Religion

I think I've got it now. These are the MSM rules when dealing with the personal lives of national candidates and/or members of their family:Given the chance to publicly embarrass and humiliate a Republican candidate's 17 year old daughter, do it. If it's a moralizing former Democratic candidate for president, well, leave that to the National Enquirer.Today, to head off the many tawdry rumors…

Rarely do the media put their institutional political bias on public display, but this past weekend, America's news industry titans left no doubt that they're fully behind one of the nation's most radical cultural and political movements.  ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox, NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the corporate owners of USA Today, the Miami Herald, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution…

CNN placed a total news blackout on Nancy Pelosi’s misrepresentation of Catholic teaching and history on abortion on Sunday’s Meet the Press and the subsequent reaction from several prominent Catholic bishops and from pro-life politicians. The news network did not mention the story at all between Sunday morning, when Pelosi made her remarks, and early Wednesday evening. This contrasts with major…

Between Maureen Dowd's column of this morning and Norah O'Donnell's questioning of an Obama spokesman this afternoon, it looks like Barack's halo is losing its glow in some MSM sectors. Obama spokesman Bill Burton was O'Donnell's guest just after 3 PM EDT, and she read to him from Dowd's column, which he jokingly professed not to have read.NORAH O'DONNELL [reading Dowd]: "Ed Rendell compared…

Ron Charles is a senior editor of the Washington Post's Sunday Book World section. He's also honest enough to admit he's liberal, he loved the schmaltzy '70s novel Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and loves the new Jesus in his book review of the novel American Savior. We're told "He's hip, he's hunky and all about tolerance, like a Unitarian porn star."The novel is all about Jesus coming back to…

Two weeks ago, my colleague Matthew Sheffield noted an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about a publishing company going back on its agreement to publish a historical fiction/romance novel centered around Aisha, a wife of the Prophet Muhammad. As of August 21, the mainstream broadcast media networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) are ignoring the controversy, even as more print outlets cover the developing…

It’s no secret that Bill Maher, the host of the HBO show "Real Time with Bill Maher," loathes religion. He came under fire earlier this year for slandering Pope Benedict XVI. On Tuesday night, CNN’s Larry King gave Maher another chance to smack Christianity, which Maher called “detrimental” and “the ultimate hustle.”  Maher was on "Larry King Live"  to promote his latest vehicle, the film "…

"Nightline" co-anchor Cynthia McFadden interviewed Pastor Rick Warren on Monday about the presidential forum he held with Senators Barack Obama and John McCain and pestered him to just admit that he's a Republican. At one point, she goaded, "You know, there are some people who feel that this is kind of a sham operation. That really, we know you, as an evangelical, are a Republican, a John McCain…

In her weekly Q&A session for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, reporter Deborah Solomon conducted a strongly hostile interview with Brigitte Gabriel, Lebanese-American journalist and opponent of radical Islam, while the headline blurb referred to Gabriel as a "radical Islamophobe." The blurb: The best-selling author and radical Islamophobe talks about why moderate Muslims are irrelevant,…

Cynthia McFadden didn't exactly say John McCain had no character, but she certainly implied it. In an interview with Pastor Rick Warren on ABC's "Nightline," McFadden was trying to get Warren to indicate if he would counsel his flock on who to vote for, and what he would say to people who say "forget character," pick the pro-lifer. The feature on Warren came after the pastor's Civic Forum on the…

Writing his faithful blog readers an epistle on Saturday's candidate forum with evangelical pastor Rick Warren, Time magazine's Joe Klein expressed disappointment that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) did not take the moment to teach the multitude, let alone perform miracles like curing Chris Matthews's restless leg syndrome and/or priapism. But let not your heart be troubled, for Klein has some sermon…

As NewsBuster Brad Wilmouth has noted, over the weekend NBC News political director Chuck Todd, previewing the Saddleback forum, suggested it represented an opportunity for Obama to forestall "personal hatred" of him by evangelical Christians.Todd has now contacted NewsBusters to express regret over his choice of words.  Todd's initial remark was made to Andrea Mitchell during a pre-game special…