Category: News Media

Pro-life street protesters and global warming controversy — getting a fair shake in the MSM?

Don’t believe it? Check out this New York Times story on pro-life street protesters and this BBC story on global warming controversy. Hat tip: Wesly J. Smith (First Things blog).

From the Times story:

The most repeated anecdotes involve abortions averted. Ms. Anderson recalled what she said was her first triumph. It was the early ’80s. After becoming pregnant with a boyfriend while separated from her husband — and deciding to have the baby despite friends’ advice to abort, she said — she was a single mother with a bumper sticker on her Chrysler Fifth Avenue that said “the heart beats at 24 days for an unborn child.”

One day in a parking lot near her home, Ms. Anderson said, a woman came up to her and said she had been on her way to get an abortion when she saw that simple statement and changed her mind. “There was a 2-year-old in the back seat,” Ms. Anderson said.

At her home in Memphis, Mich., other examples followed: of two girls from Ohio who left an abortion clinic and, she said, told Ms. Anderson that her presence had persuaded them had not gone through with it; of a young man who knocked on her door in the dead of night, after seeing anti-abortion signs in her window. …

Ms. Anderson smiled. “I can’t tell you how many babies have been saved because of abortion protesters outside the abortion mills,” she said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

From the BBC story:

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth’s great heat stores.

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: “The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling.”

So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.

Read the Times piece. Read the BBC piece.

SDG here.

For years we’ve known that The Press Doesn’t Get Religion. And, usually, when the press doesn’t get religion, Get Religion gets the press. Get Religion is a group blog of religious religion journalists covering religion journalism, and in general they do an excellent job.

I was disappointed, therefore, by a recent blog post from Get Religionista Mollie Zielger Hemingway — who says she “loves analyzing media coverage of the liturgical calendar” — offering kudos to the “reporters” who “found the story” on what she describes as “rebranding Lent as Ramadan” in the Netherlands. She even praises “most reporters” covering this alleged “rebranding” for having “put the story in context.” She also adds that this “rebranding” is “a symptom of a larger condition” that “could use some sensible reporting.”

That’s one thing Mollie and I agree on: Sensible reporting is definitely needed. That’s why God created Get Religion. So where is their “sensible reporting” when it comes to a “story” almost totally devoid of facts — a story that even by usual media standards for religion reporting seems (at least to this non-religion journalist) breathtakingly irresponsible in the disconnect between the claims of the headline and lede and whatever facts appear to lie at the bottom of the stories?

Here’s the DutchNews piece that got Mollie’s kudos for breaking the story. (Actually, this may not be the piece that broke the story, since the first sentence credits another publication; my Dutch is a little rusty, but I think Volkskrant means something like People’s News or Popular News. However, perhaps it’s all the same outfit.) Here’s the headline and lede:

Lent must be as ‘cool’ as Ramadan

The Catholic tradition of fasting at Lent needs to become as ‘cool’ as the Muslim fasting peiod of Ramadan, say Dutch Catholics in today’s Volkskrant.

This year, the church is even promoting the 40-day fast as ‘the Christian Ramadan’. ‘We use the word Ramadan because it is a term young people are more likely to understand than Lent, the organisation Vastenaktie tells the paper.

Mollie also positively cites this follow-up piece in The Telegraph that goes further. Here’s the lede:

Lent fast re-branded as ‘Christian Ramadan’

Dutch Catholics have re-branded the Lent fast as the “Christian Ramadan” in an attempt to appeal to young people who are more likely to know about Islam than Christianity.

The Catholic charity Vastenaktie, which collects for the Third World across the Netherlands during the Lent period, is concerned that the Christian festival has become less important for the Dutch over the last generation.

“The image of the Catholic Lent must be polished. The fact that we use a Muslim term is related to the fact that Ramadan is a better-known concept among young people than Lent,” said Vastenaktie Director, Martin Van der Kuil.

For what it’s worth, the DutchNews piece doesn’t mention “rebranding,” although it does claim that “the church” is “promoting” the Lenten fast as “the Christian Ramadan.” What, exactly, does this mean?

In a Catholic context, when you say “the church” is doing X — at least if you know what you’re talking about — you mean that bishops are doing X, or at least sanctioning it. That is who speaks for the Church: the bishops. If, say, individual Catholics are doing X, you don’t say that “the church” is doing it, you say some Catholics are doing it.

