Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 21, 1990 TAG: 9007200361
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARY CULPEPPER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NASHVILLE, TENN. LENGTH: Medium
"This is kind of like the day after the funeral," said Don Kirkland, associate editor of South Carolina's Baptist Courier, one of 38 state Baptist weeklies.
"They move a lot of stories . . . stories that we need, and we assume they will continue to move those as we have," Kirkland said.
The denomination's fundamentalist-dominated executive committee fired Alvin Shackleford, 58, and Dan Martin, 51 on Tuesday during a closed meeting attended by 61 committee members. The newsmen weren't allowed inside, nor were about 200 supporters who packed the halls outside the doors guarded by off-duty police officers.
Shackleford worked at Baptist Press for 3 1/2 years. Martin had worked there for nearly a decade. They were accused of producing a news report biased against fundamentalists, who control the 14.9 million-member denomination.
The two were given a week to clean out their offices at the 44-year-old news agency, which sends stories and press releases to about 400 clients, including 38 independent weekly newspapers.
Monday's news report was the latest one that went out, and editors were left pondering the future of Baptist Press, which has bureaus in Richmond, Va., Dallas, Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Kirkland, who said his Greenville, S.C.-based paper has a circulation of 124,000, had doubts about who might replace the journalists.
"Personally, you have to have some question as to what kind of journalist would walk into a situation like that, after they just fired two reputable journalists," Kirkland said.
Nashville attorney Jeffrey Mobley has announced formation of a new, independent press agency, Associated Baptist Press Inc. He pledged Wednesday the new agency would be independent.
Mobley said he did not know if Shackleford and Martin would be asked to join.
"We're going to hire the best Baptist journalists we can find. There has been no decision yet as to who those persons will be," he said.
The election of the Rev. Morris Chapman, of Wichita Falls, Texas, as president at last month's Southern Baptist convention consolidated fundamentalist control of the nation's largest Protestant church body and led to a renewed purge of moderates.
The ouster of Martin and Shackleford spurred moderates to call a meeting in Atlanta next month to plan a financial strategy to route funds away from fundamentalist causes, the Rev. Jimmy Allen of Fort Worth, Texas, said Wednesday.
Allen said Shackleford and Martin were conscientious journalists who kept their politics out of the news report. Their firings "were a tragic thing," he said.
"The firings show an arrogance of power that says, `We will control the flow of information'," said Allen, who heads the moderate-backed group Baptists Committed to the Southern Baptist Convention.
by CNB