Kristen Fyfe's blog

CW's 'Provocative' Ad Campaign Targets Teens and Blasphemes God

By Kristen Fyfe | May 6, 2008 - 13:18 ET

“OMFG” is text-speak for the unspeakable. It's also the tag line for a new ad campaign aimed at teens and featuring a jumble of sexual situations, including teens undressing each other and two girls kissing. The campaign blitz is appearing in print and television, all aimed at drumming up eyeballs for the CW network's teen-themed soap "Gossip Girl."

For the uninitiated, “OMG” translates to “Oh My God” in the language of email and text messaging. The addition of the “F” means … well, it’s the word that can cost broadcasters a hefty government fine if someone actually says it on TV.

Now, of course, executives at the CW could never admit that they were actively targeting teens with such a "provocative" ad. Nor would they ever admit they were intentionally dodging an FCC fine by using the letter "F" instead of the unspeakable word. Nor would they ever consider that "F" used next to "G," which stands for "God" would be blasphemous. In fact they've gone out of their way on these subjects. But reality has a way of well, keeping it real.

Apostles of Atheism Redux: CBS, ABC Publicize Plight of Army Atheist

By Kristen Fyfe | April 29, 2008 - 12:07 ET

Religion and the military shouldn't mix.  That's the take away message that both CBS and ABC touted when their Sunday morning news programs publicized the plight of an atheist who is suing the Army for religious discrimination.

On April 27th CBS's Sunday Morning and ABC's Good Morning America Sunday each featured the story of Jeremy Hall, an Army specialist who claims he was denied promotion and persecuted because of his atheism.  Both interviewed Hall and Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a co-plaintiff in Hall's lawsuit. 

Weinstein was described as a loyal patriot (by CBS) and a defender of the religiously oppressed (ABC).  Neither network bothered to mention that on the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's Web site American military members are compared directly to Islamic jihadists.  A video runs on the homepage of the site which juxtaposes a suicide bomber holding a rifle and Koran with a group of American soldiers holding rifles and Bibles.

Early Show and GMA Deliver Pregnant 'Man' PR

By Kristen Fyfe | April 3, 2008 - 16:15 ET

Men don't have babies. Period. Yet in covering the ‘pregnant man' story this morning both the "Early Show" and "Good Morning America" neither outlet dealt with this fact. Rather, both were completely focused on the fact that Thomas Beatie was speaking publicly for the first time and would be shown on today's "Oprah" show. Both outlets also reported that Beatie's story would appear in this week's issue of People, due on news stands tomorrow.

So really, the media were reporting on the media reporting on the pregnant man. Which really amounts to a public relations boon for Oprah, People and of course the Beaties.

WaPo Swoons Over Hollywood Left's Secular Crusade in DC

By Kristen Fyfe | March 27, 2008 - 23:12 ET

They aren’t even A-list stars, but that didn’t stop The Washington Post from highlighting a handful of visiting “Hollywood activists” in town to “start a conversation” about the separation of church and state. The story got big play in “The Reliable Source” column, the gossip/celebrity news feature of the influential Style section of The Washington Post.  Reporters Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts wrote:

Feeling a little cramped, First Amendment-wise? A crew of Hollywood activists -- Kevin Bacon! Jack Klugman! That lady from "Just Shoot Me!" -- descended on D.C. yesterday to make sure you don't have too much church in your state, and vice versa.

New Special Report: Apostles of Atheism

By Kristen Fyfe | March 25, 2008 - 16:43 ET

In all the brouhaha last week over the incendiary comments made by Barack Obama's pastor the media seemed to forget to partake in their traditional Holy Week Christian-bashing excercise.  There were a few entries in the "Easter Hit Parade," like the Comedy Central show "Root of All Evil" which my boss, Brent Bozell, wrote about in a column recently, and an episode of "Law and Order" which featured another Christian-stones-someone storyline.

I suppose it's good news that there was less faith flagellation courtesy of the liberal media, and yet at the same time it's sad that I was expecting to find it at Easter time.  But the fact remains that Christmas and Easter are generally times when the media attacks on Christians are more pronounced.

For atheists it's a different story.

