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Wednesday 14 January 2015

"Stop Lying"

I don't know who Mollie Hemingway is, I mean I do in so insofar as she is an editor of The Federalist, so I'd probably disagree with most of her political positions, but I didn't until I read this piece, which seems to me dispassionate, (if sarcastic,) and objective.
She's specific, and she backs up her (not high, but middle, and warranted,) dudgeon with sources, and she quotes instead of  almost-ubiquitous-on-the-intewebs paraphrasing.
It is hard to disagree with what she has to say, and she pulls no punches:
With straight faces and an apparent belief that we’d all forgotten the media coverage we’ve been subjected to in recent decades, editors and executives at many media outlets claimed this week that their well-established respect for religion prevents them from showing images that Muslim extremists have used to justify murderous terrorism.
Nobody believes this. Absolutely nobody on earth believes that American journalists operate with deference toward Baptists, Mormons or Catholics, much less an abundance of deference to same.
In an email to Politico, New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet claimed that his paper doesn’t print blasphemous or offensive images even when relevant to a story:
"Here is how I made the call, and it wasn’t easy,” he continued. “We have a standard that is pretty simple. We don’t run things that are designed to gratuitously offend. That’s what the French cartoons were actually designed to do. That was their purpose....
And obviously don’t expect all to agree. But let’s not forget the Muslim family in Brooklyn who read us and is offended by any depiction of what he sees as his prophet. I don’t give a damn about the head of ISIS but I do care about that family and it is arrogant to ignore them."
This is not true. It’s absolutely not true that the New York Times cares one whit about the religious (or otherwise) sentiments of peaceful families in Brooklyn. If they did, they wouldn’t run so many depictions of anti-semitic caricatures in stories about anti-semitic caricatures. Or of blasphemous anti-Christian art in stories about blasphemous anti-Christian art. Or of gross ethnic and racial stereotypes in stories about gross ethnic and racial stereotypes. When the New York Times wrote about Catholic outrage over an art exhibit that featured a “black Madonna with a clump of elephant dung on breast & cutouts of genitalia,” that story featured a color photo of the art in question. Heck, it still does. Right there on the web site. 
I’ll go further. If the New York Times’ deep respect for the religious sentiments of its readers affected its news judgment, it would know what Easter is.  
She's right, I have no faith whatsoever that the Times gives a flying fig about my religious sensibilities, and I never have. Nor do I think anyone in the right mind thinks it.
In fact, I think their editorial bent, their actual policy is to deliberately goad devout conservative Christians in minor, plausibly deniable ways. (I'm counting myself as a conservative in this context.)

Oh, and follow her link about the Grey Lady's religious illiteracy, it is a hoot and a half.

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