Rock Center with Brian Williams Doing a Hatchet Job on Mormonism...

[mikey23545]

How ****ing transparent can the mainstream media be? They constantly run interference for Hussein, and savage anyone who dares speak against their anointed one...

I wonder when NBC or CBS or ABC will do an expose on Reverend Wright's anti-American diatribes in prime time?

[blaise]

"We need you to explain your Mormonism! Because of, um. Well, because!"

[petegz28]

Originally Posted by |Zach|

Wright Dominated News Coverage
May 6, 2008

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...news-coverage/

Now it’s been quantified. If you thought the news media had been giving lopsided coverage to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Senator Barack Obama’s former pastor, you would be correct.

Mr. Wright even got more exposure than Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Mr. Wright dominated 42 percent of political stories last week, from April 28 to May 4, according to a survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which uses empirical methods to analyze news coverage.

The retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago returned to the forefront of the news after making a series of public appearances during the last week in April, causing more controversy with renewed affirmation of remarks he had made in the past.

According to the survey, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama’s rival, was the central figure in 41 percent of the articles. The study regularly examines 48 news sources (15 cable television programs, 13 daily newspapers, 8 radio programs, 7 network television programs and 5 Web sites).

Mr. Wright also completely overshadowed the next-most covered campaign issue, which was the gas tax — the central topic in just 7 percent of political stories.

The dominance of Mr. Wright swelled the overall coverage of Mr. Obama, who denounced the pastor last week, to 69 percent of all political stories.

This focus left Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee, on the sidelines, with a significant presence in just 14 percent of stories.

(It may seem as if Bill Clinton was also a big topic, but he accounted for only 2.2 percent of the coverage.)

This is the second, though nonconsecutive, week in which Mr. Wright drew the lion’s share of media attention, receiving extraordinary play over an unusually lengthy period for something that started out as a side issue.

Obama supporters contend that the coverage has been self-perpetuating, particularly on cable television, where Mr. Wright’s words are replayed in an endless loop and then interpreted by pundits as a major setback to Mr. Obama. Indeed, his polling numbers have fallen since Mr. Wright gained notoriety in mid-March, when Mr. Obama moved to quell concern about his inflammatory statements and delivered a major speech on race, on March 18.

In the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll, a majority of voters said the furor over the relationship between the two had not affected their opinion of Mr. Obama, but a substantial number said it could influence voters in the fall.

During the week of March 17 to 23, the Wright-Obama story line accounted for 37 percent of the campaign stories, the survey said. That made Mr. Obama the central figure in 72 percent of political stories that week, close to the highest level of coverage of any figure during the campaign.

The only state to vote since the emergence of Mr. Wright was Pennsylvania, which was perceived as a stronghold for Mrs. Clinton anyway. She won by more than nine percentage points, but exit polls indicated weakness for Mr. Obama among white, working-class voters. The votes today in Indiana and North Carolina will be the first since Mr. Wright reignited coverage last week with a string of interviews that caused Mr. Obama to break with him entirely.

Stories last week focused on the political damage Mr. Wright had caused for Mr. Obama. Then, as often happens with such media obsessions, the narrative circled back to focus on the media itself and whether it had gone overboard.

Kenneth F. Bunting, associate publisher of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, wrote last week, “Barack Obama’s forceful denunciation and disavowal of his former pastor doesn’t change the fact that it is an irrelevant distraction entirely created by cable television pundits using out-of-context and skewed sound bites.”

Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, told CNN that voters “think that Reverend Wright has been used as an ax to destroy or diminish Senator Obama and to divide people unnecessarily, in this country, at a time when we are at war and we’re trying to get our economy back on track.”

Over all, news of the campaign accounted for 38 percent of all news coverage last week, according to the survey. The second most-covered story was the economy, at 10 percent.

Was wright in the news all the time because of his religous beliefs or his amti-ameriacn, racist statements?

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by petegz28

Was wright in the news all the time because of his religous beliefs or his amti-ameriacn, racist statements?

They will NEVER make that distinction.

[Dave Lane]

Originally Posted by Guru

I was thinking the same thing when I was flipping channels and came across NBC. Why is that even news at all.