GMA Spotlights Woman Who Is Husband and Dad

By Kristen Fyfe | March 6, 2008 - 18:05 ET

NewsBusters.org | Media Research CenterA couple at the "cross roads" of a "complicated" love story.  That's how Diane Sawyer set up the feature on a transgendered Microsoft executive, his/her wife, and their son in the 8:00 half-hour on "Good Morning America."

The socially progressive bent of GMA was evident in the lack of context or perspective given to the family's story.  No consideration was given to the glaring social issues raised. It was reported as just another human-interest story.

Video (2:00): Windows (7.31 MB), plus MP3 audio (917 kB)

The five-minute feature, reported by Neal Karlinsky, explained the conflict Michael Wallent had with his identification as a male, his decision to become a female and the ramifications of that decision in his workplace and at home. 

NBC Casts Ex-POW Arizona Politician as Murdering Cannibal

By Kristen Fyfe | March 4, 2008 - 15:46 ET

Monday’s NBC psychic crime drama "Medium" featured a plot line in which an Arizona senator and former POW is discovered to be a two-time murderer and a cannibal. While it is safe to assume that the story was written before the Hollywood writers’ strike, and before the rise of John McCain to front-runner status for the GOP presidential nomination, the blatant use of McCain’s personal history, as a politician and Vietnam POW, as grist to feed the murderous plot is obvious.

Video (1:43): Windows Media (6.23 MB), or MP3 audio (498 kB).

In Monday’s episode, titled “Aftertaste”, the medium (“Allison DuBois,” played by Patricia Arquette) suspects an ex-POW Arizona state senator is involved in a murder she sees in her dreams. Through a series of psychic flashbacks, she discovers that the senator (“Jed Garrity,” played by Gregory Itzin), as a young Army captain held by the North Vietnamese, proposed to his cellmates that they kill and eat a dying American soldier rather than starve to death. “Garrity” drew the short straw and committed the actual murder himself by strangling the dying soldier.

Washington Post Sends Big Valentine to Alternative Lifestyles

By Kristen Fyfe | February 13, 2008 - 14:15 ET

Triads. Quads. V's.  No, it's not a math lesson, it's the terminology used to describe relationships by polyamorists.  Not sure what those are?  Lucky you have the February 13 edition of The Washington Post's "Style" section to enlighten you. And if you read far enough into the copy you'll also find a game plan for redefining marriage. More on that in a minute.

In what can only be described as a Valentine to immorality and provocative behavior, the Post ran a 2554-word feature on polyamory that describes a practice most readers - even the liberal fans of the Post - would find disturbing. Sometimes called "swinging" or "wife swapping," polyamory is the practice of openly having several sexual partners, regardless and sometimes in spite of, marital status.

Hasselbeck Jokes About Clinton Baby Bond in ABC Interview

By Kristen Fyfe | January 9, 2008 - 11:45 ET

Anyone who has given birth to a child knows that post-partum hormones can really cloud your thinking. But your political views?

Apparently, when you are a conservative, or thought to be a conservative, reporters think you might move left after you give birth. That was the assumption ABC's JuJu Chang brought into her interview with The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck on today's broadcast of Good Morning America.

Chang, who said she gave birth within nine days of Hasselbeck, was back on GMA with an interview of The View's co-host, labeled a conservative two times in the piece, who returned to her job this week as well. The interview was set up to be a chat between two new moms, but quickly became political.

Chang: Has motherhood changed your views at all - either your politics or just your worldview or your life view ?

Hasselbeck: I think motherhood stirs up questions about life. You look at it differently. I'm not voting just as a single woman anymore or just for myself. I'm actually looking at how this world will be shaped so that my kids can live in a place that's safe for them. And that is my main goal. I think it does change.

Planned Parenthood Uses Gay Character to Promote Birth Control, Sort of

By Kristen Fyfe | January 4, 2008 - 17:29 ET

Planned Parenthood Golden Gate (PPGG) has unveiled what it calls an “edgy” TV and radio campaign that “focuses on the importance of practicing pregnancy prevention and safer sex.”

Except that the words “pregnancy” and “safe sex” are never spoken.  And the pitch man in the “Mile High campaign” is flamingly gay. The TV ad is being run on MTV, VH-1, Comedy Central and TLC, and the radio ad is running on KMEL-FM, a San Francisco station.  See if you can find the purported "sexual health" education messages in the ad. 

