On September 30, the New York Times ran a front-page story that smeared St. Junipero Serra. Repeated attempts to have the paper correct the record have failed. This is yellow journalism at its worst. When I submit paid ads to the Times, I am often asked to identify my sources. Yet it accepts hit jobs like Holson's. The fact is there is no list of historians who claim Fr. Serra tortured Indians, and the Times knows it.
Anti-Religious Bias
By Kristine Marsh | October 7, 2015 | 1:02 PM EDT
It’s newsworthy when people of faith are killed by a gunman -- except when they are Christian. The broadcast networks made that clear by the difference between the massive coverage of the shooting of three Muslims in February and the little coverage of how the Oregon shooter reportedly targeted Christians.
“Many have already judged this as a hate crime,” CBS’s Scott Pelley asserted on the Feb. 14 evening news broadcast covering the Chapel Hill shooting. When three Muslim students were killed by an angry neighbor last spring, the broadcast networks jumped to allege this was an anti-Muslim “hate crime” -- bringing that phrase up a whopping 30 times in eight broadcasts.
By Dylan Gwinn | October 4, 2015 | 11:05 PM EDT
“Madam Secretary” is sworn in as President by the guy who narrated March of the Penguins, and basically everything else that has ever been narrated over the last 15 years (Morgan Freeman). Except when this swearing in takes place, there’s the notable absence of a certain phrase that has been a staple of the Oath of Office.
By Matt Philbin | October 4, 2015 | 12:34 AM EDT
As we have written here before, there is a gag order on God in the sports media. In the ending of Saturday night's Notre Dame vs. Clemsen game proved this point once again.
By Kristine Marsh | October 2, 2015 | 4:20 PM EDT
Thursday evening, news broke that the Oregon school shooter had questioned students about their faith before he shot them. Later Thursday, The New York Post reported an incredible detail: Christian students were specifically singled out by the shooter. By Friday morning, all three networks had told viewers of that nightmare scenario on their morning shows. The Washington Post and The LA Times followed up with the story shortly after.
But, for some reason, one notable media outlet was silent for the majority of Friday -- The New York Times.
By Curtis Houck | October 1, 2015 | 2:07 AM EDT
ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel took time out of his opening monologue on Wednesday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live to grumble over the news that Pope Francis secretly met with Kentucky clerk Kim Davis last week during his visit to the U.S. and quip that it would have been better if he met with Kim Kardashian or murderous North Korea dictator Kim Jong-un instead.
By Matthew Balan | September 28, 2015 | 5:09 PM EDT
Brian Williams and Chris Matthews couldn't resist the opportunity to harp on the lack of married and women priests in the Catholic Church, as MSNBC provided live coverage of Pope Francis's open-air Mass in Philadelphia on Sunday. Williams pointed out that one of the archbishops at the Mass is "from a family, [but] he cannot go home to one. He cannot have one, and be...of service to the Catholic Church. And it is still that thing that differentiates and separates the religion from so many others."
By Tim Graham | September 27, 2015 | 7:21 AM EDT
On Saturday, NPR’s Weekend Edition celebrated atheist author Philip Pullman and the His Dark Materials trilogy he wrote for middle-schoolers, a sort of anti-Narnia series. Anchor Scott Simon celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first book in this trilogy and interviewed Pullman as he sat a BBC studio in Oxford, hinting they have "maybe the mark of real excellence."
By Matthew Balan | September 26, 2015 | 11:00 AM EDT
MSNBC's Chris Matthews revealed his loathing for a part of his Catholic upbringing on Wednesday's Hardball, and ended up mangling the theology behind a beautiful and ancient Church ritual for new mothers. Matthews turned to Catholic dissident Sister Simone Campbell for her take on Pope Francis's visit. Sister Campbell touted her liberal "Nuns on the Bus" campaign as a supposed way to "take the Gospel to where it wouldn't be otherwise, and all the other people that we meet along the road – so many of them are not churched...but that we can be in touch with them."
By Matt Philbin | September 25, 2015 | 3:47 PM EDT
For journalists, it was the best of popes and it was the worst of popes. News outlets were often negative when Pope Benedict visited the United States in 2008, calling him an “enforcer,” “God’s Rottweiler,” and “very conservative.”
Not so this time around for Pope Francis. The current pontiff shares the media’s views on climate change, immigration and inequality, and seems ambivalent at best about capitalism. Even better, his language on certain social issues has been less than precise, leading them to speculate that the Church might change its teaching on homosexuality, contraception and other near-and-dear lefty issues.
In short, the media suspects Francis is really one of them.
By Dylan Gwinn | September 25, 2015 | 1:31 AM EDT
The first episode of NBC's Heroes Reborn re-births stereotypical liberal media versions of Christian activists and 9/11 imagery.
Chris Matthews: Celibate Priesthood Means Catholic Clergy Don't Have Wives Who Push Them to Allow Women Priests
By Ken Shepherd | September 23, 2015 | 8:52 PM EDT Cradle Catholic Chris Matthews spent the first segment of his September 23 Hardball program effusively praising Pope Francis, particularly for raising immigration and climate change in his brief remarks at a welcome ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. But in a later segment, Matthews and guests Joan Walsh and Sister Simone Campbell lamented how even the liberal-leaning Francis is closed to the idea of women serving as priests in the Catholic Church.
At one point, Matthews offered up his theory for why the opposition was so long-standing, and it boiled down to, wait for it, a celibate Catholic clergy.