Religion

On Saturday's Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC, NBC correspondent Richard Engel conveyed that the reform advocates who led the toppling of Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt are distraught at the kinds of candidates that Egyptian voters are choosing to replace Mubarak, with both major presidential candidates likely to curtail freedom if elected. Engel recounted: (Video at bottom)

MRC president L. Brent Bozell III had his Letter to the Editor published in Saturday's Washington Post. He objected to liberal Post columnist E.J. Dionne trying to make a mountain out of the molehill of one liberal bishop granting an interview to one liberal Catholic magazine. Dionne did not note that this same bishop, so nervous about the bishops being used by political partisans "far to the right," delighted liberals by attacking the Paul Ryan budget.

Dionne wrote the conservative bishops who are "eagerly picking fights with President Obama....have angered more progressive Catholics and led to talk among the disgruntled faithful of the need for a 'Catholic spring' to challenge the hierarchy’s shift to the right." So now the Catholic hierarchy is like Arab dictators? Brent wrote in reply:

NewsBusters for days has been strongly admonishing the media for ignoring the recent lawsuit by numerous Catholic entities against the Obama administration for its contraception mandate.

Appearing on Fox & Friends Saturday, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee likened this press boycott to "not covering the 'I Have a Dream' speech by Martin Luther King in 1963. It’s like missing the Roe v. Wade decision and not thinking that’s significant. It’s like somehow missing Brown versus Board of Education" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

NPR obviously thought the case of Monsignor William Lynn, "the highest ranking Catholic official in the U.S. to be criminally tried for covering up child sex abuse by priests," was newsworthy, as they devoted four and a half minutes to the story on Thursday's All Things Considered. Meanwhile, the public radio network has yet to cover the Monday filing of 12 major lawsuits against ObamaCare's contraception/abortifacient mandate by Catholic dioceses and organizations on the air.

Correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty's report aired mere minutes before the CBS Evening News led with the Lynn case. On Friday, Media Research Center president Brent Bozell took both CBS and NPR to task for playing up the story, while remaining completely silent on the pro-religious freedom litigation.

The broadcast media's blackout on news of the Catholic Church's lawsuit against the Obama administration continues apace, while the news media covers much more important events like who won American Idol.

So it's no wonder that MRCTV's Dan Joseph found only one person yesterday who knew about the lawsuit. Watch the video in the embed below the page break.

If you’ve ever wondered why you don’t hear much reporting on some of the dreadful traditions and lack of rights that women in the Islamic world often face, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry provided a perfect illustration in a recent discussion with Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy.

Eltahawy’s essay, which appeared in the magazine Foreign Policy, is a straightforward attempt to disabuse people of the notion that there is any sort of equivalence between the treatment of women in the Islamic and Western worlds. In her words, non-Arabs need to “resist cultural relativism and know that even in countries undergoing revolutions and uprisings, women will remain the cheapest bargaining chips.”

Updated with new statements | Fury over the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts’ continued refusal to report the lawsuits Catholic entities have filed against the Obama administration has spread beyond the Media Research Center watchdog group and Catholic leaders to 11 additional Christian leaders equally concerned about this decision to deliberately not report national news. Below are statements released by FRC’s Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer of American Values and nine more leaders.

The Big Three networks' evening newscasts have all but punted so far on the 12 lawsuits filed on Monday against the Obama administration, challenging the abortifacient/birth control mandate which is part of ObamaCare. However, CBS actually followed up on their exclusive interview of New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan on the regulation on Tuesday's CBS This Morning.

Correspondent Norah O'Donnell confronted Press Secretary Jay Carney during the Tuesday White House press briefing over Dolan's sharp critique of the mandate on the morning newscast: "He [Dolan] said that it's a 'strait-jacketing' and 'handcuffing exemption.'...Is that what the President is doing...strait-jacketing and hand-cuffing religious institutions?" O'Donnell's question didn't make it on the air on Tuesday's CBS Evening News or Wednesday's CBS This Morning, even after Carney evaded directly answering her question.

CNN devoted over twice the air-time to a "stroller moms" protest against toxic chemicals than it did to the biggest religious lawsuit in U.S. history filed Monday.

A dozen lawsuits filed by 43 Catholic institutions against the Obama administration merited only news briefs on Monday with one full segment on Tuesday morning. The coverage totaled under seven minutes. In contrast, CNN gave almost 18 minutes to a march of about 100 people pushing for a Democratic-sponsored bill.

