NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
On Friday, I posted about my experiences at the 40th annual March for Life. In the comments, folks discussed media coverage. I was busy all weekend with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod's Life Conference (which was a huge success!) but I finally got around to surveying media coverage last night. I'm required to do this for my job at GetReligion, a site that analyzes how well religion news is handled by the mainstream media.
I've been doing this media criticism for seven or eight years, so I'm pretty jaded at this point. And yet what I discovered in how the New York Times covered the March for Life shocked and greatly disappointed me.
I'm sure the Times has covered the march at some point in the past, but it hasn't in recent years. Surprisingly, they did cover it this time around. But in a larger and more prominent story, we got the piece headlined “In Fight Over Life, a New Call by Catholics.”
The March for Life in Washington on Friday renewed the annual impassioned call to end legalized abortion, 40 years after the Roe v. Wade decision. But this year, some Roman Catholic leaders and theologians are asking why so many of those who call themselves “pro-life” have been silent, or even opposed, when it comes to controlling the guns that have been used to kill and injure millions of Americans.
More than 60 Catholic priests, nuns, scholars and two former ambassadors to the Vatican sent a letter this week saying that if marchers and politicians truly want to defend life they should support “common-sense reforms to address the epidemic of gun violence in our nation.”
A caption for the piece reads:
Anti-abortion protesters flooded the National Mall in Washington on Friday for the annual March for Life. Many Catholic leaders and theologians are asking why many of those who call themselves ‘pro-life’ have been silent when it comes to gun control.
I have -- how to put it? -- gone to town on this piece over at GetReligion ("Savvy PR firm scores NYTimes coup against Life March"). You can -- and should! -- read my whole take there but let me summarize some of what appalls me.
You’ll notice that marchers are only called “pro-life” in a scare-quotey sense to cast skepticism on their claims. You might wonder if the Times broke precedent to cover the massive march so as to be able to criticize it with this more prominent story.
It turns out that this piece is basically just a press release from the same savvy, highly funded PR firm that has been providing cover for Obama via similar stunts for the last year (I assume for more than a year, but I only really got hip to it in the last year).
The group is called Faith in Public Life. They’re the ones who came up with the highly successful “Nuns on the Bus” tour that got embarrassingly uncritical coverage for an anti-Paul Ryan campaign featuring not one, not two, but as many as three to four nuns. The media literally (in the Biden sense, not the actual sense) could not have given them more (or more favorable) coverage. Even while ignoring massive events such as the 5,000+ Catholics packed into a Mass to pray for religious liberty last summer.
Would it surprise you to know that this group is funded by George Soros?
Would it surprise you to know that the same group that ran the highly political Nuns on the Bus stunt simultaneously ran the anti-Catholic bishops campaign that accused them of being too political for caring about religious liberty?
That they ran both of these campaign simultaneously is sort of a testament to their chutzpah and skill but much more a blistering and depressing commentary on the state of journalism today.
From my piece:
Here’s the press release from Faith in Public Life. Here’s the New York Times story. If you squint, you might not even be able to tell the difference. ...
Now, if I were presented a press release trying to steal the news cycle from a massive number of human rights activists, I might ask some questions. For instance, I’d try to ascertain their history of involvement with the March for Life. Are they participants? What are the names and sizes of the pro-life groups they led to the march this year? How are they traveling to the march? Are they, as so many others do, renting buses and vans and driving through the night? Don’t tell me they’re not actually in attendance. Did any of the signatories come?
I didn’t recognize any of the signatories as leaders in the pro-life movement but, then again, the pro-life movement is massive. I did recognize some of the names as people who are known for working for liberal causes unrelated to pro-life advocacy. I noticed some of the names are linked to Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which, on Facebook, was very excited about the favorable coverage the press release received in the New York Times. And yet I found no mention of pro-life advocacy or even a statement — much less a clear or strong statement — against abortion on that same Facebook page.
Wait, there’s more. I even found some strong statements critical of pro-life stances! It was almost like exactly the people you wouldn’t want signing a statement such as this … if you were going for something more than a quick and dirty stunt that wouldn’t receive even a slightly critical look before running in the most important newspaper in the country.
So what are some of their tangible, major accomplishments in defense of unborn life? How are they perceived — in terms of defense of the unborn — by pro-life activists who are marking 40 years of speaking against the regime that allows any and all unborn children to be killed throughout the pregnancy? In other words, why would people outside of a New York Times newsroom in general and among the marchers in particular, find their argument compelling and appropriate on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade?
I go on. I know that we all know that the media have some bias problems to work on. But even for the New York Times, this is pretty New York Times, no?
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Sep '10
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
That's ok I suggest calling them the "New" York Times from now on and in any and all stories discussing anything they have written, now or will ever write.
May '11
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
sigh... And a happy Monday morning to you, too, Mollie.
(actually, as depressing as that is, I am starting to get used to it)
Feb '11
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
They don't care what you think.
Apr '11
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
The last decade or so, the media has ceased the attempt to appear balanced. They've now fully committed themselves as propaganda outlets for Pres. Obama and the Democratic Party.
I think I grow more concerned for the nation on a daily basis now.
May '10
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
"NYTimes Falls For..." implies they were somehow duped.
"NY Times coordinates pro-abortion pro-gun control propaganda with Soros-funded PR agency" might be closer to the mark.
May '11
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
Falls for? Or conspires with?
