Basham Criticized for Naming Johnny Hunt’s Sexual Abuse Accuser in New Book

Fellow journalists claim she violated journalistic ethics in ‘Shepherds for Sale’

The New York Times best seller “Shepherds for Sale” is coming under fire by journalists, who say author Megan Basham didn’t follow basic rules of journalistic ethics when she revealed the name of former SBC President Johnny Hunt’s accuser.

Megan Basham / Twitter profile photo

Robert Downen, who was a key reporter about the SBC sex abuse scandal when he worked for the Houston Chronicle, criticized Basham for revealing the accuser’s name in her book, according to Baptist News Global.

He wrote on X, “I’m still working my way through Meg Basham’s new book and will have some thoughts, but want to note that she goes out of her way to name the woman who credibly accused former SBC President Johnny Hunt of sex assault. I can’t think of a single journalistic reason to have done so.”

Downen went on to say that he worked with Hunt’s accuser and her husband for months before they would agree to let him tell their story, and “only with a ton of assurances that we would do everything possible to protect their identities.”

Apparently, Basham found the name in a court document where it was not redacted and chose to publish it, Downen said.

According to the Society of Professional Journalist’s code of ethics, victims of sexual crimes should be “shown compassion” and treated with “heightened sensitivity.” It also calls on journalists to “recognize that legal access to information differs from an ethical justification to publish or broadcast.”

While Basham may have legally found the name of Hunt’s accuser, that doesn’t give her “a greenlight to abandon basic ethics. Nor do you get to abandon basic ethics because you find the allegations questionable, or you’ve decided that a victim is less of a victim than they say,” Downen argued.

“Megan Basham’s decision to publicly name our client is one of the reasons why so many abuse survivors choose to stay silent.  The naming of our client served no purpose whatsoever other than to ‘out’ our client in an apparent effort to please those in her relatively small echo chamber,” Boz Tchividjian and Melissa Hogan, attorneys for the accuser, said in a statement to MinistryWatch.

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Julie Roys of The Roys Report also criticized Basham. “Naming a sex abuse survivor without her consent is completely unethical. @HarperCollins needs to pull @megbasham’s book immediately. I wish I could say I was surprised, but Basham has repeatedly shown disdain for survivors,” she wrote on X.

“What’s so egregious is that a secular reporter is schooling a professed Christian reporter on ethics and compassion — and he is right. That’s what we’ve come to. And pastors are actually jumping to Megan’s defense. Let that sink in,” Roys added.

Basham worked for WORLD News Group for several years before moving to her current culture reporter position with The Daily Wire. According to her Daily Wire bio, she has also written for The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Town Hall.

In response to the critics, Basham wrote on X that she had reasons for naming Hunt’s accusers. “Downen, the Guidepost Report, and others portrayed the [accusers] (who were named by their lawyers, not me) as a young, naïve couple (whose ages were never given) who, though not officially under the authority of Johnny Hunt, were enthralled by his influence.” She went on to say that the accusers were SBC insiders and ages 35 and 40.

Tchividjian and Hogan took issue with Basham’s claim that their client’s “identity was revealed when her attorneys failed to redact her name in court filings.”

“The facts are that it was Johnny Hunt’s counsel who, in violation of the court’s protection order, filed a document with the court that did not redact our client’s identity. [Basham’s] misstatement of the facts could have easily been corrected with any basic fact-checking by the publisher.  But then again, we’re not convinced that facts matter all that much to Ms. Basham,” the attorneys added.

Continuing her response to the criticism, Basham added, “I do think when you make public accusations (especially when you aren’t willing to take them to actual authorities like the police or a court) you should be obligated to stand behind them. Then your character and credibility can be evaluated as well. Anything else allows for a system of secret accusers who can enact character assassination while facing no scrutiny themselves.”

She said that journalists showed their bias when “framing of Hunt’s accuser as a victim” not an “alleged victim,” even though that fact “has not been established by any court and no charges to this effect were ever filed.”

Basham did not respond to MinistryWatch’s question about whether she reached out to the Hunt accuser to ask permission or inform her that she’d be named in the book.

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