The Masters of WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily has been notoriously close-mouthed about its behind-the-scenes operations. Editor and CEO Joseph Farah clammed up when ConWebWatch asked him questions about where WND’s start-up money came from.

But there’s one connection WND has never spoken of: its links with an evangelist, meditation advocate and talk-radio mogul named Roy Masters.

Masters leads an organization called the Foundation of Human Understanding. FHU was officially recognized as a church by the Internal Revenue Service after a long fight in the 1980s; the IRS originally recognized the group as a religious organization (which must file annual IRS reports) but not a church (which doesn’t), but the Tax Court overruled that decision after the FHU appealed it.

Masters and his FHU has been accused of cult-like tendencies over the years; his followers have been called “Roybots.” Masters moved his operations to Grants Pass, Oregon, in 1982 — followed by 2,000 of his supporters, who proceeded to attempt to take over the town; that prompted a boycott of Masters-related businesses by some local residents. A July 1992 episode of Geraldo Rivera’s TV show featured a former FHU member who said of the group: “The role of women is to be very submissive, quiet, never questioning, not thinking, no decisions.” The ex-wife of one of Roy Masters’ sons denounced Masters on a 1999 TV show, citing a “long history of Masters’ denigration of women.”

Read it all.