Here is the text of the commercial: (click here to see the video)

'Compass' Not Golden at the Box Office

By Kristen Fyfe | December 10, 2007 - 15:04 ET

"The Golden Compass" did not produce box-office gold during its first weekend.

While ranked #1 for the weekend, the movie which opened in 3,528 theaters, was lavishly produced and promoted, only took in in $26.1 million, according to Boxofficemojo.com. Studio New Line Cinema was hoping for returns in the $30 to $40 million range.

"Compass" drew the ire of many Christians because the movie is based on the first book in a trilogy called "His Dark Materials" by avowed atheist Philip Pullman, who has said publicly that his books are about killing God. In "USA Today," Rolf Mittweg of New Line Cinema conceded that the "religion controversy might have had an effect."

Time: Sunday School for Atheists

By Kristen Fyfe | November 26, 2007 - 21:55 ET

Will Time magazine come and cover MY Sunday school class? You know, the one where I teach my kids that their Christian faith is under attack on a weekly, if not daily, basis from the mainstream media?

I think its a valid question because Time just did a lovely send-up to a Sunday School for ..... atheists. Yep. Seems the atheists, or rather humanists, in Palo Alto, California think believers have something going on with the whole Sunday School thing.

Time's reporter Jeninne Lee-St. John promotes the atheist program, atheist summer camps and a new Carl Sagan-named Humanist public charter school in her Nov. 21 story. The fact that the piece was put up on Time.com on the eve before Thanksgiving, when millions of Americans gathered to give thanks to God, is delectable irony.

The bias started in the first paragraph:

Does AP Stand for Anti-Abstinence Propaganda?

By Kristen Fyfe | November 11, 2007 - 16:19 ET

It feels like Groundhog Day, the movie. Every time Congress takes up abstinence-only education programs, you can count on the media to trot out a story claiming abstinence-only education doesn’t work. They did it in April of this year with the flawed Mathematica study and they’re doing it again with a "new" study put out by the pleasantly-named National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The Associated Press story, "Report: Abstinence programs don’t work" is a classic example of liberal-agenda promotion. From the slanted opening paragraph to the failure to cite or quote even a single advocate of abstinence-only education, the entire piece is a pitch for progressive comprehensive sex education programs. Just look at the lede:

'Progressive' Christian Jim Wallis: 'Stay Unborn as Long as Possible'

By Kristen Fyfe | October 19, 2007 - 15:38 ET

"If I'm an unborn child and I want the support of the far religious right I better stay unborn as long as possible because once I'm born I'm off the radar screen. No healthcare, no child care, no nothing, " said Jim Wallis, founder of the liberal Christian group Sojourners.

Only he wasn't labeled a "liberal" by Katie Couric.  He was called a "progressive."

Wallis got the royal treatment from Couric in the October 18 broadcast.  In a piece about the Values Voters Summit being held in Washington, D.C. this weekend, Couric reported a segment on whether evangelical Christians can be counted on by the G.O.P.

She went hard left after the opening statement, in which she said there was "a new kind of holy war" for the hearts and minds of 50 million evangelical voters.

Smiling, she asked Wallis,“Do you believe that evangelical Christians are still the domain of the G.O.P?”

He answered with an emphatic, “No,” adding their votes are "up for grabs."

Et Tu, Disney? Bleeping God from the Ten Commandments?!

By Kristen Fyfe | October 17, 2007 - 14:49 ET

Radio Disney is bleeping "God" from ad copy for the upcoming movie "The Ten Commandments."

Seriously.

The folks at Liberty Counsel sent out notices on Monday and Tuesday of this week letting people know about a copy of an email they had in which a Radio Disney representative was advising a media buyer to delete the words "chosen by God" in ad copy for the movie "The Ten Commandments" which opens on October 19. To see the email, and also the petition that Liberty Counsel has to get Radio Disney to reconsider this decision you can click here.