Because it's even crazier than mainstream Christianity

[BucEyedPea]

Originally Posted by Dave Lane

Because it's even crazier than mainstream Christianity

Bigot

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

I don't care what anyone says, the Mormon religion is a little more difficult to believe than the other mainstream religions.

I don't think you can tell the difference between familiarity and believability.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by petegz28

Was wright in the news all the time because of his religous beliefs or his amti-ameriacn, racist statements?

More to the point of the thread, Wright was in the news because he made a series of public appearances and invited the coverage. Contrast that with NBC going out of it's way to run a story that some might call unflattering about Romney's religion despite the fact that Romney isn't jumping up and down saying "look at me, I'm a Mormon!".

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by Dave Lane

Because it's even crazier than mainstream Christianity

I expect this sort of thing from Dane, Direckshun, and most of the other anti-Romneys, but I would have thought you'd be more capable of detaching yourself from the bias of familiarity.

[Saulbadguy]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

I don't care what anyone says, the Mormon religion is a little more difficult to believe than the other mainstream religions.

It's the same as all the other monotheistic religions out there.

Man claims to talk to god, or an angel that acts as a mouthpiece of god.
Man gathers followers.
Man starts religion.
Sacred texts are written that have historical accounts of things that never happened.
PROFIT!!!

[Direckshun]

Originally Posted by patteeu

More to the point of the thread, Wright was in the news because he made a series of public appearances and invited the coverage. Contrast that with NBC going out of it's way to run a story that some might call unflattering about Romney's religion despite the fact that Romney isn't jumping up and down saying "look at me, I'm a Mormon!".

The goddamn America stuff wasn't a press event.

It was actively recorded and then fed to rightwing news outlets, and started the media-wide frenzy on the story.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by Direckshun

The goddamn America stuff wasn't a press event.

It was actively recorded and then fed to rightwing news outlets, and started the media-wide frenzy on the story.

The article |Zach| posted, which claimed that there was widespread media coverage of Wright during a specified period, was based on Wright making voluntary public appearances.

What you're talking about was coverage by rightwing media (e.g. Hannity), not the kind of unprompted, mainstream media coverage like the NBC hitjob in the OP.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by patteeu

The article |Zach| posted, which claimed that there was widespread media coverage of Wright during a specified period, was based on Wright making voluntary public appearances.

What you're talking about was coverage by rightwing media (e.g. Hannity), not the kind of unprompted, mainstream media coverage like the NBC hitjob in the OP.

I didn't see the report, but no one has commented on whether it was accurate. Just because you may have come away with some negative views of the Mormon church doesn't mean it was a "hitjob."

[Direckshun]

Originally Posted by patteeu

The article |Zach| posted, which claimed that there was widespread media coverage of Wright during a specified period, was based on Wright making voluntary public appearances.

What you're talking about was coverage by rightwing media (e.g. Hannity), not the kind of unprompted, mainstream media coverage like the NBC hitjob in the OP.

The conservative media drove the story into the light, that's for sure.

But it stayed there regardless due to the immense (and rightful) public interest in the subject.

To claim the media as a whole didn't bite on this subject until Wright held a press conference is just silly.

[InChiefsHell]

I'm not really comfortable with Mormonism as a religion, but I can tell you that some of the kindest, most upstanding people I've known are Mormons. Same with JW's. Nice people. I may think their religion is wrong or even batshit crazy, but I don't understand how Romney's Mormonism somehow makes him un-Presidential. I didn't get it when the Republicans went after him in the primaries (the constituents anyway).

Meh. Mormonism is another religion that people don't know much about, me included. For me, I don't give a rats ass.

[patteeu]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

I didn't see the report, but no one has commented on whether it was accurate. Just because you may have come away with some negative views of the Mormon church doesn't mean it was a "hitjob."

I'm sure it was accurate, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a hit job. And I don't have any negative views of Mormons or their church. Quite the opposite.

My understanding is that the NBC treatment involved finding a woman who had a relationship with a Mormon man and that elders from his church discouraged him from continuing the relationship by suggesting that if he were to marry her his marriage wouldn't be blessed (in the eyes of his church) and if they were to have children together their children wouldn't be blessed. It doesn't sound much different, in essence, than the way several other religions encourage marriages and child-rearing to be done according to their own beliefs. But depending on how the story is told and depending on who you get to tell it (in this case, the woman who apparently had a bit of an ax to grind), it becomes a hit job.