Abstaining from sex may be the easy part. Getting the facts right about Colorado's new sex education law seems to be as mystical as unlocking the ancient secrets of the universe.

A review of media stories over the last four months — from the introduction of a bill sponsored by Rep. Nancy Todd (D-Arapahoe) to require school districts to incorporate science-based curricula in sex education programs, the signing of the bill by Gov Bill Ritter to the actual implementation of the new law on July 1 — turns up a slew of inaccurate, under-developed, and slanted reports by mainstream outlets and conservative talk radio.

Aside from the ridiculous, and unchallenged, claim by conservative lawmaker Sen. Shawn Mitchell (R-Broomfield) in the Rocky Mountain News that the requirement would lead schools to teach a "comprehensive condom, contraception, and copulation" curriculum, the media didn't do much better separating the schoolyard myths from the facts.

The inaccuracies center on three main points:

• the reporters and editors' utter lack of understanding of the bill's provisions
• uncritical reporting of right wing falsehoods about the measure
• one-sided stories that failed to present the proponents point of view

Nearly every example of news reporting on this issue ignored two critical elements important to parents and school districts — an opt-out process for students to exempt themselves from the classes based on personal or religious beliefs and the completely voluntarily nature of offering sex education, science-based or otherwise, in the classroom.

Playing into the conservative misinformation game, the media never reported that the bill relieves school districts from adhering to the new curriculum standards while receiving federal grants to support abstinence-only classes.

The omission is curious since that specific compromise was added quite early in the legislative sausage-making process for House Bill 1292 as it wound its way through the various committees of both chambers at the state capitol.

Not surprisingly, it's easy to establish the paternity of that wayward tidbit.

On his April 18 daily radio broadcast for Focus on the Family, Rev. James Dobson stated that lawmakers passed the bill "quietly without the people knowing about it."

Bingo!

The evangelical Christian church and multi-million dollar media empire has a long history of seeding its conservative views as unchallenged facts into mainstream news stories. And fellow ally in the conservative agenda, KNUS' John Andrews, host of Backbone Radio, let stand unchallenged the baseless claims of Jim Pfaff, president of the Focus on the Family-financed lobbying group Colorado Family Action. Pfaff claimed on a June 17 broadcast that Gov. Bill Ritter's support of HB 1292 was advocating abortion :

We had hoped that Governor Ritter would be a [Pennsylvania Democratic U.S. Sen.] Bob Casey — Catholic man who has expressed his belief in the sanctity of human life — but he's promoting not only the killing of unborn babies through funding Planned Parenthood, albeit under — in, in an indirect fashion — but he's also encouraging the behavior that leads to the need for abortion by encouraging sex education, very similar to what — the logical conclusion of which is what we heard at Boulder High School.

And it's that type of distortion in the news that riles up Bill Menezes, editorial director of Colorado Media Matters, a progressive watchdog group that monitors and analyzes conservative misinformation:

There appears to be a pattern regarding the controversial subjects of sex education and abortion, whereby the loudest critics from the right get their sound bites into stories but the reporters/editors/producers treat the subject as a purely political debate without any factual underpinnings," Menezes explained. As with HB 1292, the misinformation promoted by conservative media sources easily could have been checked with readily available facts from a variety of sources.

The former editor and journalist also pointed to a pattern of shoddy reporting by traditional media outlets in Colorado as well. The Associated Press, Rocky Mountain News, Colorado Springs Gazette and radio talk shows on KNUS and KVOR all reported that schools would lose federal funding for sex education classes that stress abstinence-only which is factually untrue. A quick read of the bill and the associated fiscal notes prepared by the non-partisan Legislative Council staff dispute the claim.

Yet, reporters took untrue conservative agenda-laden talking points at their word which in turn led media consumers across the state to be inaccurately informed about an important public health issue.

Thus far, no corrections appear to have been run on the previous stories.

Next: What can the average reader/listener/viewer do to combat media misinformation?