The Advocate

Scripps drops Scouts funding

http://www.advocate.com/new_news.asp?ID=1144&sd=10/27/01-10/29/01 

October 27, 2001

The parent of Home & Garden Television and the Food Network is dropping its United Way of America corporate contribution to the Boy Scouts of America over the Scouts' policy toward gays. Knoxville, Tenn.-based Scripps Networks, which owns and produces HGTV, the Food Network, and the Do-It-Yourself cable channels, gives about $10,000 annually to the United Way of Greater Knoxville. The local United Way last year gave $234,210 to the Scouts' Great Smoky Mountains Council, which serves some 19,000 scouts in 21 counties in eastern Tennessee. Officials couldn't say Thursday how much of that came from Scripps Networks.

"This is an issue the Boy Scouts understood they were taking on and that everyone who participates in United Way has to understand that they are taking on," Scripps Networks spokeswoman Cindy McConkey said. "For us, it has to do with our core values. As a company, diversity is at the top of the list, and diversity means no discrimination." McConkey said Scripps Networks' decision was independent of its parent company, Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps, or other Scripps properties, including the local newspaper, The Knoxville News-Sentinel, which have no such ban. She also said Scripps Networks wasn't preventing its employees from making personal United Way donations to the Scouts or volunteering with the organization. "It is not the Boy Scouts, the organization, that we are taking issue with," McConkey added. "The Boy Scouts have done great things here in the community. It is discrimination that we are taking issue with."

Ben Landers, president of the United Way of Greater Knoxville, said he is disappointed with the decision but grateful for the network's continued support of the United Way. Added Jimmy Williams, executive director of the Scouts' Great Smoky Mountains Council: "They have every right to make that decision as to how their money will be used."

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