In the case of the Dutch episcopacy, the prospect of someone proposing some sort of boneheaded Lent/Ramadan equivalency might not be entirely out of the question. A ways back Bishop “Tiny” Muskins made headlines by suggesting that Christians use the name Allah to refer to God, which makes a lot of sense — for Arabic-speaking Christians. It makes no sense at all for Christians whose primary language is Dutch or English. Whether this new flap represents similar episcopal thinking, though, remains to be seen.

The Telegraph piece offers the more startling headline — “Lent fast re-branded as ‘Christian Ramadan’” — written in the passive voice with no active subject, leaving it unclear who or what is responsible for this “re-branding.” To be fair, headlines are usually written by editors, not the reporters who are at least meant to be researching facts, but still it presents the alleged “rebranding” as a fait accompli.

At the very least, it suggests that someone with some sort of significant controlling stake in the Lenten “brand” — again, presumably the Dutch bishops, or at least a diocesan PR office or something — has embarked on a concerted campaign to get “Christian Ramadan” into the vernacular while consigning “Lent” to the scrap heap. (That’s what “rebranding” implies: deprecating an old, obsolete brand in favor of the new normative one.)

Then in the opening graf we learn that “Dutch Catholics” are responsible for this “rebranding.” Does this mean the Dutch Catholic bishops? Dutch Catholics in general? Is it a popular grassroots movement?  Whatever the facts, these early cues strongly suggest a broad-based Ramadanizing or Islamification of a Christian penitential season.

But wait. After telling us that “the church” was promoting Lent as “the Christian Ramadan,” DutchNews goes on to cite “the organisation Vastenaktie” as saying “We use the word Ramadan because it is a term young people are more likely to understand than Lent.”

Who or what is “the organization Vastenaktie”? DutchNews doesn’t say, possibly expecting Dutch readers to be in the know. It thus falls to the Telegraph to fill in readers outside the Netherlands that Vastenaktie is a Catholic charity. (Possibly with a special Lenten emphasis; “Vastenaktie” looks to mean something like “fasting and action.”)

So, okay, a Catholic charitable organization is concerned that the Lenten fast has lost cultural significance, and is trying to burnish its image among young people. That may be a significant story, particularly the cultural implication about young people being more familiar with Muslim cultural touchstones than Christian ones.

But it’s a far cry from the picture that you might get from the opening sentences of these stories of Lent being “rebranded” by “the church.” Even if Vastenaktie is an official arm of the Dutch church (and I have no idea whether it is or not), you still don’t say that “the church” is “rebranding” the Lenten fast because a Catholic charity has done…

Hm. Come to think of it, what exactly have they done? Exactly what form has this “rebranding” taken? What, specifically, has Vastenaktie done by way of “rebranding” the Lenten fast? Are there to be bulletins and other materials announcing the “Fourth Sunday in Christian Ramadan”? Will Catholics soon be asking each other what they’ve given up for Christian Ramadan?

Let’s see. Put together, both news stories give us a combined total of, um, zero facts in this regard. Zilch. Nada. Not a clue what “rebranding the Lenten fast” is supposed to entail. Just a quote from the organization’s director, talking about the need to “polish” the “image” of Lent and the observation that the Muslim penitential season is better known among young people. Later the Telegraph reporter vaguely mentions “linking” the Lenten fast to Ramadan, but again not a single specific as to what this means.

Perhaps at this point you’re wondering what Mollie was talking about when she praised reporters for putting “the story in context.” That was in reference to the relaxation of Lenten disciplines in the wake of Vatican II and the decline of Lenten observances among Mass-attending Catholics. I guess you could say that’s context. They just forgot to include the story. (Actually, according to comments at Get Religion, it looks like they got the context wrong too: Both stories erroneously claim that prior to Vatican II alcohol was prohibited during Lent.)

