February 16, 2008
“Christian Ramadan”: Does the Press Get Religion Now?
(SDG)
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.
Posted by SDG in News Media | Permalink | Comments (280)
October 12, 2007
Media Bias #2: God-talk (right and left)
(SDG)
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.
Posted by SDG in News Media | Permalink | Comments (16)
October 11, 2007
Not News?
(Jimmy Akin)
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.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (63)
September 27, 2007
TIME MAGAZINE: Did John Paul II Commit Suicide?
(Jimmy Akin)
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.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (98)
August 13, 2007
Confessions of a BBC Liberal
(Jimmy Akin)
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!
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (98)
June 19, 2007
NYTwits
(Jimmy Akin)
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.)
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (110)
November 02, 2006
Beisner Responds
(Jimmy Akin)
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.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (10)
October 30, 2006
Mr. Bill Moyers Responds
(Jimmy Akin)
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.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (21)
October 23, 2006
Dr. E. Calvin Beisner Responds
(Jimmy Akin)
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.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (4)
October 19, 2006
Moyers Exchange
(Jimmy Akin)
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 http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/defensor_fidei/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
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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
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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
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (213)
October 13, 2006
Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Camera: Part Two
(Jimmy Akin)
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
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (23)
September 20, 2006
Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Camera
(Jimmy Akin)
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.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (29)
September 12, 2006
Devil Not Just In The Details
(SDG)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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!
Posted by SDG in News Media | Permalink | Comments (21)
August 31, 2006
Whatta Maroon!
(Jimmy Akin)
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.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (56)
March 28, 2006
Now CNS Gets Into The Act
(Jimmy Akin)
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.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBack
AFP's Newsitorials
(Jimmy Akin)
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?
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack
November 29, 2005
America's Ministry Of Propaganda
(Michelle Arnold)
Wesley J. Smith, a noted writer on life issues, catalogues a recent case of anti-life propaganda pushed by America's premier newspaper Pravda... er, I mean the New York Times:
"Today's Times has a front page story on Woo-Suk Hwang's ethical lapses in obtaining eggs for therapeutic cloning, which I blogged on yesterday. Toward the end of the article, the story shifts from describing his bad ethics to defending therapeutic cloning. While the story mentions cloning embryos when describing the egg issue, it leaves that fact out entirely when actually describing the process of 'therapeutic cloning,' which, readers are told, consists merely of 'converting one of a patient's adult cells into an embryonic cell, and then converting that cell into new adult cells to replace any damaged tissue.'
"This description omits the crucial point: In somatic cell nuclear transfer, the nucleus of the adult cell is fused with the egg to create a new human embryo through asexual means -- the act of human cloning. The embryo is developed for about a week and then destroyed to obtain its stem cells. This is not merely reverting an adult cell to a stem cell. It is creating a new human organism, a human life, for the purpose of destroying and harvesting it.
"The point of the inaccurate reporting is to conveniently skip past the part that causes people to be wary of the therapeutic cloning enterprise. This is bad journalism and an example of bias-by-omission for which the New York Times is becoming infamous."
This must be why God created bloggers.
Posted by Michelle Arnold in News Media | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 22, 2005
Bless His Heart
(Jimmy Akin)
Down in Texas, and elsewhere in the South, we have a saying: "Bless his heart" (or, in the feminine, "Bless her heart"). This phrase is used to signal affection for someone, frequently just before or just after noting one of their shortcomings.
The amazing thing about this phrase is that you can couple it with the most withering critique, but the phrase "makes that okay."
F'rinstance: "Bless his heart, Lester never did have the sense to come in out of the rain" or "Bless her heart, Betty Jo's entry into this year's apple pie contest tasted like it had been made with persimmons."
"Bless his heart" is like of like putting a smiley face after an insult on the web.
Well it seems that the MSM has an equivalent to this. Witness:
At the end of a day of meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao and other Chinese officials, Bush held a session with a small group of U.S. reporters and spoke at length about issues like religious freedom, Iraq and the Chinese currency.
The final reporter he called on critiqued Bush's performance earlier in the day when he stood next to Hu in the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square to deliver a statement.
"Respectfully, sir -- you know we're always respectful -- in your statement this morning with President Hu, you seemed a little off your game, you seemed to hurry through your statement. There was a lack of enthusiasm. Was something bothering you?" he asked [SOURCE].