Nine prominent Catholic leaders have joined the Media Research Center to voice outrage over the broadcast networks deliberately withholding news of the momentous 43 Catholic entities suing the Obama administration for violating their religious freedoms. They represent major organizations including the Acton Institute, Cardinal Newman Society, SBA List and others. More are coming in every hour.

There are 60 million Catholics in the US.  The Catholic vote will be the most important swing vote this year.  So it’s not just a major policy issue, it is one with massive political implications.  Yet, 19 seconds of news coverage remains the only attention given by the evening broadcast networks. Two days after news broke, the tally is:

“[sigh] When will those mouth-breathing right-wingers give up their caves and clubs and learn to love science?” Pity the sophisticated liberal like CNN contributor Laura Sessions Stepp, whose impatience at Neanderthal misogynists and snake-handlers is palpable.

It’s also an act that helps them continue to push the falsehood that conservatives are anti-science and anti-contraception – and continue to play fast and loose with the facts in order to advance that narrative.

The evening news broadcasts all but spiked the largest legal action in history to defend our constitutionally protected religious freedom. The May 21 editions of ABC’s World News and NBC’s Nightly News refused to report the fact that 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Obama administration. CBS Evening News gave this historic news a mere 19 seconds of air time.

This is the worst bias by omission I have seen in the quarter century history of the Media Research Center. Every American knows about the Chinese communists withholding for 20 years the news that the US had landed on the moon, because it reflected poorly on the government. Our US media today are no different. They are now withholding news from the American people if it is harmful to the re-election of Barack Obama.

Sunday's CBS Evening News refreshingly spotlighted the continuing persecution of the Coptic Christians in Egypt, an ongoing story that the Big Three networks have largely ignored for months. Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer zeroed in on the uncertain future for the religious minority as the country gears for a rare election: "[Egypt's] Christians are deeply worried....Two of the frontrunners in the race with a realistic chance of winning are deeply devout Islamists."

The last time CBS reported on the anti-Christian violence in Egypt was a news brief on the October 9, 2011 edition of Evening News, according to a Nexis search. Since January 2011, ABC, NBC, and CBS's morning and evening newscasts have only mentioned the issue six times.

Political reporter Michael Shear uses a half-baked Times "expose" to accuse the GOP of using racial attacks by bringing up the legitimate issue of the anti-white, anti-American, paranoid ravings of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for decades in Chicago, in Saturday's "Race and Religion Rear Their Heads."

Perhaps the uglier side of politics is always close to the surface.

President Obama and his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, have said for months that the 2012 election will be about the economy. But on Thursday, it became -- at least for a brief moment -- about the always touchy issues of race and religion.

On today's edition of The Daily Rundown, MSNBC's Chuck Todd sat down to chat with Rev. Jesse Jackson to discuss a variety of issues, from Afghanistan to whether the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is fair game for Republicans to attack President Obama. In the middle of the interview, Todd asked the former Democratic presidential candidate about the NAACP Board of Directors's "historic" decision over the weekend to give the organization's stamp of approval to same-sex marriage.

"There has been this conventional wisdom that particularly among older African-Americans that the president's position on gay marriage is going to hurt him," Todd noted, adding, "Does the NAACP sort of backing up the president on this help convince the older African-American [voters], might be a little more religious, might be struggling with this issue, to ignore that part?"

Politico media reporter Dylan Byers is impatient with the media: “When will we talk about Mormonism?”

He means the negative stuff: “I’m talking about a national conversation about the Mormon faith, including its past practice of polygamy (which was renounced by the church in the 19th century) and its exclusion of African Americans from the priesthood (until 1978). That sort of thing.” Does he watch anything?

If there was a contest each week for the dumbest comment made by a member of the media, this would likely be last week's prohibitive favorite.

On the syndicated Chris Matthews Show this weekend, during a discussion about Barack Obama's America-hating Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page actually said with a straight face, "Right-wing wouldn't have that story if it wasn't for the mainstream media" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

ESPN's Grantland website jumped on the bash Manny Pacquiao bandwagon on Thursday by giving a platform to a homosexual activist, who predictably trashed the Catholic Church as she took the Filipino boxing sensation to task for defending traditional marriage.

