You couldn’t, he thought, find three Jews in the world who would agree on what it meant to be Jewish, yet there were apparently fifty million of these people who knew exactly what it meant to be German, though many of those on deck have never set foot in Germany. Alan Furst, Dark Star, (1991), p. 380. Who is a Jew? What is a Jew? Who decides who is a Jew? These questions lie beneath the surface of a Washington... Read more
Three cheers for my Get Religion colleague Mollie Hemingway! She has done a fantastic job this week pointing out the professional failures of the national press coverage of the Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia. The self-censorship of the New York Times on this issue is of Walter Duranty-like proportions. But the Gosnell case is not an isolated incident when it comes to questionable abortion reporting — they have form. There is a blindness in the Times coverage of abortion — they... Read more
The folks who edit and operate the newspaper that lands in my front yard are having a Devil of a time trying to figure out what to do with Dr. Ben Carson. Frankly, their struggles are beginning to remind me of their struggles to understand the role that the church plays in the lives of many African-Americans in the politically liberal state of Maryland. Carson is not only one of the most famous and respected African-American leaders in Baltimore, he... Read more
Earlier I shared what happened when I asked an AP reporter and a Washington Post reporter about their personal Gosnell blackouts. It was so illuminating that I decided to check out a few other media outlets. I headed over to Politico. Since Washington Post reporter Sarah Kliff tried to justify her lack of coverage of the Gosnell trial by calling it a local crime story, I thought I’d add other local stories into my search. Thanks for the idea! So... Read more
I’ve been writing about media coverage of abortion for many years. And so have many others. If you haven’t read David Shaw’s “Abortion Bias Seeps Into The News,” published in the Los Angeles Times back in 1990, you should. That report also explains why we cover the topic here at GetReligion. But the thing is that I’m getting kind of sick of pointing out egregious bias only to see things not just remain bad but get worse. Just think, in... Read more
A quick review before I get to the point of this post: • Back in January, I complained that CNN failed to provide any hard data to back up a breathless, one-sided report of “many” evangelicals warming to the need for immigration reform. • In February, I complained that a similarly vague Tampa Bay Times story — splashed across the front page — presented Scriptural references as if the Bible has a single, simple-to-understand position on the U.S. immigration debate. •... Read more
We’ve had a couple posts on the curious downplaying by the national media of the abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell’s mass murder trial going on right now in Philadelphia. We’ve noted, among other things, that USA Today is one of the few outlets to have mentioned the story more than once. Well, today that national newspaper also published an absolutely devastating column — repeat, “column” — by Kirsten Powers. You should read “We’ve forgotten what belongs on Page One” — unless... Read more
What are the odds? Several years ago, I realized that I was not really sure how long I had been writing the weekly “On Religion” column for the Scripps Howard News Service. As some of you may know, aging brains often struggle with detailed information of this kind (especially when the brain in question also deals with 100-plus emails every day). Anyway, I dug back into my analog files (thick folders full of paper printouts) and calculated that I would... Read more
Yes, there’s more. Abortionist Kermit Gosnell is on trial in Philadelphia for killing a female patient and using scissors to cut the spines of fetuses that were aborted alive. According to the grand jury report, he killed “hundreds” of living fetuses. It was his “standard business practice.” Mysteriously, Gosnell kept fetal feet in jars, perhaps as mementos. I took that from The Weekly Standard, a conservative publication covering a hard-news story that, for some reason, the national media are curiously... Read more
The death Monday of Margaret Thatcher has generated a huge amount of ink from newspapers on both sides the Atlantic. Opinions about the “Iron Lady” vary sharply — and some of these opinion pieces have found their way into the news reports of recent days. This Los Angeles Times article reports the funeral arrangements — but it has been crafted less to tell the story about the funeral than to offer its opinions about Margaret Thatcher. Save for a few... Read more
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