LifeNews.com has already exposed June Maxam's hypocrisy (see http://www.lifenews.com/bio2293.html) and now she engages in more by letting others do her research for her. Sadly, she relies on inaccurate information to attack us.

With regard to John Lofton, Lofton is a Bush hater who doesn't think President Bush or any pro-life group or person who supports him is pro-life. His only objection to our well-documented articles on Bush's pro-life actions is his argument that Bush isn't pro-life, which runs counter to the analysis of virtually every pro-life group around.

The pro-life backgrounds of Bush's nominees to the courts are well-known and LifeNews.com has written dozens of news articles on the pro-life histories of his two Supreme Court nominees. Others have as well. Both nominees and his appeals court picks have enjoyed strong support from pro-life groups and Lofton is in a very small minority opposing them.

Lofton (and now Maxam) appear to be the only ones oblivious to this and oblivious to the enormous efforts pro-life groups made to get them approved. Lofton backs third party candidates who received the support of less than one percent of pro-life voters. LifeNews.com refusal to back such candidates against pro-life candidates who have a realistic shot at winning is the genesis for his attack on us.

With regard to Lifesite, LifeNews.com has been around since 1993 (starting as the clipping service called the Pro-Life Infonet). It was the first pro-life news source on the Internet -- before Lifesite, which didn't appear online until May 1997. Web sites associated with the Pro-Life Infonet were created in 1994.

LifeNews.com doesn't copy Lifesite or anyone else and we are frequently republished in dozens of pro-life newsletters and cited on tens of thousands of web sites. Lifesite often publishes pro-life news stories on similar topics hours or days after they appear on LifeNews.com. We sometimes follow Lifesite. It's simply a matter of which news team can complete a story on a similar topic first not plagiarism.

Again, Maxam is under the erroneous notion that no news source can ever cover a topic covered by another news source. In Maxam's crazy news world, if CNN reports on something five minutes before ABC, CBS, and NBC, the latter networks must be stealing CNN's content. Fortunately, the news business understands better and Maxam's notions have been refuted frequently on public blogs.

Ironically, witness how Maxam posted a story hours after LifeNews.com:

From Google News on December 10, 2007:

Observance Of Terri’s Day Planned
North Country Gazette, NY - 11 hours ago

Terri Schiavo's Family, Pro-Life Group Announce Official Day
LifeNews.com, MT - 18 hours ago

Getting back to the response, Lifenews.com doesn't accuse Lifesite, Maxam (or anyone else) of stealing our news articles when they publish coverage of the same topic. On the contrary, we're happy when Lifesite covers pro-life news because it furthers the pro-life cause (something Maxam opposes).

It would be impossible for LifeNews.com to copy Lifesite since most of what appears on LifeNews.com was never published by Lifesite in the first place. Much of Lifesite's reporting these days concerns homosexual or religious issues, i.e. its excellent coverage of the anti-Christian themes in the Golden Compass movie or schools promoting a homosexual agenda. Those topics are important but nongermane to the pro-life scope of LifeNews.com. Lifesite has a broader pro-family focus in its news whereas Lifenews.com reports only on pro-life topics. Neither approach is better, they're just different.

Unlike Maxam, we don't attack Lifesite and we publicly encourage the work they do. When the Pro-Life Infonet became LifeNews.com, Lifesite was concerned about similar names (most pro-life groups have similar names) but one key pro-life leader realized that the pro-life movement shouldn't have turf battles and asked them to back down. Fortunately, both news services have been able to educate the pro-life community and get them involved and the movement is better for it.

We've never published a derogatory word about Lifesite and never will, as we're on the same pro-life team. When they get to a pro-life topic before LifeNews.com can, more power to them.

Maxam prides herself on making money reporting on Terri Schiavo and has publicly indicated on numerous occasions that she is not pro-life (and has Google ads touting Planned Parenthood on her web site). As we have documented in the article listed above, she attacks anyone reporting on Terri as well despite requests from Terri's family to stop.

At least LifeNews.com can enjoy knowing that we're not alone. A quick Google search yields numerous results from others who she has viciously attacked, including her former newswriting partner.

Yes, Maxam, we're in it for the cause. We actually care that Terri Schiavo was murdered by her husband with court approval and we're never going to stop covering her life and death and the ramifications of it.