Wenonah Hauter on gasoline prices, Richard Bulliet on Shia uprising
What’s wrong with US reporting on Iraq’s Shia community? Also: discussion on under-discussed causes of rising gas prices.
SoundBites
The Disarmament Nightmare Subheads over a March 4 New York Times article: “More Missiles Destroyed; Washington Is Concerned Over Possible Complications for Effort to Disarm Iraq.” Nothing like disarming to complicate disarmament. NBC Nightly News (2/27/03) was even more alarmed about the missile destruction, with Andrea Mitchell reporting: “For the U.S., it’s a nightmare scenario. […]
Secular Liberal Media?
Conservative critics often accuse mainstream media of being hostile to religion. But a quick survey of cover stories in the leading newsweeklies puts an end to that notion. Religion is one of the favorite cover subjects of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. Religion is an important force in social life that deserves […]
Steven Emerson’s Crusade
Did self-styled anti-terrorism expert Steven Emerson help push the world toward nuclear war? On Sunday, June 28, a sensational story appeared in the British newspaper the Observer: “Pakistan was planning nuclear first strike on India.” The stunning revelation that South Asia was on the brink of thermonuclear war was credited to an unnamed “senior Pakistani […]
Pat Buchanan in His Own Words
Here is a sampling of Buchanan’s views: On African-Americans After Sen. Carol Moseley Braun blocked a federal patent for a Confederate flag insignia, Buchanan wrote that she was “putting on an act” by associating the Confederacy with slavery: “The War Between the States was about independence, about self-determination, about the right of a people to […]
Islam: Fundamental Misunderstandings About a Growing Faith
There are approximately 5 million Muslims in the U.S. — nearly as many as there are Jews, and more than there are Episcopalians. Early in the next century, Islam will probably be the largest non-Christian religion in the country (L.A. Times, 12/17/94). Yet there’s rarely a mention of Muslims in the media that doesn’t have […]
The Extremist Worldview Behind Pat Robertson’s Media Empire
In May 1992, television preacher Pat Robertson announced that he was interested in buying United Press International, the financially struggling news service. Reflecting on the proposed deal, Robertson told reporters the purchase “may be a little opportunity” for God to touch society. Two months later, the deal was off. Robertson explained that his auditors had […]
Media Turned Population Debate Into Pope vs. Veep
“The Cairo Conference will probably be remembered as the Great Abortion Showdown,” exclaimed a Wall Street Journal report (9/13/94) as the International Conference on Population and Development drew to a close this September. But whose fault is that? For all the “isn’t it a shame” tone of journalistic commentary, most of the mainstream media allowed […]
Religion and Politics
In a recent keynote address to the Religion Newswriters Association, Bill Moyers noted, “For broadcast executives, news of the soul is no news at all.” Such dissatisfaction with religion coverage seems to be shared by many Americans. Stewart Hoover has found that newspaper readers rated religion as an important topic for papers to cover (above […]
Pseudo-Science at CBS
The use of prime-time TV to sell the public a bill of goods hit a new low a little over a year ago, when, on May 15, 1992, CBS aired a two-hour primetime special called Ancient Secrets of the Bible. Produced by David W. Balsiger, the program claimed to present “startling and surprising evidence” to […]
Northern Ireland From London’s Perspective
In October 1988, British Home Secretary Douglas Hurd announced a ban on broadcasting statements by members or apparent sympathizers of eleven political and paramilitary organizations (three of them legal). “This is not censorship,” Hurd announced. Affected journalists tried to adapt to the new conditions. Some news reports in Britain and Ireland now declare that stories […]
Are You on the Nightline Guestlist?
ABC News Nightline is widely considered to be the preeminent public affairs program in the United States. It undoubtedly has the biggest audience of such shows; five to seven million households are tuned to Nightline on an average week night. With its combination of near-universal acclaim from critics and a large number of loyal viewers, […]
Behind the Times
The Washington Times, the right-wing daily that bills itself as an alternative to the Washington Post, is owned and influenced by Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church. But most journalists seem unable or unwilling to consider the political implications of this fact — despite the role of Washington Times executives in the Koreagate scandal of […]
PBS Drops Documentary on Religious Right
Award-winning filmmaker Antony Thomas was putting the final touches on his TV documentary about the religious right last April, just when the Jim and Tammy Bakker scandal broke. PBS Frontline had put up half the film’s $360,000 budget and was set to run it in two parts on May 12 and 19. It couldn’t have […]
