NEA Funding Coverage

While Allan Parachini’s coverage of the dispute surrounding the funding standards of the National Endowment for the Arts is shamelessly biased in tone and perspective, the very least that readers should expect is factual accuracy.

Several reports by Parachini have categorized the Rev. Donald Wildmon and his American Family Assn. as “fundamentalist.” Neither Wildmon, a Methodist minister, nor his organization are theologically fundamentalist, a religious term frequently used by Times reporters as a pejorative.

I find it insensitive and offensive that The Times would so carelessly use terminology that I doubt most reporters and editors could even define. I would urge consultation with your religion writers.

Another falsehood, never corrected: In reporting on Assemblywoman Maxine Waters’ support for the NEA, Parachini stated that Waters was “running for the House seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Augustus Hawkins. . . .” Rep. Hawkins, very much alive as I write this letter more than a month later, had actually appeared and spoken just days before at NEA reauthorization hearings in Malibu attended and covered by Parachini.

JOSEPH FARAH, Los Angeles