FWIW, I Googled Vastenaktie, went to their website, glanced over the homepage in Google translation, clicked on the first thing that mentioned fasting, and found a paragraph on “Christian Ramadan”. Below is an eclectic rendering in English based on a couple of online translation engines and my own ignorant judgment (my family is Dutch, but I learned almost nothing; I would welcome a more informed translation):

Christian Ramadan

A typical wordplay. In the Dutch media there is much attention for non-Christian religions and their practices. Each year Ramadan invariably pulls the front pages of newspapers in our country. By contrast, the Catholic fasting tradition is forgotten in oblivion. Young people especially know the Islamic fast, but not the Christian. The carnival obtains the news… The Catholic fasting tradition  is valuable. And the interest grows.

Putting together this paragraph with every single fact from both news stories, as far as I can tell, it looks like a Catholic charity in the Netherlands may or may not be saying something like, “You know how Muslims have Ramadan? Well, Catholics have something like that too! Lent: It’s like Ramadan… except the press talks a lot about Ramadan and ignores Lent, so maybe if we point out the connection, we can get Lent some coverage as well.”

I’m not saying that is all that Vastenaktie has done. Nor am I saying that this much, as far as it goes, is necessarily a good idea in itself. I’m not arguing any of that. I’m not defending Vastenaktie in any way. I’m saying that (1) I have no idea what Vastenaktie has actually done; (2) neither, as far as I can tell, does anyone else; and (3) the way the story is being reported and perpetuated seems wildly incommensurate with the facts that have emerged to date.

Certainly if the paragraph above, and the “wordplay” it suggests, represents the extent of the “Christian Ramadan” business, I’d say we have an instance here, not merely of journalistic incompetence in religion reporting, but of sensational Islamo-controversy-mongering.

That’s the kind of thing I expect Get Religion to be all over, instead of perpetuating.

It isn’t only Get Religion. A number of Catholic and non-Catholic bloggers have blogged on the story, either not noticing the problems in reporting, or possibly figuring it sounded crazy enough to be true. And who knows, it could be. But “could be” is not a story. Maybe someday if someone does some sensible reporting, we might find out.

Mollie commented in her piece that “It’s easy to write the first story.” She might have underestimated the difficulty. Perhaps we’ll know when (or rather if) the first story emerges.

SDG here (still not Jimmy!).

Stephen L. Carter in The Culture of Disbelief let the cat out of the bag (if it weren’t already) that God-talk by political conservatives is viewed far more suspiciously by media and political elites than God-talk by political liberals:

…in the 1992 campaign, the media often treated President Bush’s speeches to religious organizations as pandering—but when Bill Clinton spoke, for example, to a black Baptist group, he was given credit for shrewdness.

Even "pandering" is a mild charge; when conservatives speaking in churches, grave concerns about the separation of church and state are raised, but when liberals speak in churches, they’re credited with staking their own claim to faith and values.

This week, it seems, Barack Obama spoke in an Evangelical church in South Carolina.

Addressing a crowd of nearly 4000 people during a service livened by a rock band and hip-hop dancers, Obama spoke of creating "a Kingdom right here on Earth," and asked the crowd to "pray that I can be an instrument of God in the same way that Pastor Ron and all of you are instruments of God."

Now, let me say right off the bat that this "instrument of God" business doesn’t strike me as ominously messianic God-talk. Obama didn’t say "I am God’s instrument" or anything like that; he asked for prayers that he could be an instrument of God "in the same way that Pastor Ron and all of you are instruments of God."

Having said that, it seems safe to say that if it were Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson or Mike Huckabee who had talked about being "an instrument of God" while speaking at a church, the incident would have received front-page, top-story panic-level treatment in the MSM.

How was Obama’s speech actually covered?

As far as I can tell, the only major news venue to report on Obama’s "instrument of God" line was CNN.com — not in its feature article on the event (headline: "Obama: GOP doesn’t own faith issue"), but in a blog entry at CNN’s Political Ticker blog.

However, if you go to the blog entry today, you may be surprised to discover that the "instrument of God" line isn’t there any more.

The text of the story has changed a number of times this week. Specifically, it keeps getting shorter, with less and less coverage of Obama’s God-talk.

Here’s how the CNN blog covered the event early this week, as reproduced on other websites and blogs:

GREENVILLE, South Carolina (CNN) — After speaking to an evangelical church on Sunday in this traditionally conservative South Carolina city, Sen. Barack Obama said that Republicans no longer have a firm grip on religion in political discourse.

