Anti-Religious Bias

Wonder if this latest lightbulb moment from Sally Kohn will win her another “Stupidest Analysis” award at next year’s Media Research Center Gala? CNN political commentator Sally Kohn set off a firestorm Oct. 10 on Twitter when she compared fundamentalist Islam’s treatment of women to Christianity’s treatment of women.

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,…

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…

“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.

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.

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…

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.  

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…

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."

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…

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…

The first episode of NBC's Heroes Reborn re-births stereotypical liberal media versions of Christian activists and 9/11 imagery.

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…

Welcome to the United States, Pope Francis, it's "indefensible" that Catholic hospitals refuse to perform tubal ligation surgery on women. That is the thrust of a Daily Beast piece written by one Jessica Mann, who explained her plight in a September 23 article headlined, "A Catholic Hospital Says It’s ‘Evil’ For Me to Get My Tubes Tied"