Omission Watch: San Fran Takes Jesus-Bashing To Extremes

By Kristen Fyfe | September 28, 2007 - 13:12 ET

On September 30, a Sunday – the Lord’s Day in the Christian church – San Francisco will host the Folsom Street Fair, perhaps the most hedonistic event held in public in America. The fair is the San Francisco homosexual community’s annual celebration of promiscuity, sadomasochism and debauchery. The ad for this year’s fair mocks Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, with a half-naked beefcake Christ and disciples bedecked in all manner of leather and chains. The bread and wine of The Last Supper are replaced with sex toys. Many Christian groups have expressed outrage. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells CNSNews.com "I do not believe Christianity has been harmed." Hear the audio there.)

Will the national media cover the story?

Knight Column: New Study Exposes Anti-gun Bias in Media

By Kristen Fyfe | August 29, 2007 - 16:36 ET

On Tuesday, Jesse Jackson, the Brady bunch -- not the TV folk but the anti-gun lobby -- and other liberal activists rallied against “the national scourge of illegal guns” in cities around the nation.

The networks ignored the event, probably because turnout was so embarrassingly low. The Chicago Tribune reported that “about 200” piled out of three buses in Lake Barrington, Illinois, the Chicago-area protest keynoted by Jackson himself. The Philadelphia Inquirer said “about 200” showed up in Philly. The Dallas Morning News reported about 60 demonstrators in South Dallas, and AP said “about 100”attended the Washington, D.C. event held in nearby District Heights, Maryland.

Anti-gun activists were counting on good coverage if they had big turnouts, and no negative coverage if they didn’t. It’s the flip side of how the media cover pro-life rallies, downplaying enormous crowds and playing up the handful of counter demonstrators. In this case, the networks chose to look benignly in the other direction. The gun grabbers know that liberal journalists don’t like guns. Or, rather, they don’t like private citizens owning guns and taking personal responsibility for their own safety and that of their families and property.

How do we know? From the loaded coverage night after night on the networks and each day in major newspapers. A new CMI study, The Media Assault on the Second Amendment, documents seven months of media coverage of gun issues, and explains how the media are taking potshots at the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

TIME: RU Kidding?

By Kristen Fyfe | August 17, 2007 - 15:27 ET

The TIME headline is ironic: “Study Finds Abortion Pill Safe.” Safe for whom exactly?  Certainly not for the millions of pre-born children who have died when their mothers took it.  Nor is it “safe” for their mothers.

The August 15 article by Sara Song (and the story run by AP on August 16) touts the findings released in the New England Journal of Medicine that show use of the RU-486 abortion pill “in the long term, is safe.”

That’s a message the feminist influenced, pro-choice media want to promote. In her article Song wrote “women who use mifepristone (RU 486) are no better or worse off than those who choose surgical abortion” and that “most existing research shows that surgical abortions have no effect on overall health risks.” 

WaPo Film Critic: Where's the Abortion?

By Kristen Fyfe | July 16, 2007 - 15:44 ET

Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday wants abortion. In the movies, that is. In her July 15 piece Hornaday complains that two box office successes this summer, “Waitress” and “Knocked Up,” feature main characters that are pregnant. Both are unmarried and less than thrilled with their pregnancies. Both have their babies.

“It’s a setup that has some viewers, especially women who came of age in a post-Roe v. Wade America, wondering just what world these movies are living in.”

Well, Ann, they’re living in the modern day world where the number of out-of-wedlock births among 20- and 30-something women is dramatically up, according to a poll conducted by Pew Research. Just look at Brangelina, if you want to see what that looks like in real life.

NBC Quotes Breyer Not Roberts in Supreme Court Ruling on Race

By Kristen Fyfe | June 29, 2007 - 16:02 ET

The landmark Supreme Court ruling which found that schools cannot diversify their student bodies based on race alone gave NBC the launch pad they needed to talk about the conservative nature of the Supreme Court. 

NBC’s coverage on Nightly News was remarkably stacked to the left.  Reporter Pete Williams led his package with this sentence: “This decision vividly reveals how divided this current supreme court is on social issues.”  In reporting the ruling Williams described the majority ruling as coming from “the five most conservative justices.”  But he never quoted Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion which included the statement, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race, is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”  He did, however, quote this statement from the minority opinion of Justice Stephen Breyer, “It's not often that so few have so quickly undone so -- changed so much.”