It appears that "Respectfully, sir" is the MSM equivalent of "Bless his heart." It's a phrase to "make okay" whatever outrage is about to pass the reporter's lips.
Only it's darker than "Bless his heart," because there can be (and usually is) genuine affection expressed with the latter phrase.
There isn't any of that in the reporter's "Respectfully, sir" and certainly not in the patently false "you know we're always respectful."
This question was anything but respectful, and calling it that didn't make it so. It only called attention to the fundamental rudeness of the question, which can only be described as an ill-willed, nitpicky, and petty effort at "gotcha" journalism.
The question was asked purely to embarrass the president. It certainly was not a serious attempt to elicit information that would be valuable for the public to know. I mean, if there was a urgent global crisis that the president was aware of and that was what was what was on his mind, he could scarcely be expected to tell that to the reporter.
The question also has the appearance of trying to stir up ill will between the president and his Chinese hosts by overtly suggesting that he wasn't enthusiastic about relations with them. Trying to stir up trouble between the U.S. and China in a diplomatic situation like this isn't just asinine, it's positively unpatriotic.
No president should be asked such a blatantly insulting question in such a diplomatic situation. Not Bush. Not Clinton. Not anybody.
Oh, and think what a sterling example of the free press the reporter set for the Chinese. Yes, that'll make Beijing want to loosen control of reporters in China. "My asinine behavior is what y'all have to look forward to if you free the press, guys!" is what this guy telegraphed to the Chinese leadership.
Despite the fact that the reporter was acting like an arrogant, nitpicking, petty little man bent on troublemaking, the president had a good comeback:
"Have you ever heard of jet lag?" Bush responded. "Well, good. That answers your question."
Nice comeback.
Still, that reporter needs a trip to the woodshed.
Bless his heart.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in News Media | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack
September 22, 2005
Yesterday's News
(Jimmy Akin)
The NYT has announced that it's cutting 500 jobs from its different operations (which are more diverse than just the paper you think of). This amounts to 4% of its overall labor force.
Why?
Because they have fewer readers and fewer profits and so can sustain fewer workers.
Over at Powerline John Hinderaker offers this:
As life-long newspaper junkies, we take no pleasure in the industry's current crisis. Apart from anything else, we web-based commenators need newspapers to produce the raw material for our commentary. But my sympathy for the Times, the Globe, the Chronicle, et al. is tempered by the knowledge that there is a path to solvency, which I think would likely succeed, but that they would never consider: stop being so liberal. Wouldn't you think that with newspapers nearly everywhere sliding inexorably downhill, just one might consider whether its readers--or former readers--were trying to tell it something? Like, we're not interested in supporting far-left nonsense?
But no. They would rather go broke than abandon their reason for being, which is, with only a handful of exceptions, promoting the Democratic Party.
Would moderating their hard-left politics help stop the financial bleeding? It's hard to say for sure. But don't you think that if they were motivated mainly be economics, just one of our major liberal papers might try it? [SOURCE.]
I agree that stopping being so liberal would help the situation of the major newspapers, and that they'd try it if they were motivated by purely economic considerations, but I don't think it would fix the situation.
Why?
'Cause I think newspapers are losing their market for reasons independent of the fact that their political ideology is driving readers away.
Personally, I have no interest in reading newspapers. None. I don't need any more paper piling up around my house, thankyew. I don't need burglars knowing that I'm not at home because my sloppy, distracted paperboy keeps throwing papers when I'm out of town. I don't need anything that the papers have to offer.
Not when I can get it all online.
I can get my news online, read comics online, print coupons online, check movie times online, go to eBay instead of the classifieds. Anything! I can get all of my newspaper-type business done online far faster, cheaper, and more conveniently.
It's the same reason I don't watch TV news (except for rare exceptions for major national events like after 9/11 or a presidential election).
If I can get my standard information needs fulfilled online--for free--anytime I want them, then why should I even bother with television, much less something as klunky as a newspaper.
As more people are brought up in the fourth age of human communications, it will be harder and harder for newspapers to have a go of it.
I suspect that they will always exist. There will be a few big ones, probably on the model of USA Today, and there will be lots of little, tiny, local papers, like the weeklies that exist principally to run classified ads and that do a few stories on the side.
