OrthodoxNet.com Blog

The Philadelphia Inquirer | Rick Santorum | Jan. 3, 2008

If art is a reflection of our culture, our culture - and particularly our youth culture - is awaking to the reality of life in the womb. You hear it in Nick Cannon’s autobiographical single “Can I live?” You see it in the stunning episode of the television show House where Dr. Gregory House’s finger is grasped by a baby in the womb during intrauterine surgery. The recognition of the life in the womb is going mainstream. Continue Reading »

OrthodoxyToday.org | Fr. George Morelli | Dec. 4, 2007

It is very rare that I would use an entire interview from another source as the basis of a Smart Parenting article. C.S. Lewis, in his book — The Screwtape Letters, is the Christian writer who warned against the subtle devices of the evil one working in the world in such books and films as The Golden Compass. Parents, as heads of their “domestic church,” have even a higher God-given calling: to lead their children to the awesomeness of God. Use of the media, the weapon of those who attack God and His Church, an ideal way to accomplish this. Turn the weapon back on the evil one and his cohorts.
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OrthodoxyToday.org | Paul Lundberg | Dec. 4, 2007

The Golden Compass is $180 million movie that opens this weekend. Based on the first novel in a series written by an avowed atheist, it contains unmistakable criticism of the Church, which serves as an antagonist in the story. That it is made for children as well as adults has only added to the intensity with which some groups have denounced it as “sugar-coated atheism” and the author’s “deliberate attempt to foist his viciously anti-God beliefs upon his audience.”

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FrontPage Magazine | Paul Kengor | Dec. 3, 2007

Every year my family eagerly awaits the annual broadcast of the classic 1965 Peanuts special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” This timeless masterpiece by Charles Schulz remains so popular that the networks salivate over the rights to it, despite the strong, explicitly Christian statement made in the end by Linus, which surely exasperates the secular crusaders who control TV content from New York.

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Townhall.com | Michael Medved | June 13, 2007

Does heavy TV viewing push people toward more liberal opinions? Or is it the impact of pre-existing leftist attitudes that lead viewers to invest more of their lives on television?

Analysts may argue about causation, but there’s no real doubt about correlation: an important new study from the Culture and Media Institute shows that those who describe themselves as “heavy” TV viewers embrace distinctly liberal attitudes on a range of crucial issues, placing them well to the left of those who report “light” TV viewing.

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Wall Street Opinion Journal | Jeff Emanuel | May 23, 2007

Embedded journalists in Iraq are having their minds changed left and right by U.S. soldiers.

Operation Iraqi Freedom saw the advent of a practice that revolutionized modern war reporting: the embedding of journalists with frontline combat units in war. This practice gave the media, the American public and the world unprecedented access to the soldiers on the front lines, as well as to the war itself, through the filing of stories, photographs and video from the battlefront in real time, by reporters who were right there with the soldiers doing the fighting. “We were offered an irresistible opportunity: free transportation to the front line of the war, dramatic pictures, dramatic sounds, great quotes,” said Tom Gjelten of National Public Radio. “Who can pass that up?”

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Townhall.com Jeff Jacoby January 22, 2007

Did you know that a majority of American women now live without husbands? I didn’t either, but last week the New York Times announced it on Page 1: “51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse.”

[ ... ]

Well, maybe. Or maybe not. For when you try to pin down the numbers, Roberts’s startling finding turns out to depend on some awfully strained definitions.

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Wall Street Opinion Journal Peter Kann December 13, 2006

The media is in need of some mending.

Thomas Jefferson, a better president than we’ve had in a very long time, penned a line back in 1787: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I would not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” By 1807, in his seventh year as president and after seven years of being subjected to severe press criticism, he wrote: “I deplore the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity and the mendacious spirit of those who write them.”

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Best of the Web November 7, 2006

“The labor market for American workers is continuing to improve, the latest government statistics showed yesterday, with job growth advancing in recent months and the unemployment rate falling last month to the lowest level since May 2001. In a report that eased concerns that economic growth might be faltering, the Labor Department reported yesterday that the jobless rate, seasonally adjusted, dropped in October to 4.4 percent, from 4.6 percent in September.”–news story, New York Times, Nov. 4

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Jewish World Review Daniel Pipes October 18, 2006

Soldiers, sailors, and airmen once determined the outcome of warfare, but no longer. Today, television producers, columnists, preachers, and politicians have the pivotal role in deciding how well the West fights. This shift has deep implications.

