Category: News Media

As previously indicated, equal space would be given for any response that Bill Moyers chose to send me in response to the reply that Dr. E. Calvin Beisner made to the demands Mr. Moyers issued through his lawyer.

I recently received the following e-mail:

There have been posts on your site about the exchange between Bill
Moyers and Dr. Calvin Beisner.  Attached is a PDF of the latest email
sent from Bill Moyers.  As of the time I am emailing you, Dr. Beisner
has not responded to the attached email.  We ask that you post it so
that your visitors can have a complete picture of their correspondence.
Thank you.

Best,

Rick Byrne
Director of Communications
Public Affairs Television

I therefore excerpt a portion of Moyers’ e-mail equal in length to what was excerpted from Beisner’s newsletter. Following it will be a link to the original PDF:

—–Original Message—–
From: Moyers, Bill
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 3:21 PM
To: Calvin Beisner
Subject:

Dear Calvin Beisner:

As this weekend passed and there was no response from you to my urgent request that you retract the lie that you have been spreading about me, my anger gave way to sorrow. There was only silence from you as your defamation raced across Cyberspace. By Sunday evening I had concluded that you were waiting for the damage to accumulate, knowing that with the Internet, a lie circles the earth instantly while truth stumbles to its feet.

And this saddened me. I had not wanted to believe that you are just as eager as your allies on the Right to practice the polemics of personal destruction. I knew that you were the designated spokesman on environmental matters for the religious wing of the political right, which is why they sent me to you. But I came to Florida in good faith, and I left believing that if you and I had such a cordial conversation, perhaps the sorely-needed dialogue among evangelical Christians in America might actually be possible. For so long the invective of the Falwells, Robertsons, and Dobsons has poisoned relations with other Christians. The transformation of Christianity into a political religion – a weapon of partisan combat – weighs heavily on the soul of democracy. I read Ann Coulter, listen to Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage – and I do not recognize the God they are talking about or the people they demonize, myself included. The great heart of Jesus seems missing from their worldview. The Golden Rule is tarnished and twisted. The Bible is turned into a partisan tract. And the Beatitudes are blasphemed. The profound themes of our historic faith – justice, mercy, love, compassion, redemption, and forgiveness – are swept away in the toxic dust of their vituperation. The propagation of the Gospel – the Good News – has been replaced by the polemics of personal destruction. As I listen and read all this, I think to myself: If this is what the world sees and hears of our faith today, no wonder Jesus weeps.

CONTINUE READING IN ORIGINAL PDF.

Text taken from the October 21, 2006 newsletter of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance (not yet available online):

Bill Moyers

In the October 9 issue of this newsletter I reported my recollections of a conversation with Bill Moyers prior to a taping of an interview for his PBS special "Is God Green?" Mr. Moyers through his attorney challenged that report as being defamatory of Mr. Moyers. My response, through counsel, follows:

        Your letter of October 18, 2006, to Interfaith Stewardship Alliance and your letter of October 19, 2006, to Dr. E. Calvin Beisner have been sent to me by my clients for reply.
    

        I have carefully examined the language in the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance Newsletter dated October 9, 2006, that you contend in your October 18 letter is defamatory of your client, Bill Moyers. My examination of that language in the light of applicable United States Supreme Court opinions and those from other jurisdictions as well as major treatises on defamation forces me to the opinion that the language is not legally capable of a defamatory meaning. I would be pleased to review any authority you have that you believe supports your position.
    

        Dr. Beisner is troubled by the fracturing of the relationship with your client and desires to attempt to restore that relationship outside of the civil courts as Christians are admonished to do in First Corinthians chapter six.  He was preparing to do this before he received your first letter, which necessitated his seeking legal counsel.  He sincerely believes that he accurately summarized in the newsletter his recollection of a private conversation with your client that was not recorded prior to the interview on camera.  He also believes his recollection may have been influenced by a conversation he and your client had on the way to the airport following the interview.  Finally, he stands by the opinions expressed that you challenge in your letter.
    

        Accordingly, your demands in your letters are rejected.  Should you be able to call to my attention applicable authority in support of your position which is persuasive, then your demands will be reconsidered.

While I understood from the conversation that he was a Democrat, I accept his representation that he is an independent.

In Christ,
Calvin

NOTE: Equal space will be offered for any response that Bill Moyers or his attorney care to provide to me.

