Exposing the Times’ anti-Christian bias
Modal Trigger
Shutterstock
It’s rare to see a major media outlet be so honest about its ideological bias. But yet there was New York Times reporter Dan Levin on Twitter the other day, openly soliciting negative stories about Christian schools. “I’m a New York Times reporter writing about #exposechristianschools,” Levin tweeted, “Are you in your 20s or younger who went to a Christian school? I’d like to hear about your experience and its impact on your life. Please DM me.”
The Times reporting was no doubt provoked by a now-infamous episode in which a group of boys from the Covington Catholic school in Kentucky were smeared by an online mob set off by mainstream media. At first, most outlets ran with a story of a fabulist American Indian activist named Nathan Phillips, who had falsely accused the MAGA hat-wearing kids attending the March for Life of ganging up and bullying him.
Videos, as most folks now know, later showed that it had been the teens who had to deal with a torrent of racist insults from Black Hebrew Israelites and who had been confronted by Phillips.
As it turns out, the teens had exhibited a great deal of self-control for boys their age. Maybe more parents should be sending their kids to Christian schools.
On a broader level, the recklessness of the media had, once again, needlessly stoked national division. On another level, it had tangibly damaged the lives of a bunch of kids and parents for no reason.
What it didn’t do is encourage any genuine self-evaluation. Rather than simply admitting their mistake, the media decided to recast the entire incident as a learning experience for the people they had victimized.
And yet another way to muddy the story would be to cobble together another unscientific piece highlighting the horrors of a Catholic education.
It would take a saint-like leap of faith to believe that Levin, as he later claimed, was merely looking for an array of stories related to Christian schools. Anyone who’s ever worked as a journalist can tell you that “exposing” someone does not typically — or perhaps, ever — entail the pursuit of positive stories.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn, then, that the #exposechristianschools hashtag Levin used did not initially go viral because Twitter users were anxious to share their enriching experiences in Christian-based educational institutions. The tag was predominately used to dox and smear the Covington Catholic School kids.
In this regard, the effort was successful. Users unearthed pictures of the kids flashing white supremacist hand signals (they turned out to be just a universal sign for three-point basketball shots), dressing in blackface (it turned out the school had “black out” games and “white out” games for fans of the sports team) and the banning of a gay valedictorian’s speech (it turned out that openly gay boy had both handed his speech in late and broken school rules about political rhetoric.)
The New York Times’ long history of prejudicial coverage of religious Christians should cement your skepticism about its intentions. Even while the newspaper was rifling through Twitter looking for people who had been damaged by a traditional Christian education, it was running a fawning profile on the overtly racist and anti-Semitic “Black Hebrew Israelites.” The piece opens with the line: “They are sidewalk ministers who use confrontation as their gospel.”
Christian schools, of course, irritate the sensibilities of contemporary Democrats for a number of reasons. It’s not only that students who attend them are often saved from the leftist cultural and political indoctrination, but also that the very existence of parochial schools, private schools and home schooling undermines their institutional political monopoly.
The New York Times, for example, was one of many outlets that negatively reported that Second Lady Karen Pence had recently begun teaching at a private school that adhered to the Christian doctrine of her church.
Editors at The Washington Post and other large outlets incredulously wondered how Christian schools that still embraced traditional social values could even “happen” in contemporary American society.
On the bright side, like Levin, at least they were honest.
No comments:
Post a Comment