NPR and coverage of religion

Back in mid-March, it transpired that Jack Kelley, a senior reporter at USA Today, had spent much of the last decade just plain making shit up. One of the reasons that Kelley got away it for so long, according to his supervisors and co-workers, is that as an outspoken self-described Christian, people just assumed that he wouldn't constantly lie about pretty much everything. Kelley has been fired and two of his editors, including one who has been at USA Today since it was founded, have resigned.

When the Jack Kelley scandal broke, Atrios poked around. He discovered that Kelley was associated with the World Journalism Institute, which can charitably be described as a cabal of right-wing Christian journalists who support each other in their efforts to make sure that only right-wing causes are described as "religious". Or, in their words:

The practical need for Christian worldview journalists in our contemporary society is self-evident, but to simply note the obvious, there is the urgent need to provide journalistic "salt" and "light" and "leaven" within the mainstream media as a manifestation of our Christian obligation to lovingly model justice to our society.

For decades, WJI's parent corporation, God's World Publications, has stood against the cultural, intellectual, and spiritual degradation of our society. GWP has placed its focus on reporting from a unapologetic Christian point of view.

The WJI was founded by Marvin Olasky, the Bush policy advisor who came up with the "compassionate conservatism" slogan and the entire "department of faith-based works" approach to Rethuglican charity.

As Atrios notes:

Anyway, I could spend hours having fun with this I'm sure. And, maybe I will. But, at a time when the New York Times has fired a stringer reporter simply because he had worked as an AIDS awareness activist, and the San Francisco chronicle has forbidden two reporters from having anything to do with covering the same-sex marriage story because they got married, I'm a bit confused (And not, sadly, surprised), that a substantial number of reporters doing the religious beat are associated with an explicitly pro-religion pro-conservative Christian organization.

And then elaborates:

Of course, the point isn't that I think all journalists need to be secular. But, this is an organization dedicated to training journalists to push a particular conservative Christian agenda from within mainstream news organizations, and many of their people are covering religion and social issues in top organizations. Including that liberal NPR. From my first pass look at some of the kinds of stories these people crank out, it seems they're quite good at creating fairly innocuous pieces which aren't obviously slanted propaganda, but which inevitably do push the position and emphasize the things you would expect.

The WJI member that Atrios found at NPR is Barbara Bradley Haggerty, who reports on religious, social, and moral issues for the main newsprograms (Morning Edition and All Things Considered).

Yesterday (Friday, April 30), Haggerty had a long piece on Morning Edition which basically boiled down to "moral people are Republicans who oppose abortion, and John Kerry doesn't appeal to moral, religious people". Except that if it had been that overt, NPR would have known not to run it; instead, the article points that way steadily through indirect suggestion, misdirection, sample bias, and innuendo. Atrios annotated a transcript of the piece, which is well worth your time.

I deeply resent the way that in the modern political discourse, "religion" is in the sole custody of the reactionary right-wing, and I want to see the people who promote this false discourse called out on it.

After you're done reading Atrios, I suggest that you might want to let NPR's ombudsman know how you feel about all this. Jeffrey Dvorkin, the NPR ombudsman, can be reached by e-mail at ombudsman@npr.org. A thoughtful, reasoned letter to Mr. Dvorkin expressing your dismay that such an openly biased reporter is NPR's senior voice on religious issues would not be at all out of place, I think.

Pet health: Unexpected adventures

I got home from gaming last night at around 2:30 AM. (A little later than usual, but the gaming was held in Bohemia, Long Island, about 20 miles further east than its usual venues in Seaford, Wantagh, or East Meadow.) I was dead tired as I made the rounds of tucking in the pets for the night, and thus totally unprepared to find Aimee Semple sitting on a shelf in her cage wheezing horribly and unceasingly. I woke nellorat and we decided that I should immediately take Aimee to the animal hospital in Manhattan. Traffic was, refreshingly, very light and I made it there in about half an hour, and was seen immediately. Of course, by the laws of how these things work, Aimee was sounding much better by the time we reached the hospital. According to the doctor, she did not have any signs of pneumonia or other lung involvement; the problem seems to be purely upper-respiratory. The doctor I saw was not an exotics specialist, but she felt that it was safe to take Aimee home and bring her to our regular vet today.

I gave Aimee some chocolate and some zithromax--the former is a broncodilator, and the latter a powerful antibiotic--when I got home, and took her in this morning. Our local doctor confirmed the original diagnosis, and said we should put Aimee on zithro for five days, tops.

So, a rat adventure which didn't end horribly; it wasn't even all that expensive, since the emergency vet didn't charge us for the five-minute exam and we already have zithro on hand for Pluto, who is still fighting off a more serious infection. I would very much like to have gotten more than five hours' sleep overnight, but these are the sacrifices one makes as a parent.

Rat footnote: In Bohemia, I got to visit Eleanor Rattsevelt, now re-named "Shadow", sister of two of our dear rat boys. (benderelle, this is the rat you originally name "Gerbil".)She is doing very well indeed. She's still small--smaller than either of her brothers--but obviously healthy, and very active and bright-eyed and energetic. Her human companion loves her very much.

Courageous update: The one-pill-a-day prednisone regimen seems to be working well; kitty has shown no signs of depressed appetite or mouth pain since we stabilized her at this dose a week ago. And we can keep her at this level indefinitely. She's enjoying being able to wander (supervised) outside, though even when the porch door is open, she's just as likely to sun herself inside as out.