In a conventional conflict like World War II, fighting had two premises so basic, they went nearly unnoticed.

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Wall Street Opinion Journal September 19, 2006

One 9/11 picture, thousands of words: Rorschach of meanings.

Faith in the camera as an infallible eyewitness was supposed to have died for good with the advent of Photoshop. Critics have opined for years that the popularity of such digital trickery would erode the truth value of all photographs. What attorney would risk introducing an 8-by-10 print as evidence of a murder scene if jury members knew how to rotate bodies and paintbox skin tones on their home computers?

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Townhall.com Marvin Olasky August 17, 2006

Try on this exciting photo caption: “A Hezbollah PR man poses for dramatic effect in front of a tire fire.”

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Real Clear Politics July 13, 2006
Thomas Sowell

The same newspapers and television news programs that are constantly reminding us that some people under indictment “are innocent until proven guilty” are nevertheless hyping the story of American troops accused of rape in Iraq, day in and day out, even though these troops have yet to be proven guilty of anything.

What about all the civilian rapes that are charged — and even proven — in the United States? None of them gets this 24/7 coverage in the mainstream media.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example of media hype of unproven charges against American troops. While military action was still raging in the early days of the Iraq war, there was media condemnation of our troops for not adequately protecting an Iraqi museum from which various items were missing.

When the smoke of battle cleared, it turned out that members of the museum staff had hidden these items for safekeeping during the fighting.

Then there was the incident when a Marine shot a terrorist who was pretending to be asleep and the media turned that into a big scandal until an investigation revealed how these and other tricks used by terrorists had cost the lives of American troops in Iraq.

None of the brutal beheadings of innocent hostages taken by terrorists in Iraq — and videotaped for distribution throughout the Middle East — has aroused half the outrage in the mainstream media as unsubstantiated charges made by terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo

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Townhall.com Brent Bozell III July 12, 2006

There was the expected wailing and gnashing of teeth from the left when New York’s state Court of Appeals ruled against installing so-called “gay marriage” by judicial fiat, as they had in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts. The New York Times, as expected, was stunned that the judges could find a “rational basis” for traditional marriage, and that judges would defer to elected legislators.

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Townhall.com Bruce Bartlett July 4, 2006

The New York Times is very upset that it has been singled out for revealing a government program that tracks terrorists through financial transactions. The Times notes that the same story was simultaneously broken by the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, but so far they have not come in for the same criticism.

One reason for this disparate treatment is that the New York Times has no reservoir of goodwill to fall back on. Because of its past actions, people are disinclined to give it the benefit of the doubt when its judgment and patriotism are questioned.

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Wall Street Opinion Journal June 30, 2006

“Not everything is fit to print. There is to be regard for at least probable factual accuracy, for danger to innocent lives, for human decencies, and even, if cautiously, for nonpartisan considerations of the national interest.”

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The Empire Journal
Zogby Poll Shows Americans Favored Terri’s Survival

According to polls published by the mainstream media, particularly one by ABC News, it was indicated that most Americans favored the removal of the nutrition and hydration of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, the 41-year-old disabled woman who died of starvation and thirst March 31 in a court-ordered death in Florida.

But the polls by ABC and Time were based on the disinformation campaign engaged in by the mainstream media in the case. They didn’t tell the public that Terri Schiavo wasn’t vegetative, that she wasn’t in a coma, that she wasn’t terminal. They didn’t tell the public about Michael Schiavo’s adulterous affair and that the order to end her life was based on the self-serving hearsay testimony of Michael Schiavo who had a lot to gain by Terri’s death. In the opinion of many, the mainstream media is as responsible for the death of Terri Schiavo as Judge George W. Greer, Michael Schiavo and his attorney, George Felos.

The Case Heard Round the Web

Continuing the media bias discussion Hugh Hewitt’s Two incidents highlight the mainstream media’s defects and biases is a good read.

Continuing the theme of liberal bias in the mainstream media, Jim Geraghty asks in National Review if the liberal media has too many outlets for too few viewers. Will the MSM have to start reaching out to conservatives?