"I think its important particularly for those of us in the Democratic Party to not cede values and faith to any one party," Obama told reporters outside the Redemption World Outreach Center where he attended services.

"I think that what you’re seeing is a breaking down of the sharp divisions that existed maybe during the nineties, when at least in politics the perception was that the Democrats were fearful of talking about faith, and on the other hand you had the Republicans who had a particular brand of faith that often times seemed intolerant or pushed people away," he said.

Obama noted that he was pleased leaders in the evangelical community like T.D. Jakes and Rick Warren were beginning to discuss social justice issues like AIDS and poverty in ways evangelicals were not doing before.

"I think that’s a healthy thing, that we’re not putting people in boxes, that everybody is out there trying to figure out how do we live right and how do we create a stronger America," Obama said.

During the nearly two hour service that featured a rock band and hip-hop dancers, Obama shared the floor with the church’s pastor, Ron Carpenter. The senator from Illinois asked the multiracial crowd of nearly 4,000 people to keep him and his family in their prayers, and said he hoped to be "an instrument of God."

"Sometimes this is a difficult road being in politics," Obama said. "Sometimes you can become fearful, sometimes you can become vain, sometimes you can seek power just for power’s sake instead of because you want to do service to God. I just want all of you to pray that I can be an instrument of God in the same way that Pastor Ron and all of you are instruments of God."

He finished his brief remarks by saying, "We’re going to keep on praising together. I am confident that we can create a Kingdom right here on Earth."

Asked by CNN if he talks about faith more in churchgoing South Carolina than he does in the other early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, Obama said: "I don’t talk about it all the time, but when I’m in church I talk about it."

Around mid-week, though, when I checked the page, the sentence about being an "instrument of God" was missing. Gone. The phrase "instrument of God" was, however, still there, only in a photo caption, not in the text of the story.

Now, though, the the story is even shorter, and even the photo caption has changed so that it no longer mentions the "instrument of God" line. Instead, the "build a Kingdom" line has been moved into the photo caption — and out of the text of the story. (Will the caption change again?)

Here’s the story as it appears at this writing:

GREENVILLE, South Carolina (CNN) — After speaking to an evangelical church on Sunday in this traditionally conservative South Carolina city, Sen. Barack Obama said that Republicans no longer have a firm grip on religion in political discourse.

"I think its important particularly for those of us in the Democratic Party to not cede values and faith to any one party," Obama told reporters outside the Redemption World Outreach Center where he attended services.

"I think that what you’re seeing is a breaking down of the sharp divisions that existed maybe during the nineties, when at least in politics the perception was that the Democrats were fearful of talking about faith, and on the other hand you had the Republicans who had a particular brand of faith that often times seemed intolerant or pushed people away," he said.

That’s it. That’s the whole story. There’s a link to "Full story," but it doesn’t link to the original version of the blog entry — only to the CNN.com feature article that never mentioned the "instrument of God" business in the first place.

Now. I don’t read CNN.com’s Political Ticker blog on a regular basis. For all I know, they could have some strange policy of commonly editing pieces down as the stories get old. It would seem an odd thing to do, and I can’t imagine why they would, but it could be for all I know.

Barring that, though, it looks as if Obama’s God-talk — which even with this low-level coverage has raised skeptical eyebrows in the blogosphere, though not in the MSM or in Washington, DC that I can tell — has been tacitly buried by CNN editors, who ignored it in their feature piece and now have even excised it from their blog coverage.

Now, let’s see what happens if/when one of the Republican candidate darkens the door of a church.

In the above clip, two reporters explain why a drop in American casualties does not constitute news, while an increase in casualties does constitute news.

Is this a case of "If it bleeds, it leads" or a case of media bias–or both?

You decide.

MORE.

In a shockingly outrageous and irresponsible story, TIME Magazine has suggested that John Paul II committed suicide, or at least attempted to do so.

Here’s the basis of their story:

1) An Italian doctor who only watched news stories about John Paul on television thought that he was losing weight and having trouble swallowing due to his Parkinson’s disease.

2) Two years after his death, following the Vatican’s refusal to allow a Church funeral for a notorious Italian who demanded to be starved to death (and was), this doctor decides to revisit the death of John Paul II.

3) She concludes that if he was losing weight and having trouble swallowing then he should have been given a feeding tube earlier than he was.

