Anti-Religious Bias

In Sunday's edition, the Washington Post perhaps unintentionally did conservative critics of Reza Aslan a favor by printing liberal religion scholar Stephen Prothero's review of the UC Riverside creative writing professor's new book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. "Aslan is more a storyteller here than a historian" who doesn't bring "much new here other than [his] slick…

The media has proclaimed that conservatives and proponents of religious liberty are engaging in a “war against women.” Conservatives, so the narrative goes, fired the first shots by opposing taxpayer funded contraceptives and abortofacients under the HHS Mandate, which will go into effect Jan. 1, 2014. Nancy Pelosi first claimed Republicans were engaging in a “war against women” in 2011, and…

You knew the warm fuzzies for Pope Francis couldn't last that long. While the media initially went gaga over Pope Francis, hoping beyond hope he was some liberal reformer who would open up the Catholic Church to all kinds of heterodoxy, the reality is slowly setting in. The first-ever Latin American pontiff is warm, genial, charismatic, and an excellent communicator with both the public and the…

Author Reza Aslan was disingenuous about his biases in his weekend interview with Fox News Channel's Lauren Green, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell told FNC's Shannon Bream on the July 31 edition of America Live. Aslan, as a Muslim, denies the divinity of Christ, and should have been straightforward about how his religious beliefs would necessarily color his…

While most liberal media outlets have been positively giddy about Pope Francis's off-the-cuff remarks to the media about gay Catholics, Tim Padgett is having none of it, complaining, accurately, that the media have misconstrued the pontiff's comments. But Padgett's beef is not with inaccurate secular media outlets but with the church itself. "Catholic doctrine still vilifies homosexuality, and…

Last year, Entertainment Weekly magazine honored the arrival of a viciously anti-Catholic tilt on the FX show “American Horror Story: Asylum,” promoting how actress “Jessica Lange returns, this time as a terrifying nun." Bigotry sells – big – in Tinseltown. This year, after that “Asylum” season aired, Hollywood has honored the show again by showering it with 17 Emmy nominations. There’s a…

Bill Maher has said some disgusting things about religion before. Possibly the most disgusting came on HBO’s Real Time Friday when the host actually said, “God in the Old Testament is a psychotic mass murderer” (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo):

It seems as though some media personalities never miss an opportunity to slam the Catholic Church. Take for example the July 18 Imus In The Morning on Fox Business, in which host Don Imus took an unnecessary swipe at Pope Francis and the sex abuse scandal surrounding the Catholic Church. Speaking with Father Jonathan Morris, a regular Fox News contributor, Imus suggested that, “because of all…

Readers are advised to prepare themselves for a rare dose of sanity and reality on television. On CNN's Reliable Sources Sunday, journalism professor Steve Roberts actually said, "What's missing often in TV newsrooms: there are plenty of gays, there are very few people of faith and very  few evangelical Christians who in their own beliefs would be against gay marriage. And this has always…

Offending gays or speaking ill of Muslims is a cultural taboo, but mocking the Blessed Virgin Mary is just good clean fun. That was the approach the Santa Fe Reporter took when it published its 2013 Summer Guide. The New Mexico weekly’s cover featured a full-page cartoon of Our Lady of Guadalupe in a strapless yellow bikini and sunglasses, sipping a margarita, accompanied by a beer-drinking…

Brightening up my Monday morning (not) is an item carried at CNN.com last Friday whose headline basically tells loyal, faithful spouses that they're nature-defying freaks who in the vast majority of cases are ignorantly honoring an institution which doesn't make any sense. Meghan Laslocky doesn't have the gumption to use those words. But what else are we supposed to conclude from a column…

Those paranoid Christians. Always thinking someone is persecuting them. Pro-gay violence? Christians bullied for supporting traditional marriage? Puh-leeze. Just grow up already. That stuff never happens. Only gays get bullied. That was the sarcastic approach of comedian Samantha Bee in a fake reporting segment she filmed for “The Daily Show.” Interviewing (controversial) right-wing…

In Tuesday's Washington Post, Tom Hundley of the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting gave Post readers a textbook example in biased reporting freighted with loaded language. The target was a predictable bogeyman of secular liberal reporters: the Catholic Church. Hundley painted the constitutional court battle over a "reproductive health law" in the Philippines as a struggle "pit[ting] the…

And Rabbi Joshua Hammerman thought he had a “Tebow Problem” before. Back in 2011, the columnist at The Jewish Week fretted that the Tim Tebow-led Denver Broncos might beat his “beloved” New England Patriots in the upcoming AFC championship game. But his wasn’t a fan’s normal pre-game nervousness. It was the hand-wringing of a liberal bigot. Hammerman imagined that the rubes in fly-over…