Indiana

On the front page of the New York Times sat "Religion Laws Quickly Fall Into Retreat," a label-heavy (14 "conservative" labels) 1,500-word story on Indiana's controversial religious freedom law. The Times' coverage has also been consistently slanted with both that labeling bias and scare quotes surrounding the term "religious freedom."

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo has aggressively attacked those who support Indiana's religious freedom law and on Thursday night he brought on Charles Barkley to slime Christians as "religious nuts." The former NBA player, who is from Alabama originally, sneered, "All these rednecks hide behind the Bible. That's what they do. That's one of the reason the south is behind in everything. They always hide…

The PBS NewsHour hosted a panel discussion on Thursday night on the controversy over religious freedom in Indiana. To their credit, PBS brought on a Baptist minister, Tim Overton, to speak for Christians who are upset at the current liberal trend. But National Journal correspondent Ron Brownstein pushed hard on the politics -- on how Republicans are going to suffer as “we expand the circle…

Update, April 3: The Indiana man who claims to have been hacked now admits that he wasn't, but says he was "joking" about robbing Memories Pizza, and is threatening to sue those who exposed his (ahem) public comments.  Those of us following the Memories Pizza story won't have trouble remembering it as the years go by, thanks only partially to the Walkerton, Indiana store's fairly unusual name…

If it's Thursday, it must be...yet another front-page New York Times story on the issue that is going to tear the Republican Party apart and doom prospects in 2016 (the actual issue changes every week, of course). On cue with the ginned-up controversy over Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, came reporter Jennifer Steinhauer's story, under a liberally stacked deck of headlines: "Rights…

A short unbylined Associated Press report at its national site on the situation at Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana this afternoon made sure to mention that the pizzeria "won't cater gay weddings" (in the headline). It also misstated the owner's statement to a South Bend TV station, claiming, using its own words, that she "said the state's new religious objections law backs their right to…

Mika Brzezinski has never been one to shy away from smearing conservatives and Wednesday was no exception. Still furious over the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Brzezinski said of Governor Mike Pence "People are calling him a bigot because it sounds like one and looks like one. I'm sorry."

Something hasn't seemed right about the Memories Pizza story from the get-go. Now I know why. In a Tuesday report, TV Station ABC 57 cited the Walkerton, Indiana business's Crystal O'Connor as saying that, in the station's words, they "don't agree with gay marriages and wouldn't cater them if asked to." In other words, they've never been asked to. The non-story which ignited a national firestorm…

Leave it to Chris Matthews, during Holy Week no less, to slander Catholic nuns as anti-gay bigots. The Hardball host made the charge today during the conclusion to a heated debate segment pitting Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy (D) against former RNC chairman Michael Steele on the issue of Indiana's brand-new Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

If Chris Matthews thought he could trip up and embarrass Russell Moore, the head of the South Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, he was most certainly disappointed.

Following the passage of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the Huffington Post began churning out anti-religious freedom screeds like an assembly line of hyperbole. The most outrageous of which came from the "Reverend" Susan Russell, who called the law a "perversion of religion into a weapon of mass destruction." It’s remarkable how negatively this religious leader views…

On their Monday evening newscasts, the major broadcast networks kept up their attacks on the State of Indiana for having enacted a religious freedom law that aims to protect individuals from government infringement based on their religious beliefs. While ABC, CBS, and NBC mentioned that there are those supporting the law, their coverage continued to veer off in a slanted direction against the law…

ABC on Monday continued to assail Indiana's religious freedom law, hyping the "firestorm" over a law that "many" say could "legalize discrimination." Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts trumpeted "growing calls to move the men's Final Four and boycott the state over the new law that many say legalizes discrimination." 

Nancy Armour was a sports writer for Associated Press for years before coming a sports columnist for USA Today. Or a sports censor. Armour believes anyone holding a conservative view based on some ancient holy text that homosexuality is a sin should be punished and exiled in some say. It's a "lunatic fringe," she writes. When Indiana’s governor signed a law creating a religious-freedom exception…