Why MSM Covers Christianity Badly

Here's an add-on to last week's vox blogoli by Hugh, on why MSM cover Christianity so poorly.

In my earlier post on the subject (here), I asked, "Why would editors , who see themselves as champions of reason, do something so without reason as deliberately alienating 80 percent of their readers?" The answer I gave to that question was evangelism; evangelism for "reporting the truth," no matter what the publisher, the advertisers, or the readers might say about it. For secular journalists, unfortunately, the truth is closer to the Jesus Seminar than it is to the gospels.

This radical urge to stand in definace of the hands that feed them was evident again today in the LA Times, but in a story that had nothing to do with religion, a fact that makes it easier to understand Newsweek's cover story shunning Biblical Christianity. It's subject: Liberal LA Congresswoman Maxine Waters. (here)

The story is sharply critical of one of the icons of LA liberalism, and as such will be unpoplar among many LA Times readers. Blacks make up 10 percent of LA County's population and are a significant part of the paper's circulation. But attacking Maxine Waters creates greater risks than just attacking a Black icon; she is also a liberal icon, and criticising liberals won't play well with the newspaper's core.

It's not even a very good attack, at that. It accuses three family members of making more than $1 million over the last ten years by riding on Waters' coattails. Do the math -- $1 million comes to $33,333 a year per family member, which is hardly a large-scale scandal, especially since much of their renumeration came from slate mailers and campaign work, which are legitimate. The article raises a few good questions, but all in all it's a thin gruel. Still, the paper soldiered on, attacking one of its own on page one.

And if they can do that to Maxine Waters, then attacking Christians, who they don't even want to understand, will come very easily.