October 18, 2006

PDF SENT VIA EMAIL (JIMMYAKIN01@GMAILCOM)

Mr. Jimmy Akin

Re: Bill Moyers

Dear Mr. Akin:

This firm represents Bill Moyers. The following statement from the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance Newsletter dated October 9, 2006, by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner has been brought to our attention:

First, not earthshaking regarding climate science but of some interest to yours truly, Bill Moyers’s documentary "Is God Green?" (Click here: WGBH Programs) airs on PBS Wednesday evening, October 11 (check local listings). When Moyers interviewed me for the documentary last spring, he very candidly told me that he is a liberal Democrat and intended for the documentary to influence the November elections to bring control of Congress back to the Democrats. Don’t expect good science, economics, or ethics–or even journalistic balance. (Emphasis added.)

Dr. Beisner’s accusation is false and defamatory as it goes to the heart of Mr. Moyers’s integrity as a journalist. I am enclosing a copy of an e-mail from Mr. Moyers to Dr. Beisner dated October 17, 2006 in which he vigorously denies that any such statement was made and challenges Dr. Beisner to produce proof from his own tape recording to support his allegation. No such proof was produced.

We have demanded on behalf of Mr. Moyers a retraction from the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance stating clearly and without qualification that Dr. Beisner’s statement was erroneous, that Mr. Moyers never made any such statement to Dr. Beisner or anything colorably close to it, and apologizing to Mr. Moyers for the error.

You have re-published at https://www.jamesakin.com/reels_squares/2006/10/pay_no_attentio.html,
and perhaps elsewhere as well, Dr. Beisner’s statement as if it were true, and without seeking

————————————————————————————————————-
FRANKLIN, WEINRIB, RUDELL & VASSALLO, P.C.
Jimmy Akin
October 18, 2006 Page 2

corroboration from Mr. Moyers or proof from Dr. Beisner. In doing so, you have also defamed Mr. Moyers.

On behalf of Mr. Moyers, we demand that you immediately publish in full Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner, as well as the retraction and apology of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, if any, all with at least equal prominence to that given the false statement of Dr. Beisner.

Nothing in this letter should be construed as a limitation of the rights and remedies of our client, all of which are expressly reserved.

Neil J. Rosini

NJR/aws

Enclosure
cc: Bill Moyers

281309/1/0471/0000

————————————————————————————————————-
Moyers, Bill
From: Moyers, Bill
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:47 PM
To: [Dr. E. Calvin Beisner]
Subject: What has come over you?

You are not telling the truth. In fact, what you wrote in the ISA newsletter is an outright lie. You claim that "When Moyers interviewed me for the documentary last spring, he very candidly told me that he is a liberal Democrat and intended for the documentary to influence the November elections to bring control of Congress back to the Democrats." I said nothing of the sort — nothing. To the contrary, I told you that I am an independent – members of the crew remember my saying that to you specifically (there were, remember, three other people in the room.) You yourself taped the entire session with your own recorder; show me where in the transcript such a conversation occurred. I also told you, as I told everyone interviewed, that we of course could not usethe entire interview but that I would post it on our Website when the broadcast aired, as was done. If I had said anything approaching what you claim I said, if you perceived any bias on my part. you could have — and should have refused to participate. But you did participate freely, you were treated fairly and honestly, and for you now to bear false witness is not only unChristian but astonishing. What am I to make of the many friendly emails you have sent over these months, signed: "In Christ, Cal"? Or our exchange on how much I have enjoyed your daughter’s CD that you sent? Your conservative evangelical brothers who were also interviewed in the documentary – from Richard Cizik to Tri Robinson to Allan Johnson (not a liberal among them) have written in praise of how they were treated. You and you alone have chosen to bear false witness to our conversation and to defame – in your own words –the ethics and journalistic balance of the documentary. You owe me arid my team an apology and a public retraction.

Bill

ORIGINAL PDF.

————————————————————————————————————-

October 19, 2006

Neil J. Rosini, Esquire
Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, P. C.
488 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10022-5707

Re: Jimmy Akin

Dear Mr. Rosini:

This firm represents Jimmy Akin. I am in receipt of your correspondence to my client dated October 18, 2006, in which you claim—without citing any legal authority—that Mr. Akin defamed your client, Bill Moyers, by republishing certain statements from a newsletter penned by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner on behalf of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance dated October 9, 2006.

Mr. Akin categorically rejects your characterization of the blog post in question ("Pay no attention to that man behind the camera: Part Two," October 13, 2006—the only place my client republished the statements in question), and—having reviewed the relevant case law—I find it highly unlikely that you can sustain a case against my client for defamation.

