. For us, they are just two different sides of the same coin of society.

This is exactly why the Founders of our great nation, in thier wisdom, chose not to open that can of worms by either establishing a state religion (like Britain), or banning religion altogether (like France tried to do). They chose the best option, leave it up to the individual, keep it free, and keep the government from taking sides.

The idea that "religion" causes the flame wars is the same as the old
argument that guns cause murder. And I don't think that anyone believes
that flame wars are going to magically disappear if discussions about
religion are banned.

Even by discussing a ban here on the main thread, you make religion a political issue, and in effect, choosing to ban religious discussion would be discrimination. Suppose we substitute another group to apply a ban to. Suppose someone were to propose a ban on discussing feminist issues here on NB, or a ban on discussing racial issues, or a ban on discussing gun ownership issues, or a ban on discussing money related issues, or a ban on discussing death penalty issues; do you see how ridiculous that sounds?

Politics and Religion are forever intertwined, and since
Religion is so deeply rooted in American Politics, I think it foolish
to attempt to dispense with it and not expect a negative unintended result for NB.

Let's clarify the issue by seeing what is or is not a religious issue for discussion:
See if you can answer these current events questions:

1. 19 devoutly Moslem hijackers killing nearly 3000 people by crashing 4 jets into 3 buildings and nearly hitting a 4th as a way of expressing their faith in Islamic jihad is not a religious issue. [True or False]

2. Prohibition of prayer in public parks and public schools is not a religious issue. [True or False]

3. Whether or not churches will be required to perform same sex marriages is not a religious issue. [True or False]

If you answered "False" to any of those questions, then you believe that religous issues are political issues.

The truth is that religion is the biggest political issue of all and every political discussion is on some level also a discussion involving someone's religious beliefs, and if you ban religious discussion, inevitably someone will start a discussion about religion and you are going to have to enforce the ban and punish them, and discriminating against someone based on his or her religious beliefs is illegal. I don't think NB wants to open that can of worms either. The lawsuit would be front page news in the left wing biosphere and a media circus would ensue. I can see the headlines now: "Conservative Blog Bans Religious Speech". Can you see how ironic it would be if a first amendment protected news blog were to ban first amendment protected religious speech?
There is a solution to accommodate religious discussion so that it does not become a disruption to NB.

1. Keep religious debates separate as they are now, and enforce rules of order.

2. Don't let people get away with insulting each other on the forums. Give the creator of any forum topic the power to "kick" a person out of his topic if that person gets out of line.This would allow the creator of the forum topic to police his own discussion, instead of just flaming back at the other poster(s).

3. If two (or more) people (one of them being the person who created the forum topic) start a flame war that becomes little more than an exchange of insults, and the topic creator doesn't stop and doesn't kick the other flamer out but just keeps the war going, then an NB editor or moderator should lock the forum topic. But the rule should be that the topic is only shut down if insults are exchanged, not legitimate religious debate on religious or political issues, or scriptural or legal interpretations.

I don't see any reason to blame religious discussion for certain individual's habit of being rude, condescending, insulting, and/or abusive in the forum.

Most of us who engage in religious debate on occasion are perfectly able to converse and debate without being rude or insulting to others. Those who cannot manage to do that, should be sanctioned as individuals. Collective punishment is not the solution, it just creates hidden resentment and people would start to abandon NB.

The bottom line is a ban would hurt sales of NB stuff and Clicks on NB ads. I think it much better to let them argue any topic they want, including religion, so long as they play nice, all while those NB sponsor's ads are running on their screens. Really, how can you complain about that?

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Britcom
City, Florida
U.S.A.