Anti-Religious Bias

Brian Williams and Chris Matthews couldn't resist the opportunity to harp on the lack of married and women priests in the Catholic Church, as MSNBC provided live coverage of Pope Francis's open-air Mass in Philadelphia on Sunday. Williams pointed out that one of the archbishops at the Mass is "from a family, [but] he cannot go home to one. He cannot have one, and be...of service to the Catholic…

On Saturday, NPR’s Weekend Edition celebrated atheist author Philip Pullman and the His Dark Materials trilogy he wrote for middle-schoolers, a sort of anti-Narnia series. Anchor Scott Simon celebrated the 20th anniversary of the first book in this trilogy and interviewed Pullman as he sat a BBC studio in Oxford, hinting they have "maybe the mark of real excellence."

MSNBC's Chris Matthews revealed his loathing for a part of his Catholic upbringing on Wednesday's Hardball, and ended up mangling the theology behind a beautiful and ancient Church ritual for new mothers. Matthews turned to Catholic dissident Sister Simone Campbell for her take on Pope Francis's visit. Sister Campbell touted her liberal "Nuns on the Bus" campaign as a supposed way to "take the…

For journalists, it was the best of popes and it was the worst of popes. News outlets were often negative when Pope Benedict visited the United States in 2008, calling him an “enforcer,” “God’s Rottweiler,” and “very conservative.” Not so this time around for Pope Francis. The current pontiff shares the media’s views on climate change, immigration and inequality, and seems ambivalent at best…

The first episode of NBC's Heroes Reborn re-births stereotypical liberal media versions of Christian activists and 9/11 imagery.

Cradle Catholic Chris Matthews spent the first segment of his September 23 Hardball program effusively praising Pope Francis, particularly for raising immigration and climate change in his brief remarks at a welcome ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. But in a later segment, Matthews and guests Joan Walsh and Sister Simone Campbell lamented how even the liberal-leaning Francis is…

Welcome to the United States, Pope Francis, it's "indefensible" that Catholic hospitals refuse to perform tubal ligation surgery on women. That is the thrust of a Daily Beast piece written by one Jessica Mann, who explained her plight in a September 23 article headlined, "A Catholic Hospital Says It’s ‘Evil’ For Me to Get My Tubes Tied"

Liberal Ryan Murphy’s campy, horror-comedy show Scream Queens that premiered tonight is full of vile and heartless characters who humiliate, insult and even kill. However, the “queen” of them all is Chanel Oberlin (Chanel #1), president of the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority. Scream Queens was created by Murphy along with Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan. Murphy has often used his shows to attack…

Thomas Roberts set aside four full segments on his MSNBC Live program on Monday and Tuesday to a panel of six Catholics who dissent from the Church's teachings on sexuality and abortion. Roberts hyped his guests as "Catholics like me who have been deeply wounded in life by the Church." He noted how a divorced woman stayed with the Church and asked, "Do you feel as if you're almost on a cyclical…

Kim Davis’s willingness to be jailed for acting on her convictions has now provoked Gabriel Arana, the senior media editor of the Huffington Post to anger. The headline of his piece left nothing to the imagination: “Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis Is No Rosa Parks. She's The Bus Driver.”

The long and short of Jill Filipovic's Friday op-ed in the New York Times was her outrage that the Catholic Church – and specifically, Pope Francis – still considered abortion to be a grave sin. The former Cosmopolitan political writer asserted that Pope Francis "offering forgiveness" to women who've had abortion is "a softer version of the same judgment: that the millions of women around the…

One of television’s most sacred and central responsibilities is making sure they only display images that are “right and appropriate” for the viewing public to consume. Yet, judging by NBC’s decision to not show the post-game prayer gathering of players on the field after the Patriots’ 28-21 victory over the Steelers in the Thursday night Kickoff Special, NBC clearly believes public displays of…

Like a Monty Python skit gone tragic, the New York Times actually ran a chart labeling Democratic lawmakers against Obama's controversial nuclear deal with Iran as "Jewish?" or not (the "Jewish?" part was removed online after outcry). The four chart headings read: "Democrats against the deal – Jewish? – District and estimated Jewish population – Vote with party." Under "Democrats against the deal…

On his September 10 Hardball program, cradle Catholic Chris Matthews voiced his disdain for political candidates  discussing their religious faith and/or citing the Bible at a campaign event. The target of Mr. Matthews's wrath was Dr. Ben Carson, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Proverbs to answer a question related to Donald Trump.