That having been noted, Mr. Akin is certainly willing to "immediately publish in full Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner, as well as the retraction and apology of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance if any, all with at least equal prominence to that given the . . . statements of Dr. Beisner"; not because your client demands it, but because he believes it is only fair to allow Mr. Moyers to have his say on the matter. I will email you the text and links to such posts once they are published. A post containing Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner will be published on my client’s blog today, and (as a showing of good faith) will be featured as the top post for a 24-hour time period.

It is my sincere hope that the foregoing actions will resolve this matter between our clients. If you choose, however, to proceed with a civil action against our client, notwithstanding his willingness to comply with Mr. Moyers’s demands, please understand that this firm will vigorously defend Mr. Akin’s rights and good name.

 

SLAD/cbt

ORIGINAL PDF.

October 19, 2006

Neil J. Rosini, Esquire

Franklin, Weinrib, Rudell & Vassallo, P. C 488 Madison Avenue

New York, NY 10022-5707

Re: Jimmy Akin

Dear Mr. Rosini:

This firm represents Jimmy Akin,. I am in receipt of your correspondence to my client dated October 18, 2006, in which you claim—without citing any legal authority—that Mr, Akin defamed your client, Bill Moyers, by republishing certain statements from a newsletter penned by Dr. E.. Calvin Beisner on behalf of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance dated October 9, 2006.

Mr. Akin categorically rejects your characterization of the blog post in question (“Pay no attention to that man behind the camera: Part Two,” October 13, 2006—the only place my client republished the statements in question), and—having reviewed the relevant case law—I find it highly unlikely that you can sustain a case against my client for defamation.

That having been noted, Mr. Akin is certainly willing to “immediately publish in full Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner, as well as the retraction and apology of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance if any, all with at least equal prominence to that given the . . . statements of Dr. Beisner”; not because your client demands it, but because he believes it is only fair to allow Mr. Moyers to have his say on the matter. I will email you the text and links to such posts once they are published. A post containing Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner will be published on my client’s blog today, and (as a showing of good faith) will be featured as the top post for a 24-hour time period.

It is my sincere hope that the foregoing actions will resolve this matter between our clients.. If you choose, however, to proceed with a civil action against our client, notwithstanding his willingness to comply with Mr. Moyers’s demands, please understand that this firm will vigorously defend Mr. Akin’s rights and good name.

SLAD/cbt
————————————————————————————————————-

October 18, 2006

PDF SENT VIA EMAIL (JIMMYAKIN01@GMAILCOM)

Mr. Jimmy Akin

Re: Bill Moyers

Dear Mr. Akin:

This firm represents Bill Moyers. The following statement from the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance Newsletter dated October 9, 2006, by Dr. E. Calvin Beisner has been brought to our attention:

First, not earthshaking regarding climate science but of some interest to yours truly, Bill Moyers’s documentary "Is God Green?" (Click here: WGBH Programs) airs on PBS Wednesday evening, October 11 (check local listings). When Moyers interviewed me for the documentary last spring, he very candidly told me that he is a liberal Democrat and intended for the documentary to influence the November elections to bring control of Congress back to the Democrats. Don’t expect good science, economics, or ethics–or even journalistic balance. (Emphasis added.)

Dr. Beisner’s accusation is false and defamatory as it goes to the heart of Mr. Moyers’s integrity as a journalist. I am enclosing a copy of an e-mail from Mr. Moyers to Dr. Beisner dated October 17, 2006 in which he vigorously denies that any such statement was made and challenges Dr. Beisner to produce proof from his own tape recording to support his allegation. No such proof was produced.

We have demanded on behalf of Mr. Moyers a retraction from the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance stating clearly and without qualification that Dr. Beisner’s statement was erroneous, that Mr. Moyers never made any such statement to Dr. Beisner or anything colorably close to it, and apologizing to Mr. Moyers for the error.

You have re-published at https://www.jamesakin.com/reels_squares/2006/10/pay_no_attentio.html,
and perhaps elsewhere as well, Dr. Beisner’s statement as if it were true, and without seeking

————————————————————————————————————-
FRANKLIN, WEINRIB, RUDELL & VASSALLO, P.C.
Jimmy Akin
October 18, 2006 Page 2

corroboration from Mr. Moyers or proof from Dr. Beisner. In doing so, you have also defamed Mr. Moyers.

On behalf of Mr. Moyers, we demand that you immediately publish in full Mr. Moyers’s response to Dr. Beisner, as well as the retraction and apology of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, if any, all with at least equal prominence to that given the false statement of Dr. Beisner.

Nothing in this letter should be construed as a limitation of the rights and remedies of our client, all of which are expressly reserved.

Neil J. Rosini

NJR/aws

Enclosure
cc: Bill Moyers

281309/1/0471/0000

————————————————————————————————————-
Moyers, Bill
From: Moyers, Bill
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:47 PM
To: [Dr. E. Calvin Beisner]
Subject: What has come over you?

You are not telling the truth. In fact, what you wrote in the ISA newsletter is an outright lie. You claim that "When Moyers interviewed me for the documentary last spring, he very candidly told me that he is a liberal Democrat and intended for the documentary to influence the November elections to bring control of Congress back to the Democrats." I said nothing of the sort — nothing. To the contrary, I told you that I am an independent – members of the crew remember my saying that to you specifically (there were, remember, three other people in the room.) You yourself taped the entire session with your own recorder; show me where in the transcript such a conversation occurred. I also told you, as I told everyone interviewed, that we of course could not usethe entire interview but that I would post it on our Website when the broadcast aired, as was done. If I had said anything approaching what you claim I said, if you perceived any bias on my part. you could have — and should have refused to participate. But you did participate freely, you were treated fairly and honestly, and for you now to bear false witness is not only unChristian but astonishing. What am I to make of the many friendly emails you have sent over these months, signed: "In Christ, Cal"? Or our exchange on how much I have enjoyed your daughter’s CD that you sent? Your conservative evangelical brothers who were also interviewed in the documentary – from Richard Cizik to Tri Robinson to Allan Johnson (not a liberal among them) have written in praise of how they were treated. You and you alone have chosen to bear false witness to our conversation and to defame – in your own words –the ethics and journalistic balance of the documentary. You owe me arid my team an apology and a public retraction.

Bill

ORIGINAL PDF.

Bill Moyers (left–and leftist) has long been regarded as one of the worst journalistic shills for the Democratic Party, pretending neutrality but in reality viciously slanting his coverage in favor of liberal causes.

And with good reason. As his Wikipedia entry notes:

Moyers’ frequent criticism of conservative policy has led conservative commentators like Brent Bozell to label him a liberal commentator rather than an objective journalist.

Moyers has drawn further allegations of bias in his role as president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. In 2003 the center gave money to a variety of establishments which have been described as "left leaning," such as Sojourners magazine ($500,000), Salon.com ($277,785) and The Nation magazine ($115,000). After reviewing these donations David Horowitz’s conservative Discover the Network website has asserted that "Bill Moyers has dropped any pretense of objectivity". He has also been involved with the group Take Back America, an organization that seeks to help elect liberal political candidates.

I was interested, therefore, when E. Calvin Beisner of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance told me that he would be on a recent episode of Moyers’ program "Moyers on America" that was devoted to environmentalism and titled "Is God Green?"

I was not surprised that he tried to smear Cal by selectively disclosing facts and selectively editing the interview he did with him. That’s par for the course with the MSM. What did surprise me was just how open Moyers was about his use of his journalism as a political tool to benefit liberal causes. In a recent ISA newsletter (not yet online, unfortunately), Cal writes (EXCERPTS):

The bias of Moyers’s program is not
surprising. He forthrightly told me before our interviews that he, as a
liberal Democrat, hoped to use this program to divide the evangelical
vote and return control of Congress to the Democrats in November’s
elections. The timing of the program’s release, therefore, is not
surprising.

The PBS program aired Wednesday, October 11. The full program, which included excerpts from an interview Moyers did with yours truly, can be viewed on PBS’s web site; the transcript is also available, as is the full transcript of his interview with me. Comparing the full transcript of his interview with me with what actually got into the program is an education in how to misrepresent someone by editing his on-camera comments.

 

What kind of selective presentation of information did Moyers make?

While Moyers mentioned that some think tanks that oppose the popular view receive some funding from fossil fuel industry sources (and, by the way, he did not mention that I received no compensation for my association with the Acton Institute or any other think tank–he just let the association of ideas do its job of making viewers think my views are bought off), he did not mention that the Evangelical Climate Initiative’s initial funding was a $475,000 grant from the Hewlett Foundation, which is a major supporter of abortion as a method of population control around the world, or the reasons why Hewlett links those concerns with global warming concerns.

[H]e left the appearance that this lonely little professor of historical theology and social ethics [Beisner] holds this view, along with a handful of contrarian scientists, all bought off by industry money, when in fact, as we document in our “Call to Truth,” the scientific community is quite divided on the issue.

You will also have noticed that Moyers very carefully avoided all discussion of the actual scientific evidence, asserting instead simply that a 2004 study of 928 scientific articles found unanimous consensus in favor of the manmade catastrophic warming hypothesis. What he didn’t tell viewers was that an attempt to replicate that study discovered very significant methodological errors in it that improperly excluded over 90 percent of the relevant literature and that even within the articles the study did survey,

* only 1 percent explicitly endorsed what study author Naomi Oreskes called the “consensus view”;

* 29 percent implicitly accepted it “but mainly focus[ed] on impact assessments of envisaged global climate change”;

* 8 percent focused on “mitigation”;

* 6 percent focused on methodological questions;

* 8 percent dealt “exclusively with paleo-climatological research unrelated to recent climate change”;

* 3 percent “reject[ed] or doubt[ed] the view that human activities are the main drivers of the ‘the [sic] observed warming over the last 50 years’”;

* 4 percent focused “on natural factors of global climate change”; and

* 42 percent did “not include any direct or indirect link or reference to human activities, CO2 or greenhouse gas emissions, let alone anthropogenic forcing of recent climate change.” {Benny J. Peiser, Letter to Science, January 4, 2005, submission ID: 56001.Science Associate Letters Editor Etta Kavanagh eventually decided against publishing the letter, or the shortened version of it provided at her request by Peiser, not because it was flawed but because “the basic points of your letter have already been widely dispersed over the internet” (e-mail from Etta Kavanagh to Benny Peiser, April 13, 2005). Peiser, a scientist at Liverpool John Moores University, replied: “As far as I am aware, neither the details nor the results of my analysis have been cited anywhere. In any case, don’t you feel that SCIENCE has an obligation to your readers to correct manifest errors? After all, these errors continue to be employed by activists, journalists and science organizations . . . . Are you not aware that most observers know only too well that there is absolutely *no* consensus within the scientific community about global warming science?” He went on to cite a survey of “some 500 climatologists [that] found that ‘a quarter of respondents still question whether human activity is responsible for the most recent climatic changes,” and other evidence. Peiser, e-mail to Kavanagh, April 14, 2005. The whole correspondence, including much more evidence of the lack of scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming, and refutation of some attempts to debunk Peiser’s critique of Oreskes’s study, is online at www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Scienceletter.htm.}

When you think the data are on your side, you argue the data. When you don’t, you attack the person. That is what Moyers did, and that is what the supporters of the Evangelical Climate Initiative have done, consistently.

UPDATE: Mr. Moyers disputes Dr. Beisner’s account; PLEASE SEE THIS LINK.

Mr. Moyers sent an e-mail to Dr. Beisner stating the following:

From: Moyers, Bill
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:47 PM
To: [Dr. E. Calvin Beisner]
Subject: What has come over you?

You are not telling the truth. In fact, what you wrote in the ISA
newsletter is an outright lie. You claim that "When Moyers interviewed
me for the documentary last spring, he very candidly told me that he is
a liberal Democrat and intended for the documentary to influence the
November elections to bring control of Congress back to the Democrats."
I said nothing of the sort — nothing. To the contrary, I told you that
I am an independent – members of the crew remember my saying that to
you specifically (there were, remember, three other people in the
room.) You yourself taped the entire session with your own recorder;
show me where in the transcript such a conversation occurred. I also
told you, as I told everyone interviewed, that we of course could not
usethe entire interview but that I would post it on our Website when
the broadcast aired, as was done. If I had said anything approaching
what you claim I said, if you perceived any bias on my part. you could
have — and should have refused to participate. But you did participate
freely, you were treated fairly and honestly, and for you now to bear
false witness is not only unChristian but astonishing. What am I to
make of the many friendly emails you have sent over these months,
signed: "In Christ, Cal"? Or our exchange on how much I have enjoyed
your daughter’s CD that you sent? Your conservative evangelical
brothers who were also interviewed in the documentary – from Richard
Cizik to Tri Robinson to Allan Johnson (not a liberal among them) have
written in praise of how they were treated. You and you alone have
chosen to bear false witness to our conversation and to defame – in
your own words –the ethics and journalistic balance of the documentary.
You owe me arid my team an apology and a public retraction.

Bill

In the current uproar about the pope’s words and whether they were or were not offensive to Muslims the attention has centered almost exclusively on whether the pope was wrong to say what he said (either at all, or in this context, or in this way) and whether Muslims are overreacting.

The answer to the latter question is: Of course they are.

But there is, as the like to say in Latin, a tertium quid that should be considered in assessing the question of who–or what–is to blame for the current situation.

That third thing is the mainstream media.

Canadian editorialist DAVID WARREN makes a persuasive case, including fingering one of the chief offenders.

EXCERPTS:

The BBC appears to have been quickest off the mark, to send around the world in many languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Urdu, and Malay, word that the Pope had insulted the Prophet of Islam, during an address in Bavaria.

This was not a crude anti-Islamic polemic; nor was it so at the end of the 14th century. It was a quest for peace and amity, then as now.

By turning the story back-to-front, so that what’s promised in the lead — a crude attack on Islam — is quietly withdrawn much later in the text, the BBC journalists were having a little mischief. The kind of mischief that is likely to end with Catholic priests and faithful butchered around the Muslim world. Either the writers were so jaw-droppingly ignorant, they did not realize this is what they were abetting (always a possibility with the postmodern journalist), or the malice was intended. There is no third possibility.

From the start, the BBC’s reports said the Pope would “face criticism from Muslim leaders” — in the present tense. This is a form of dishonesty that has become common in journalism today. The flagrantly biased reporter, feigning objectivity, spices his story by just guessing what a man’s enemies will say, even before they have spoken.

While I don’t mean to pick especially on the BBC, when other mainstream media are often as culpable, they are worth singling out here to show the amount of sheer, murderous evil of which this taxpayer-funded network is capable.

GET THE STORY.

A couple of weeks ago, Jimmy blogged  on an article in the Daily Mail reporting on a Vatican Radio interview with Fr. Gabriele Amorth.

A few days later, content from that Daily Mail article cropped up in an incredibly garbled form in a Sydney Morning Herald article by one Linda Morris, credited as "Religious Affairs Writer."

I don’t know how you get to be "Religious Affairs Writer" for the Sydney Morning Herald, but based on this piece, if I lived in Sydney, I’d consider getting my religion news from a more reliable source. Like the National Enquirer.

Here’s how the article starts out:

Devil in the detail: Vatican exorcises Harry Potter

THE Vatican has never been a fan of Harry Potter, but its chief exorcist has gone one step further and condemned J. K. Rowling’s fictional boy wizard as downright evil.

"Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil," says Father Gabriele Amorth, the Pope’s "caster-out of demons".

The books contained numerous positive references to the satanic art, falsely drawing a distinction between black and white magic, he told the Daily Mail in London. In the same interview, Father Amorth said he was convinced that Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler were possessed by the devil.

Last year the Pope, who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, described Harry Potter as a potentially corrupting influence.

Now… how many problems can YOU spot in those few short paragraphs?

1. Source problems. The article claims to be reporting on an interview with Fr. Amorth given to "the Daily Mail in London." False. In fact, that article was reporting on an interview given with Vatican Radio. Fr. Amorth was apparently not interviewed by the Daily Mail.

2. Furthermore, even in the Daily Mail piece the Harry Potter business is only tacked on the end as something that Fr. Amorth has said "in the past." So even the Daily Mail wasn’t reporting on recent comments made by Fr. Amorth. The Daily Mail doesn’t even source the "past comments" in question — and then the current story linked above misattributes the Daily Mail‘s unsourced comments to a non-existent interview with the Daily Mail itself — specifically stating that the comments were given "in the same interview," which they weren’t! Just goes to show how carefully the reporter read the piece she was regurgitating.

3. The article calls Fr. Amorth the "chief exorcist" of "the Vatican" as well as "the Pope’s ‘caster-out of demons’" (the latter phrase apparently lifted straight from the Daily Mail story). Jimmy has already pointed out the problems with these assertions.

4. Given that (as Jimmy points out in the above link) Fr. Amorth is a priest of the diocese of Rome rather than an official of Vatican City, the various references to "the Vatican" are even more misleading than such media statements typically are.

5. "Last year the Pope, who was then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, described Harry Potter as a potentially corrupting influence." Since Cardinal Ratzinger was elected to the Roman See in mid-April, that would put the alleged comments within the first 3½ months of 2005. In fact, though, this statement represents a garbled report about a letter Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in March of 2003 — two years before he is supposed to have made the comments in question. Again, Jimmy has the clarification. Suffice to say, it is not at all clear that Ratzinger ever described Harry Potter as a "potentially corrupting influence," either last year or in 2003.

6. The article paraphrases Fr. Amorth as saying that "The books contained [sic; the books still exist!] numerous positive references to the satanic art." As phrased, this suggests that Fr. Amorth attributed to Rowling positive references to "the satanic art" as such, when in fact satanism is perhaps never mentioned in any of the HP books. The paraphrase in the original article is slightly more convincing: "Rowling’s books contain innumerable positive references to magic, ‘the satanic art’." That makes more sense: The books refer positively to magic, which Fr. Amorth calls "the satanic art." That’s different from saying that the books "contain numerous positive references to the satanic art."

"Devil in the details," indeed!

I have to say, I’m sick to death of the news media reporting that "the Vatican" has done this or that every time someone sneezes in Italian.

This piece, though, is even more egregious than usual. Did the reporter even bother to read her source piece twice — let alone actually check a single fact?

Sydney residents, demand more from your local media!

Man! I read what had to be the stupidest editorial I’ve read in some time yesterday.

It appeared in USA Today, and the headline I saw it under (though not the actual headline when I clicked on it) was "The Seductive Mythology of the Blogosphere."

"Okay," I thought. "Perhaps it’ll be a critique of the blogosphere that has something valuable to say."

NOT!

The author–someone named Bruce Kluger–seems to be one of the most insular, perspectiveless individuals I have seen commenting on the blogosphere, and he writes a triumphalistic piece about how the blogospher ain’t all it’s cracked up to be because (are you aready?) "the bloggers" got Joe Liberman denied the Democratic nomination yet "the bloggers" aren’t likely to be able to keep him from retaining his seat in the Senate, thus proving "the bloggers" relative impotence when it counts.

Oh yeah, and the blogosphere also ain’t all it’s cracked up to be because the movie Snakes on a Plane didn’t perform better than most horror movies, despite "the bloggers" best efforts to promote it.

Excuse me, but where has this guy been?

He must be reading a rather polarized selection of blogs if he can speak of "the bloggers" as if they were monolithic supporters of the effort to deny Liberman the Democratic nomination. He’s acting as if the Kos Kidz and their ideological ilk are the whole of the blogosphere, but there were countless conservative bloggers out there arguing that it was a boneheaded move it was for the nutroots to go after Liberman when he was virtually sure to retain his seat. It would only make the Democratic Party look more extreme to the public and potentially alienate Liberman at a moment when the Party needed him particularly badly.

Whatever else may be said about this matter, the blogosphere was not trying to oust Liberman. One segment of politically liberal bloggers was trying to do so, but Mr. Kluger is apparently so myopic that he confuses a single copse of trees for the whole Amazon rainforrest.

Same thing goes–and probably moreso–for his ridiculous argument that the blogosphere couldn’t boost Snakes on a Plane into blockbuster status. There was no monolithic blogosphere effort made here, either.

Now, it’s quite true that the blogosphere has limited power (albeit the power to topple a Dan Rather or to smoke out a "Secret Senator" trying to kill legislation that would allow greater public scruitiny of government waste). The fact is that most people aren’t bloggers and that most people don’t (yet) read blogs on a regular basis. Those points are quite fair.

But to speak as if the blogosphere was a monolithic entity that acts concertedly–as opposed to simply a community of people with widely divergent ideas, interests, and ideologies–is simply reflective of the most blinkered, uninformed journalistic stereotyping imaginable.

I know the press loves simple stereotypes that it can pour people into, but this is simply unconscionably bad journalism.

The irony is that Mr. Kluger himself is a blogger–at least some of the time–at the HuffingtonPost.

If this is the kind of ideologically bubble-bound, "my circle of friends represents the whole universe" low-wattage analysis that goes on at HuffPo then . . . maybe that’s why I don’t read HuffPo.

And maybe it should have rammifications for my willingness to click on USA Today editorials as well.

Here’s another newsitorial–this time from Catholic News Service.

It has the startling headline:

In immigration law, distinctions of ‘legal,’ ‘illegal’ fairly recent

Huh? Really? Nobody distinguished between legal and illegal aliens until recently?

How does this headline get justified? Let’s look at the opening of the story:

Here’s a little-understood fact about immigration law: Until well into the 20th century, pretty much anyone who showed up at a port of entry or walked across a border got to stay in the United States.

In other words, one reason so many people today can say "my ancestors followed the law when they came here" is because until fairly recently there was no distinction made about whether someone arrived legally or not. With few exceptions, anyone who got here was admitted.