But I suspect that within a generation the middle level of papers will simply be gone.
They'll be yesterday's news.
What will emerge in their places, I'm not sure. Blogs will be a big part of the picture, but not all of it. Probably the broadcast media will have web sites that provide news, on the model of FOXnews.com or CNN.com.
I'm dubious, though, whether anybody will be able to put together a for-pay online newspaper, not when you have newsgatherers like the broadcast networks wanting to involve people with their web sites so that they can involve them with their TV channels.
The quality of news coverage may suffer, at least for a while.
Ultimately, though, the Internet will serve as a net knowledge gain for society, not a net knowledge loss.
That's what the fourth age is all about.
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May 30, 2005
AP Makes "Slight" Correction
(Jimmy Akin)
TEXT OF CORRECTION:
ROME - In a May 26 story about Pope Benedict XVI's visit to a Rome basilica, The Associated Press erroneously reported that Catholics believe the Eucharist represents the body and blood of Christ. Instead, Catholics believe the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ.
Oops!
Guess they started hearing from folks.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)
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May 16, 2005
Newsweek Lied, People Died
(Jimmy Akin)
You may have encountered the recent story--floated by Newsweek--that interrogators down at Gitmo have been desecrating the Qur'an and, in one case, flushing it in order to get cooperation from interogees.
Doesn't sound very plausible, does it? Not the kind of tactic a seasoned interrogator would want to use.
I mean, if I saw somebody desecrating the Bible that way, would that make me want to cough up info for them, or would it make me more resolved not to give them info?
I think the latter.
Newsweek, on the heels of a hot story, though, couldn't think things through this far (perhaps because Newsweek has no sense of what it's like to be a religious person) and they published the story.
INSTANT RIOTING OVER YONDER IN THE MUSLIM WORLD!
I mean, everyone over in the Muslim world knows that us Americans are just eeevil, right? So why let reason get in the way of passion and stop a good riot?
Trouble is, folks get killed in riots.
EXCERPTS:
Reaction across the Islamic world has been strong, with daily demonstrations since the May 9 story came out. At least 15 people died in Afghanistan after protests broke out Tuesday following the report that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, placed Qurans in washrooms to unsettle suspects, and in one case "flushed a holy book down the toilet."
"The American soldiers are known for disrespect to other religions. They do not take care of the sanctity of other religions," Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the Pakistani chief of a coalition of radical Islamic groups, said Sunday
Ahmed's comments came a day after Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, both allies of Washington, demanded an investigation and punishment for those behind the reported desecration of the Quran.
Newsweek apologized in an editor's note for Monday's edition and said they were re-examining the allegations.
"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker wrote.
Newsweek's source later said he was unsure about the origin of the Quran allegation, and a top Pentagon spokesman told the magazine that the military "had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them 'not credible.'"
A SECOND STORY CONFIRMING NEWSWEEK'S ERROR HERE.
Now, I dunno from my own experience that the charge is false. I could come up true, after all. So it's a bit premature to say "Newsweek lied." In fact, I doubt very much that Newsweek did knowingly and deliberately print a falsehood with intent to deceive, so the title of this post is hyperbole in regard to the first part.
But not the second.
People died.
People died on account of what Newsweek irresponsibly printed. To be sure, the Yahoos who would be so foam-at-the-mouth nuts as to start a riot (rather than a peaceful demonstration) so violent that folks would get killed deserve a share of the blame.
But so does Newsweek.
Their irresponsible behavior has not only resulted in the deaths of particular individuals but also in a major international incident at a time of war against terrorists when the U.S. very much needs to improve its image in the Muslim world.
You don't go to press with anything other than rock-solid verification with a claim like that at a time like this.
Newsweek, you're despicable.
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May 06, 2005
Dead-Tree Blogs
(Jimmy Akin)
Something Thomas Sowell said in a recently quoted piece came back to me:
Even those who write editorials about how we need Mexicans to do work that Americans will not do would not be willing to write editorials for a fraction of what they are being paid. If Mexican editorial writers were coming across the border illegally and taking their jobs, maybe the issue would become clearer.
And I thought: "Wait a minute. Something like this is happening right now."
The folks undercutting the editorial market aren't Mexicans for the most part, but new technology (the blog) has made it possible for a large number of people to editorialize, and they are doing so, and doing so for free. In fact, most of the successful ones pay something to have customized, attractive blogs, and I don't know if the revenues from all those political T-shirt ads actually subsidize the costs of doing the blog. In any event, they're severely cutting into the market for editorials.