Writer Laurel Fantauzzo ripped the "the Church's cruel, untrue dictates about me," and promised if he didn't "evolve" like President Obama, "I'll simply have to sigh wearily and turn away from you, the way I've turned away from all of the idiotic bigots I've come across in my life, carrying a cross or a heavy book or a Constitution."

Thursday's New York Times off-lead by Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg was intended to cause heartburn for the Mitt Romney camp: "G.O.P. ‘Super PAC’ Weighing A Hard-Line Attack on Obama."

The ad strategy, which was aborted after the Times ran with it on Thursday's front page, would have emphasized Obama's controversial Chicago pastor, the racially inflammatory Jeremiah Wright. But the Times as usual described Rev. Wright's anti-white jeremiads in bland terms, burying Wright's 9-11 quote that the attack was “America’s chickens are coming home to roost," and left out his notorious "God damn America!" rant completely. That distanced approach matches the paper's reluctant Wright coverage during the 2008 campaign.

"Some religious leaders are struggling with President Obama’s support for gay marriage but not the Rev. Jesse Jackson," gushed frequent MSNBC contributor Toure noted in the opening line of his May 17 Time.com "Ideas" blog post as he introduced how he "spoke to the Reverend [Jesse Jackson] about the impact of Obama’s announcement among blacks and the wider community of the faithful."

It goes without saying that the interview was a game of softball in which Toure helpfully lobbed easy questions over the plate to drive home for readers, but particularly those who may be African-American Christians who typically vote Democratic, that it would be great if they could evolve to where President Obama has on same-sex marriage, a "civil rights" and "discrimination" issue.

Do a majority of Americans really support gay marriage? "Maybe not," the Washington Post admits. For years, headlines have screamed that society is open to redefining marriage. But every time the theory is put to the test, it's proven wrong. As Daniel Horowitz says, the only authentic polling data is votes at the ballot. Thirty-two times, voters have gone to the polls in some of the most liberal states in America and rejected counterfeit marriage--most recently in North Carolina, where a constitutional amendment won by 22 points. Now that President Obama has literally made a federal case out of marriage, the reaction is even more severe.

Ben Maller skewered Filipino boxing champion Manny Pacquiao as a "homophobic boxing superstar" and a "bigoted boxer" in a Wednesday post on ThePostgame.com, an online magazine of Yahoo! Sports. Pacquiao had criticized the redefinition of marriage in a Friday interview: "It [marriage] should not be of the same sex so as to adulterate the altar of matrimony, like in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah of old."

Maller, who is also a talk radio host for Fox Sports Radio, also trumpeted that the boxer, "long a darling of Madison Avenue, figures to lose a number of endorsements and fans over his intolerant, bullheaded position."

Appearing as a guest on Tuesday's Conan show on TBS, HBO comedian Bill Maher absurdly suggested that recent allegations that Mitt Romney engaged in "bullying" in high school are worse than being molested by Michael Jackson, and asserted that he would be willing to trade being beat up in grade school for being "gently masturbated by a pop star."

Maher also again attacked Mormonism and religion generally, using uncensored vulgarity, and seemed to hold Romney responsible for the polygamy of his grandfather.

The Real Time host brought up Michael Jackson to suggest that Romney had behaved worse than a child molester:

CNN's Carol Costello wondered why the U.S. Catholic Bishops are investigating the Girl Scouts over possible ties to Planned Parenthood and the distribution of anti-Catholic material. "Not all of those Girl Scouts are Catholic," Costello mused on Tuesday. "So why impose Catholic beliefs on the Girl Scouts and threaten to pull out of the organization?"

Costello hosted the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, who argued that the Girl Scouts might be the one's "imposing" on others' beliefs. "I think it's going backwards. If, in fact, everything that the critics of the Girl Scouts are saying were true, then it's the Girl Scouts imposing on Catholics," he insisted. [Video coming soon.]

"I’ve never understood the opposition to gay marriage." That's the confession with which Sally Quinn -- the agnostic, liberal editor of the Washington Post's "On Faith" religion section-- began her May 11 column. But rather than humbly seek an understanding of the religious faith that informs the beliefs of millions of American Christians, Quinn launched into an attack on them by comparing them to opponents of the racial integration of the nation's public schools.

History, Quinn insists, is on the side of the eventual societal and legal acceptance of same-sex marriage, and those who stand in the way will one day be haunted by it, living their lives knowing how wretched they were to oppose progress in the first place: