by Fred Jackson and Jody Brown
Conservative groups say a recent article in Newsweek magazine points to the hypocrisy of the mainstream media which loves to promote tolerance — except when it comes to true Christianity.
The focus of the Newsweek story is Attorney General John Ashcroft and his efforts to track down terrorists. The headline, “Holy Warrior in the Hot Seat,” sets the tone for the piece which is laced with terms such as “quasi-religious zeal, “messianic sense of mission,” and “fundamentalist Christian.”
According to Family News in Focus, Bob Knight of the Culture and Family Institute is both bewildered and irritated by the article. He says if Ashcroft, a devout Christian, were not pursuing terrorism aggressively, the press would accuse him of lacking motivation. But “since he is pursuing it aggressively, they are saying he is over-zealous and then bring his faith into question.”
But Knight says it is typical liberal bias at work. He says if it was a left-winger like Ted Kennedy they were talking about, he would be framed in terms that one normally associates with heroes, such as “dedicated” and “selfless.”
Jan LaRue of the Family Research Council agrees. She says the Newsweek article goes beyond a smear of Ashcroft. In the FNIF report, she calls it “an outright attack” that is “driven by religious hostility,” and indicative of the “political correctness of and the hypocrisy of standing up for certain religious faiths, while it's okay to attack Christians.”
In his current book, Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, veteran CBS reporter Bernard Goldberg says there is a reason newsrooms allow such tainted journalism. He says just about everybody who works in those newsrooms is a liberal, and they refuse to believe they are doing anything wrong.
Read the Newsweek article.
(This update courtesy of the Media Research Center.)