Not convinced?
Well, newspaper circulation has been dwindling for decades as more folks started getting their news from radio and then television. Back in the first half of the 20th century, for example, each city used to would have multiple newspapers of competing ideologies. Not any more. Most cities have only one major daily paper. The market won't sustain more than that. That's why so many cities and regions have newspapers with hyphenated names like "Union-Tribune" or "Democrat-Gazette" or "Post-Dispatch." The old rivals merged when the market for papers shrank.
Now broadcast TV news is suffering due to defections to cable and the Internet. Meanwhile, newspaper circulation continues to decline:
Circulation at 814 of the nation's largest daily newspapers declined 1.9 percent over the six months ended March 31 compared with the same period last year, an industry trade group reported yesterday.
The decline continued a 20-year trend in the newspaper industry as people increasingly turn to other media such as the Internet and 24-hour cable news networks for information [SOURCE].
It may well be a generational thing, too. Those who I know who read newspapers tend to be of the generation that grew up with them when they were stronger than they are now.
Personally, I never read newspapers (except when I'm travelling and a complimentary one is shoved under my door). Frankly, I don't want to get a newspaper at home. I already have too many books in my house, and I Don't Need Any More Paper, Thankyou. Having someone throw more paper at my door every day would just clutter the place up.
In fact, I'm getting sick of having dead-tree books around. Given the volume of volumes in my library, I want everything to be space-savingly electronic (either readable or audio both), and I'm starting to become resistant to buying non-electronic books. Unfortunately, the publishers aren't where I need them to be yet.
So I get all my news online or from cable and talk radio. I know that not everybody does that (or else newspapers would already be out of business entirely in dead tree form), but there are more and more folks who are getting their news from non-paper sources.
And the blogosphere has only intensified that shift.
You can spend hours a day (if you want to) reading commentary on any subject of your choosing. Fresh, new commentary! Churned out daily by the legions of pajamahadeen.
With all this commentary available for free on the Net, why would I want to pick up a newspaper to get my analysis?
Habit.
If I'm in the habit of doing so, if I'm not yet comfortable with the Internet, if I'm already attached to a commentator who's not available online without an obnoxious registration requirement. In those cases, I might want to pick up a newspaper for commentary.
But I'm not in that habit. And neither are the new batch of kids being raised right now.
So what else might attract me to pick up a newspaper for commentary?
Quality.
Hypothetically, the newspapers could aggregate to themselves all the quality commentators and generate commentary of a markedly higher quality than what's available in the blogosphere. But that ain't gonna happen. It would mean chucking out the vast majority of the individuals publishing slop editorials today and recruting the most talented bloggers.
A little bit of that is actually happening (thus, for example the PowerLine guys occasionally write editorials for different papers, thus decreasing proportionately the amount of space devoted to non-blogger editorialists). But a full-scale, overnight housecleaning isn't in the offing, and even if newspapers paid the best editorialists to stop blogging and write exclusively for them (which also won't happen) then a new crop of bloggers would make the leap from Large Mammal to Higher Being in the TTLB Ecosystem and take their places as premier, for-free online editorialists.
So I don't think it's practically possible for newspapers to outperform the blogosphere in quality or price.
But if you can't outperform someone in either quality or cost, that makes your survival precarious--as indeed the survival of major daily metropolitan newspapers now is.
Oh, sure, they'll be around in some vastly shrunken form in the decades to come. And I'm sure that there will still be editorials in them. Editors, like everybody else, want to spout off about their opinions.
They want to have their own, daily dead-tree blogs.
But the market is changing. Dramatically. And fewer and fewer folks will be willing to pay for a daily dead-tree blog when they can get the same quality analysis online for free.
Now everybody can be an editor.
Something like Sowell's hypothetical scenario is already happening.
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April 20, 2005
What A Surprise
(Jimmy Akin)
BOSTON GLOBE WRITER FABRICATES STORY.
But it was in such a good cause!
The story she fabricated was about baby seals being clubbed to death! Couldn't let an absence of facts get in the way of a story like that! People needed to be emotionally manipulated by her making up details of a seal hunt that hadn't happened!
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)
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