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So I’m sitting in a restaurant eating my lunch and, up on the wall, the large-screen television is tuned to CNN, where a lengthy report is unfolding about a European Union plan attempt to raise the corporate tax rates on Cyprus, a land in which wealthy Russians have funneled billions into tax shelters.
You guessed it: I’m going to write about media coverage of evangelicals and immigration reform. Again
So, let’s assume that you are a Catholic leader and you pick up your morning newspaper and it contains a story in which Pope Francis is described as “a leader” of the world’s Catholic Christians.
Two years ago, Dr. Kermit Gosnell was arrested for the murders of eight people at the abortion clinic a jury called a “house of horrors.” As I wrote at that time, normally if anyone in the country is accused of murdering eight people (and, in fact, a reading of the grand jury report indicates he is suspected in the murders of untold more, and I do mean untold), that would be big news.
Suggestions that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was morally complicit in the crimes of the Argentine junta during the 1970s âdirty warâ have made the rounds of the press following his election last week as pope. However, the American and French newspapers have diverged in their coverage of the story with the French reporting the accusations but giving them little credence.
Various media reported that new CIA chief John O. Brennan swore his oath of office last week on a Constitution that didn’t contain the Bill of Rights. And, given his strenuous support of the U.S. drone program — which has killed thousands of people, including a few Americans — stories focused on the lack of the fifth amendment’s guarantee of due process. But I wonder if there wasn’t a religion angle there. I’m honestly not sure. Here’s how The Guardian wrote up the news:
Let’s flash back, for a moment, to the early stages of the tsunami of papal conclave coverage. Readers will recall that I wondered — in light of existing New York Times guidelines on the use of anonymous sources — why the Gray Lady’s offerings in Rome were built almost entirely on anonymous sources.
As always, the gospel according to The New York Times — in an early version of its instant Pope Francis analysis — was spot on, with this headline: “Argentine Pope Will Make History, but Backs Vatican Line.”
Back in November, The New York Times produced a downright nauseating account of Liberty University’s effort to become a big-time college football program.
