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(Photo Credit: Catholic Bishops Against HHS)
Dear media-gurus-who-never-care-about-the-Roman-Catholic-See-except-as-a-bogeyman-and-had-to-use-Wikipedia-for-your-reporting,
Please stop.
Yours truly,
A Religion Researcher
From the Brain of Bart, 2/12/13
12 Tuesday Feb 2013
Posted in Uncategorized
Awesome,
Way to go Bart.
The Catholic church as a whole is not going to budge on these issues. Love em or hate em, that is the reality.
It’s ironic that these media-types never care about the church unless they can report a scandal or they can agitate for change.
Reporting bad news is the nature of media. This is not isolated to reports about bad news in religion.
And, in fact, I regularly read good news (if not in comparable quantities) of a religious nature – the Amish/Mennonites rebuilding homes destroyed in a storm, for instance, or a Methodist trip to help build homes or provide clean water in Haiti, for instance.
Or, right now, reporting on the Pope’s retirement and his eventual replacement, that’s not bad news, is it?
But bad news does appear to sell papers better than good news. That would be a societal problem, though, not exclusively a media problem.
Seems to me.
~Dan
The media problem is not so much the affinity for bad news, it’s the selective demonization of those, within and without the church, who are traditional or conservative in their point of view.
Read. Learn. http://www.amazon.com/Left-Turn-Liberal-Distorts-American/dp/1250002761
Blaming the supposed “liberal media bias” is just intellectual laziness. The right/conservative side has all the tools they need to communicate their ideas if they want to. That people are unconvinced by many of the arguments on the Religious Right only shows your collective inability to make your case logically, respectfully and morally.
There is no vast left wing conspiracy. You all fail to make your case even in a friendly (to the Right, that is) place like this, where the Left is routinely demonized.
Also, criticizing the supposed “liberal media” for allegedly demonizing more conservative folk falls rather flat when the same behavior is clearly done by those on the Right, as well. It would appear that your problem is not with misrepresentation and demonization, but only when the “other side” does it. Otherwise, you’d take a stronger stand against it here, in your own home.
Where specifically am I mistaken?
(And here is your chance to respond not by demonizing “the other side” or by criticizing points I have not made, but by responding to my actual points that I have actually made.)
~Dan
“Where specifically am I mistaken?” It would be easier to identify where you are NOT mistaken.
The link I gave you reports the most comprehensive study on media bias ever done, reported in one of the most prestigious journals in the Western Hemisphere. There is nothing “supposed” about it. The bias is real and vast and not the product of any conspiracy but of a cultural phenomenon that has developed over many years.
“Intellectual laziness” is much better demonstrated by your unwillingness or inability to fully investigate the matter, and then blow your usual smoke. Did you even read the summary of the book before you fired off your canned response?
Mark, I made the point:
Conservatives have equal opportunities to create their own media, to report on things themselves, to make their arguments. Today, more than ever, you have the chance to do that.
Am I mistaken? If so, where specifically?
If you have all the world of opportunity out there to create your own media (and you do have that opportunity – there’s nothing keeping you from starting your own newspapers – Fox News, anyone?), to make your own case, to defend yourselves, how is it the “liberal media’s” fault (keeping in mind that the “liberal media” is inevitably owned by conservative corporations) that you are failing to make your case?
I studied journalism in school for two years before changing my degree course. I’m aware of the tendency for reporters to lean slightly more liberal than the US as a whole. It’s still intellectual laziness to not make your own case and frankly, we’re pretty tired of you all falling back on your crutch of blaming the conservatively-owned media and their liberal-leaning reporters for your inability to make your case in a rational manner.
Again, IF you were interested in opposing demonization, you could begin by addressing it here in these very pages, where it happens every day. That you turn a blind eye to the problem when it’s conservatives doing the demonization simply undermines your supposed concern for even-handed-ness and makes you sound rather hypocritical.
