media bias

“What Are We Trying to Hide?”

“Sticks and stones may break my bones / but names will never hurt me.” So goes the old children’s nursery rhyme. We know, of course, that the claim is not exactly true: CBS produced a documentary in 2011 about the effects of bullying in a digital age, “Words Can Kill.” What is less talked about … Read more

On Papal Popularity

A new poll shows that among Americans, Pope Francis remains very popular. The Holy Father has a 68 percent approval rating overall, and 88 percent approval among Catholics. Impressive numbers—certainly to be envied by most politicians in the US. But why inquire about the popularity of a religious figure to begin with? We know the … Read more

A Response to Hollywood’s War Against Christianity

Viggo Mortensen, the same actor who played Strider/Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, seems to enjoy getting naked in his non-Tolkien films, evincing, perhaps, certain latent exhibitionist fantasies: In Eastern Promises, he fought off, el fresco, two Russian mobsters in a steam bath; in The Road, he chucked it all to swim out … Read more

The Gray Lady’s Long History of Journalistic Malpractice

“He who is compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate.”  ∼ Ancient Midrash of the Sages On February 17, 2017, President Donald Trump created a firestorm of controversy when he tweeted that the news media (The New York Times, CNN, NBC, and many more) is not his enemy, but is the enemy … Read more

Beauty and the Beast’s Obeisance to the Big Gay Machine

My son and I saw the new Beauty and the Beast. It was lovely, magical, following the 1991 cartoon, almost scene for scene, song for song. This is the story everyone wants to hear: darkness and evil and selfishness transformed by love into light and good and self-surrender. Life and love conquer death and fear. … Read more

Christians Who Shill for the Secular Left

Posted outside my office door is an old cartoon. A bearded professor wearing sandals and carrying a backpack leads a group of wide-eyed undergrads into a land labeled “utopia.” As they merrily march along, they pass an exodus of escaping humanity, fleeing an ash-strewn landscape amid scattered bodies and smoldering ruins. “Isn’t this great?” the … Read more

A Turning Point in the Culture War?

Is the social revolution approaching its Thermidor, the point at which its progress stops or reverses? It’s difficult to be optimistic, but recent developments raise the possibility. Until very recently, effective opposition to globalism, open borders, and lifestyle liberalism—that is, for traditional local ties over global markets, regulatory bureaucracies, and recent understandings of human rights—had … Read more

The Evaporation of Truth

Everyone agrees that public discussion has become divorced from reality. On the hard left people talk about capitalist propaganda, while the soft left, including most respectable journalists, complains about conspiracy theories, truthiness, fake news, and the post-truth era. At the same time, conservatives protest media omissions, distortions, falsehoods, and narratives, while the far right grabs … Read more

The Christmas Story in an Era of Irrational Skepticism

Tis the season to attack traditional Christianity by pedaling, through social networks and the mass media, speculative theories that contradict orthodox Christian beliefs. On Christmas Eve (predictably), the Washington Post revived a 2014 article promoting the discredited theory that the “historical Jesus” never even existed. Yet even the agnostic New Testament scholar, Bart Ehrman, famously … Read more

What is Progressive Derangement Syndrome?

I noted recently that educated and well-placed people today tend toward a stripped-down view of man and society that redefines family, religious, and communal ties as private preferences, thereby erasing their public importance. The effect is to promote exclusive reliance on the social authority of bureaucratic and commercial arrangements. The existence and sentimentalization of non-binding private … Read more

Five Untruths About the New Texas Rules for Fetal Remains

The state of Texas recently enacted a set of rules pertaining to the handling and disposing of fetal remains. The new rules require that healthcare facilities dispose of fetal remains by burial or cremation, and bans the facilities from disposing of the remains via industrial garbage disposals. The rules, expected to be passed into law … Read more

Attack on TV Couple Recalls a Chik-Fil-A Story of Solidarity

As I clicked through and read the outrage-mongering BuzzFeed article that launched the sham controversy over the personal beliefs of Chip and Joanna Gaines, co-hosts of the show “Fixer Upper” on HGTV, I was transported back to 2012, and another event that prompted national outcry against the alleged enemies of diversity, tolerance, and open-mindedness. On … Read more

The Press Try to Ruin a Popular TV Couple for Being Christian

Buzzfeed reported last week that HGTV stars of the show “Fixer Upper,” Chip and Joanna Gaines, belong to a church that is “firmly against same-sex marriage.” Of course, it may come as little surprise that an Evangelical church in Waco, Texas holds such a view. After all, no more than 27 percent of white Evangelical … Read more

A Populist Election and Its Aftermath

Considering how many crucial matters were at stake during the recent election, including the right to life and religious freedom, and confronting the preponderant bias in the media and opinion polls, it did not seem melodramatic to hope for a providential Hand to guide things. Without mistaking optimism for hope, and cautioned by the disappointment … Read more

“Where Do You Get Your News?”

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? ∼  T.S. Eliot, Choruses from the Rock A little over a decade ago, I sat behind a one-way mirror in a nondescript office building outside Denver, watching a focus group go through the motions with a skilled … Read more

St. Maria Goretti and the Demise of the Catholic Blogosphere

Did you know that St. Maria Goretti was even the least bit controversial? The facts of her case are not disputed. She was a peasant girl of 11 who came under sexual assault from a twenty-year-old male who shared the building where she lived with her family. She resisted, telling him it would be a … Read more

Amoris Laetitia and the “Brinkmanship” of Pope Francis

The aftershocks continue after the ground-shaking April 8 release of Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia. Extreme reactions vary from “we don’t have to talk about sin any more” and “conscience trumps everything” and “Communion for everybody” and “now we can contracept” all the way to “Francis is a heretic and … Read more

How Obergefell Really Happened

Without a doubt Obergefell was crammed down our throats, as were all the lower court decisions that overturned 34 state laws and constitutional changes voted upon by citizens. But, it is hard to see that Obergefell would ever have happened if the ground had not been prepared, if those five Supreme Court justices could not … Read more

I’m Still Alive, and So Are Donohue, Burke, and Pavone

One year ago, Salon ran a rather breathless piece by an anti-Catholic writer named Patricia Miller who danced on the graves of Cardinal Raymond Burke, Father Frank Pavone, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, and me. Miller was thrilled to her toes that each of us had in some way become “discredited” and were doomed. So, … Read more

Shining a ‘Spotlight’ on Hollywood Duplicity and Bias

Portrayed as a villain in Spotlight, the new film describing the clergy abuse scandal, Jack Dunn, the media spokesman for Boston College and trustee for Boston College High School, has hired a lawyer to demand that the scene portraying him as a cold and callous bureaucrat—caring nothing for victims—be stricken from the film. The scene … Read more

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