Jack Cafferty Continues Misleading Spin on Catholic Church Scandal

April 5th, 2010 6:20 PM
On Monday's Situation Room, CNN's Jack Cafferty continued his attack on Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church, devoting his fourth commentary in 12 days on the Church sex abuse scandal. Cafferty spun a recent comment by a high-ranking cardinal who denounced the media's campaign of innuendo against the Pope as "petty gossip," falsely portraying it as being about the abuse itself.The…

CBS 'Sunday Morning' Goes After Catholic Church on Easter Sunday

April 5th, 2010 3:06 PM
On CBS's Sunday Morning, host Charles Osgood marked Easter Sunday by proclaiming: "For many Roman Catholics, the joy of this Easter is mixed with sadness over continuing charges of child abuse and of cover-ups within the Church's hierarchy." In a report that followed, correspondent Dean Reynolds declared that the scandal was "like a heavy blow to the soul."  Reynolds went on to cite the latest…

Getting Its Rites Wrong: ABCNews.com Headline Refers to Obama's 'Easte

April 5th, 2010 11:47 AM
Just another sign that the media just don't get religion. Here's the ABCNews.com headline for an April 4 story on President Obama's attendance of Easter Sunday service at Allen Chapel AME Church in Southeast D.C.:Of course, the term Easter Mass would connote a Catholic liturgical celebration, but the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) is a thoroughly Protestant denomination, as its articles…

Easter, MSNBC-Style: Network's Facebook Page Features Crucifix Juxtapo

April 4th, 2010 8:55 AM
Of all the images to accompany its Facebook feature on "Easter observances and celebrations from around the world," MSNBC chose the one displayed here.  As it turns out, the man hooded in white is a participant in a traditional Easter procession in northern Spain.  But how many readers will click through all the images to discover that? How many more will assume, as did I until informed otherwise…

U.S. Media Punt on Muslim Violence in Spanish Mosque-Turned-Church

April 2nd, 2010 5:17 PM
The Associated Press was the only American major media organization (as of 4 pm Eastern on Friday) that picked up on a March 31 altercation in the world-famous Catholic cathedral in Cordoba, Spain (at right, taken from The Builder blog), where over 100 Muslims responded with violence after security guards ordered them to stop praying inside the building, which once served as a mosque. Two of the…

Mediaite Attempts to Elevate Pseudo-Con David Frum to Biblical Status

April 2nd, 2010 3:04 PM
Is it possible to be so wrapped up in a media culture that one could minimize a sacred religious holiday in a shoddy attempt to write a clever headline? Mediaite's Tommy Christopher and his editors seemed to have pulled this feat off. Christopher, who has had a much-publicized run-in with Andrew Breitbart, has a new hero, former American Enterprise Institute scholar David Frum. Christopher…

Media Run to NYT's Defense, Accuse Vatican of 'Killing the Messenger

April 1st, 2010 6:26 PM
On Thursday's Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC, host Dylan Ratigan went after the Vatican for criticizing the slanted New York Times reporting on the priest sex abuse scandal: "Blame the messenger. The Vatican blasting the New York Times for telling the truth about Church – the Church and its harboring of sex abusers. It's the paper's fault." Ratigan spoke with Democratic strategist Steve Hildebrand,…

CNN's Cafferty Bashes Pope Benedict XVI For Two Straight Days

April 1st, 2010 6:14 PM
CNN's Jack Cafferty slammed the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI during his regular commentaries on Wednesday and Thursday, for a total of three times during the course of a week, as he also targeted them on March 25. On all three occasions, Cafferty also read mostly Catholic-bashing e-mails from viewers.During the March 25 "Cafferty File" segment, the CNN commentator wasted little time in…

Larry King Deferential to Sinead O'Connor, Tough on Carrie Prejean

March 31st, 2010 4:45 PM
CNN's Larry King, moderating a panel discussing the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal on his program on Tuesday, tossed softballs at noted anti-Catholic Sinead O'Connor, who recently pushed for Catholics to stop attending Mass. By contrast, King hostilely interrogated former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean in November 2009, to the point where she almost walked out of the interview.The CNN host…

The Religion Blog That Hates Religion

March 31st, 2010 8:57 AM
No, hell hasn't frozen over but, yes, the Huffington Post now has a religion blog. The Huffington Post, a Web site devoted to rankling conservatives and pushing a liberal agenda, announced on Feb. 24 that it was launching HuffPost Religion. Huffington Post's co-founder, Arianna Huffington, claimed it would simply be "a section featuring a wide-ranging discussion about religion [and] spirituality…

Using Sinead O'Connor to Attack the Catholic Church is Despicable

March 30th, 2010 4:15 PM
Editor's Note: In a statement released today, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell denounced CNN for relying on bigoted anti-Catholic singer Sinead O'Connor as a credible source to discuss recent allegations brought against the Catholic Church in the cable network's repeated interviews with her. Those comments are posted below. Sinead O’Connor is a despicable, hate-filled person who has…

'Joy Behar' Guest Host Gives Perfect Example of Bias Against Catholic

March 30th, 2010 1:10 PM
Jeanine Pirro provided a textbook demonstration of media bias against the Catholic Church during her stint as a substitute host for CNN Headline News's "The Joy Behar Show on March 29. Pirro never gave her guest a chance to defend the church and interrupted him six times within 1 minute, 59 seconds. Pirro is a former Westchester County, N.Y., district attorney and judge who now hosts the TV…

Happy Easter, Newsweek Fans: Religion Editor Defines Jesus as 'Typical

March 30th, 2010 8:13 AM
Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller has two big articles in this week's issue. "The Bad Shepherd" is another piece trashing Pope Benedict over the sex-abuse charges emerging in Europe. But Miller even trashed Jesus Christ as a "typically cranky" religious figure. This came in an excerpt from Miller's new book on Heaven, as she explained how implausible the religious concept of resurrection is:…

CNN's Cooper Brings on Anti-Catholic Sinead O'Connor to Condemn the Po

March 29th, 2010 3:50 PM
CNN's Anderson Cooper brought on anti-Catholic singer Sinead O'Connor on his program on Friday to discuss the Church sex scandal. Unsurprisingly, O'Connor, who infamously tore up a picture of then-Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1992, has engaged in lesbian relationships, and went on to be "ordained" in a schismatic dissident church, spent much of the interview blasting Pope Benedict…