[net.religion] Coverage of religion in the papers

mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (07/11/84)

On July 10, the south transept of York Minster was destroyed by fire.
This event was reported upon at length by both of the "major" newspapers
in my area, the _Washington Times_ and the _Washington Post_.  The Post
article was very dry and ignored the enormous theological controversy
which rages still in England.  The Times, however, played up this
scandal and suggested that divine retribution may have been involved.

One must remember that the Times is owned by the Unification Church.  Even
so, there are a lot of inaccuracies and editorial errors.  Few of the
people mentioned escape with their proper titles.  If the Right Rev.
David Jenkins was not a Bishop before his consecration, then it was an
ordination, not a consecration; if he was, he was the Right Rev., not
just Reverend.  On a less nitpicking note, the article implies that all
of Christendom can be divided into fundamentalists and pentacostalists,
who believe in the Bible literally, and "liberals", who don't believe
in the Bible at all.  This is the grossest kind of oversimplification,
albeit one that the media, always in search of conflict, are prone to.

[ and now its FLAMING TIME! ]

I have had with the typical media coverage of religious events and
conflicts.  Religious knowhow in your average newspaper seems to be hard
to come by, and reporters missquote "experts" so often that I don't
know why these experts even bother.  The media seem to take either of 
two extreme positions: either they take out all the substance and give
us something akin to commercial Christmas, or they sensationalize 
problems and disputes outrageously.   They consistently fail to report
questions of doctrine and theology correctly (here I suppose that those
who suffer the torment of knowing something about a scientific discovery
related in the paper will commiserate.). 

[ Flame (sputter, sputter) off ]

Charley Wingate    umcp-cs!mangoe