4) She assumes that John Paul II’s doctors would have explained this to him.

5) Since he wasn’t given a feeding tube earlier than he was, she concludes that he must have refused it himself.

6) She also concludes that Church teaching would have required the use of a feeding tube at the earlier time she now thinks he should have had it.

7) Therefore, John Paul II was euthanized at his own request.

Which would mean it was suicide.

Kids, can you say "Cheap sensationalistic Italian press attempt to subvert Church teaching on euthanasia, tar the memory of John Paul II, and get payback for the Church’s stance regarding the Italian who starved himself to death last year?"

This chain of reasoning is so full of holes that I don’t see how it can be read as anything else.

And how about these gems from the TIME article:

Catholics are enjoined to pursue all means to prolong life.

Indeed her accusations are grave, questioning the Catholic Church’s
strictly traditional stances on medical ethics, including the dictum
from John Paul’s own 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae to use all modern means possible to avoid death.

Whoa!

Kids, can you say, "Partisan TIME correspondent too dangerously unqualified to keep his job?"

Yes! It seems that Ruth "I’m too dangerously unqualified to keep my job" Gledhill has some company in her unique group of reporters covering religion. She’s now joined by Jeff "I’m too dangerously unqualified to keep my job" Israely.

Hey, TIME Magazine! Next time you want to do a hit-job on the Catholic Church, try running the story past someone who knows what the Catholic Church actually teaches!

Try to avoid using television to diagnose subtle things like when a feeding tube should be used, too. Not every sick man should be put on one as soon as the scale drops a few pounds.

GET THE STORY.

HERE’S ANOTHER RESPONSE.

HERE’S A PARTICULARLY INTERESTING STORY ABOUT THE BBC AND THE LIBERAL BIAS IT (LIKE THE MSM IN GENERAL) HAS.

EXCERPTS:

[T]he BBC’s own report on impartiality that effectively admitted to an institutional “liberal” bias among programme makers. Previously these accusations had been dismissed as a right-wing rant, but since the report was published even the BBC’s allies seem to accept it.

It is of particular interest to me because for nine years, between 1955 and 1964, I was part of this media liberal consensus.

[W]e were not just anti-Macmillan; we were antiindustry, anti-capitalism, antiadvertising, antiselling, antiprofit, antipatriotism, antimonarchy, antiempire, antipolice, antiarmed forces, antibomb, antiauthority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place – you name it, we were anti it.

Although I was a card-carrying media liberal for the best part of nine years, there was nothing in my past to predispose me towards membership. I spent my early years in a country where every citizen had to carry identification papers. All the newspapers were censored, as were all letters abroad; general elections had been abolished: it was a one-party state. Yes, that was Britain – Britain from 1939 to 1945.

I was nine when the war started, and 15 when it ended, and accepted these restrictions unquestioningly. I was astounded when identity cards were abolished. And the social system was at least as authoritarian as the political system. It was shocking for an unmarried couple to sleep together and a disgrace to have a baby out of wedlock. A homosexual act incurred a jail sentence. Procuring an abortion was a criminal offence. Violent young criminals were birched, older ones were flogged and murderers were hanged.

So how did we get from there to here?

Very good question!

GET THE STORY.

The New York Times recently ran THIS STORY about B16’s meeting with President Bush.

Here’s the opening sentence:

President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI, both religious conservatives, met for the first time on Saturday in the papal palace at the Vatican, where the pontiff privately expressed his concerns to the president about “the worrying situation in Iraq,” especially the treatment of minority Christians there.

"Both religious conservatives"?

You just know that the folks at the NYT were just itching to caption the above picture (also from the story) something like "President Bush and Pope Benedict XVI, both religious conservatives, review plans for world domination."

Unfortunately they had to settle for "President Bush took a close look at his gifts, an etching and a medallion, from Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday."

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)

Regarding the recent controversy with Bill Moyers, Dr. E Calvin Beisner writes:

First, I didn’t lie but wrote honestly from the best of my memory.
  Second, the conversations on which my memory were based occurred before and
  after the recorded interview, as I reported in the October 12 issue of the ISA
  newsletter (before ever hearing from Moyers about the October 9
  issue) and were not taped.

Equal space will be given to any response that Mr. Moyers chooses to send me.