You’ll note that I’ve put two phrases in blue here and two phrases in red.

The blue phrases are designed by the reporter (Patricia Zapor) to convey the impression that it is a "fact" that "there was no distinction made about whether someone arrived legally or not." That serve to justify the headline of the piece.

But the phrases in red indicate that the blue phrases–and the story as a whole–is creating an inaccurate impression. The reporter knows that there was a distinction between legal and illegal immigration, because she concedes that she says people got legally in "pretty much" of the time and that there were "exceptions."

That means that she’s deliberately slanting the news. She knows that the impression she’s trying to create isn’t accurate, but she’s creating it anyway because of her agenda.

Either that or she’s too slow witted to realize the contradiction.

It’s hard to credit the later idea, though, because the contradiction gets more blatant as the story goes on. Later we read:

"The number who got sent back at Ellis Island was less than 2 percent," Meissner told Catholic News Service in an interview, "possibly less than 1 percent."

And those rejections were almost always because the people suffered from an illness that might make them financially dependent upon the community, she said. For instance, a then-common eye infection left victims blind and presumably unable to support themselves. People who had it were turned away.

There were some exceptions to the open-door policy, explains an immigration law history article provided by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Bureau, as the agency Meissner headed in the 1990s is now called. An 1882 Chinese exclusion law that remained on the books until 1943 was originally aimed at limiting cheap labor.

Other laws of the era excluded polygamists, those with criminal records for "moral turpitude," people with contagious diseases or epilepsy, professional beggars, anarchists and those who were insane.

So it turns out that there were a whole bunch of categories of people who could not legally enter the country, meaning that if they did enter it that their entry was illegal.

The percentage of people who showed up and were disallowed entry may have been smaller than it is today–or it may not have been smaller at all. I don’t know that more than 1-2% of aliens who show up at U.S. airports today get turned away. The story doesn’t go into that. And it’s not the number of people turned away from Ellis Island that indicates how large a problem illegal immigration was, anyway. It’s the number of people who circumvented Ellis Island and similar institutions that’s an indicator of how many illegals there were.

In any event, the story contains abundant evidence that there was a distinction between legal and illegal immigration. "Pretty much anybody" is not the same thing as "anybody."

So what we have here is another instance of a unprofessional story that violates journalistic ethics with a blatant attempt to slant the news in favor of the author’s agenda.

GET THE STORY.

The AFP has a real problem–the same problem that the rest of the Mainstream Media has: It’s can’t stop itself from slanting the news to fit it’s political agenda, and in the most ham-handed, obvoius ways.

Consider the following opening paragraph from an AFP new story:

At least 14,000 mostly Hispanic students stormed out of school classes across Los Angeles in a snowballing protest against Washington’s plans for a draconian crackdown on illegal immigration.

Now look at the last line of the same story:

At least 11 million illegal immigrants, most of them from neighbouring Mexico, live in the United States and are responsible for keeping the human machinery of US cities humming.

This piece is unsigned and is not presented as an editorial. It’s presented as a straight news piece.

Why then is the AFP so blatantly editorializing, referring to "Washington’s plans for a draconian crackdown on illegal immigration" and playing up the role of illegal aliens as being "responsible for keeping the human machinery of US cities humming"?

"Draconian" is an evaluative term, and reporters who make a pretense of objectivity have no business evaluating government programs and telling us whether they are draconian or harmful or beneficial or necessary or anything else.

Neither do they have any business putting positive slants on the role of people who are breaking the law. It would be fair to say that illegal immigrants are tightly knit into the American economy at present, but to say that they keep things "humming" puts a positive spin on their presence.

If an individual reader of the story wanted to conclude that the presence of illegal aliens is a positive thing and that it outweighs the damage done to society by widespread breaking of the law that their presence entails then that would be an opinion that a person might legitimately hold. So would the contrary opinion that the damage done to society outweighs the benefits. It’s a judgment call whether a benefit outweighs a harm or visa versa.

And that’s the point.

It’s a judgment call, and reporters pretending to objectivity have no business making such evaluative judgment calls on behalf of their readers. They should be taking a "Just the facts, ma’am," approach, and leave the editorializing to . . . well . . . editors.

This kind of editorial masquerading as a news story–a "newsitorial," if you will–and especially one as blatantly editorial as this–is just unacceptable from an organization that does not openly and honestly declare itself a partisan entity.

Who do they think they’re fooling?

GET THE STORY.