The day that you start calling your conservative brothers and sisters on the many half truths and twisted “facts” and slander here on these pages is the day I will believe you have some honest concern for demonization and mis-reporting.
Where specifically am I mistaken?
Dan, Gus, whatever: you are “specifically” mistaken (among many other instances) in your assertion that the hated (by liberals who never watch) Fox News, talk radio, etc. give conservatives an equal chance at getting their message out. That’s simply not reality, and the study I previously cited shows that pretty conclusively.
And there are other surveys/statistics/studies covering the last 40+ yrs that also point to the same conclusion. Against the backdrop of the overall media/entertainment complex, right-leaning news sources are little more than a drop in the bucket. (Resulting in the leftist conditioning clearly infecting folks like yourself).
It’s clear from your responses that you are not not interested in investigating these studies. If you want to comment on the subject again at least read the summary of the book I cited beforehand else you risk looking even more uninformed.
I think it is also clear from your verbosity throughout this website that you are trying to convince yourself as much as anyone else of the rightness of your point of view. You are not fooling anyone, and it’s painfully clear that responding to you is generally a waste of time since you either don’t comprehend what is being said or you simply disregard it.
Mark…
Resulting in the leftist conditioning clearly infecting folks like yourself
I’d suggest it is not the hated “left-wing media” that is to blame for the slow demise of conservative values, it is mostly your own undoing, as in responding to reasonable comments with ad hom attacks like this one of yours above. For your information, I was raised conservatively and did not READ or surround myself with “the liberal media” or other sources. I read exclusively conservative, traditional writers (Billy Graham, RA Torrey, Leonard Ravenhill, Jonathan Edwards, CS Lewis, Dobson, etc, etc, etc) and the Bible. The “liberal sources” that led me to my current views are these, not “the liberal media.”
Well, those conservative, traditional voices in addition to the poor reasoning, ad hom attacks and false representation of “conservative” voices such as we find here.
So, once again, the facts undermine your culturally-prejudiced hunches.
Mark…
It’s clear from your responses that you are not not interested in investigating these studies.
Actually, from my responses, it is clear that I have already investigated it and find your conclusions wanting. Again, I studied journalism for two years in my more conservative days and am aware of the data. My point stands, as evidenced by your inability to offer a reasonable, evidence-based response to my questions and fall back to the same tired ad hom attacks and strawman false representations that are the greater problem with modern conservatism.
You may wish to humbly and prayerfully consider the real world evidence and your rather blind striking out against reality, my brother.
~Dan
So true, Mark. I’m still waiting on them to get all giddy hoping the next pope will be very liberal. Considering the cardinals Benedict appointed, it’s unlikely. They may likely get a conservative who’s African or Latino, so will be fun watching a repeat of the Clarence Thomas ordeal. There’s nothing liberals hate more than a conservative with dark skin.
Absolutely. It takes the race card off the table, one of their favorite ploys.
Stop what? Reporting on a major news event?
No, feverishly prognosticating that somehow a radically revisionist Bishop of Rome will be elected by a college of incredibly orthodox cardinals who were picked by JPII and B16 and that this figure will somehow single-handedly overturn 2000 years of tradition regarding family, marriage, and ordination. It’s obvious these “reporters” don’t actually keep up with the very simplest status of conditions for the world’s largest Christian communion.
Absolutely. Look at statistics regarding church attendance by mainline journalists. It’s much lower than the general population. Their main interest in church-related stories is how they may be used to forward their left-leaning notions.
Additionally, their incompetence is often jaw-dropping.
Thanks for the answer. I have not seen the “feverish prognostication” by reporters, but thanks for explaining yourself.
~Dan
Reporters are generally clueless about religion. When David Koresh and the Branch Davidians were in the news, reporters took Koresh’s writings about the “seven seals” (of Revelation, that is) to refer to the aquatic mammals. Apparently they didn’t even know any ex-Christians who could explain what the seven seals were. Talk about living in a cocoon.