Mar '11
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
This is about as surprising as snow melting in the spring. I can't even get mad over it anymore. It's simply the beast doing what the beast does.
Second, I would suggest that your anger should be more appropriately targeted not at the NY Times or George Soros, but at that segment of the Catholic Church that has never given up the dream of liberation theology and an effectively Marxist-Secular church that builds Heaven on Earth instead of preparing for the Kingdom to come.
May '10
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
We have our facts and they have theirs. Before we have another "national conversation", let's wait for reality to kick them in the face.
Nov '11
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
Unfortunately, it's not just a "segment" of the Catholic Church that embraces statist politics.
The Church's official position is that "handguns should be eliminated from our society," which is an anti-life position: The right of an individual to defend and to preserve his own life is a pro-life position. Soros is able to "hijack" a pro-life event because the Church's positions on abortion and gun control indeed are contradictory.
The Church is similarly self-contradictory on economic issues affecting the poor. Perhaps because of concern about "materialism," which the Church has wrongly associated with capitalism, the Church has never gotten things right when it comes to individual freedom and free market economies. It overemphasizes and overglorifies the Mother Teresa alms-collecting redistributionist approach (which keeps the poor dependent on the church and the government), without fully acknowledging how individual economic independence in a free-market economy "liberates" the soul.
The Church should seriously ask itself whether the Church itself "exploits" the poor.
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
Nick Stuart: "NYTimes Falls For..." implies they were somehow duped.
"NY Times coordinates pro-abortion pro-gun control propaganda with Soros-funded PR agency" might be closer to the mark. · 1 hour ago
Amen.
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
Astonishing
Unfortunately, it's not just a "segment" of the Catholic Church that embraces statist politics.
The Church's official position is that "handguns should be eliminated from our society," which is an anti-life position: The right of an individual to defend and to preserve his own life is a pro-life position. Soros is able to "hijack" a pro-life event because the Church's positions on abortion and gun control indeed are contradictory.· 11 minutes ago
Alas, yet another sign of the imprudence of today's Catholic clergy. They tend to mistake the state for a totalizing moral community and to suppose that the state is their friend.
Sep '10
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
If you read that story carefully, you'll see that there is no "official position", so they had to dredge a footnote from some hacky sack document produced by one of the numerous hand waving, chin stroking USCCB "committees" to come up with the Church's "official" position.
I hope the deep sea diver they sent down to pull up this fool's gold didn't develop air bubbles in his bloodstream from his rapid assent to the NYT position on gun control. Its dark down there and -- without proper lighting -- it could be a deep sea cucumber.
This is analogous to going through Ricochet's thousands of comments and finding one that agrees with your particular point of view, nailing it to the masthead and announcing it as the "official" Ricochet position.
Must be Monday.
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
Pseudodionysius
If you read that story carefully, you'll see that there is no "official position", so they had to dredge a footnote from some hacky sack document produced by one of the numerous hand waving, chin stroking USCCB "committees" to come up with the Church's "official" position. . . .
This is analogous to going through Ricochet's thousands of comments and finding one that agrees with your particular point of view, nailing it to the masthead and announcing it as the "official" Ricochet position.
Must be Monday. · 2 minutes ago
The trouble is that nation's bishops have allowed these committees to speak for them. Has a single bishop spoken up to repudiate the stand of the pertinent committee?
Nov '11
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
Unfortunately, when reality kicks, Obama will explain (again!) that it is a conservative foot in a GOP boot doing the kicking. This explanation can work well enough and be believed long enough, until the state acquires such power that an explanation, as such, is no longer necessary.
Eventually, when no one believes the explanation and when everyone understands the explanation is quite ludicrous, the explanation is still given, not as a political expedient, but as a an expression of state power, by making manifest to all that the state so thoroughly dominates the will of the individual that every indivdual says the ludicrous explanation is true, when everyone knows that everyone without exception believes otherwise.
Sep '10
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
Paul A. Rahe
The trouble is that nation's bishops have allowed these committees to speak for them. Has a single bishop spoken up to repudiate the stand of the pertinent committee? · 4 minutes ago
Based on several of the cleric bloggers I follow, I'm just viewing several recent smartphone pictures of them blasting targets at a shooting range as they attempt to get a concealed carry permit. I think this kind of Footnote Fidelium Alternative Magisterium dies a death of obscurity that befits the amount of thought that went into it.
Nov '11
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
Pseudodionysius
If you read that story carefully, you'll see that there is no "official position", so they had to dredge a footnote from some hacky sack document produced by one of the numerous hand waving, chin stroking USCCB "committees" to come up with the Church's "official" position.
. . .
This is analogous to going through Ricochet's thousands of comments and finding one that agrees with your particular point of view, nailing it to the masthead and announcing it as the "official" Ricochet position.
That's such a lame dodge.
It's not a matter of one stray comment among the rank and file.
It's multiple statements by official church bodies, official church spokemen (including the "Voice of the Pope") never directly contradicted by any other official body, never disputed by the Pope.
Sep '10
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
Astonishing
. . .
This is analogous to going through Ricochet's thousands of comments and finding one that agrees with your particular point of view, nailing it to the masthead and announcing it as the "official" Ricochet position.
That's such a lame dodge.
It's not a matter of one stray comment among the rank and file.
It's multiple statements by official church bodies, official church spokemen (including the "Voice of the Pope") never directly contradicted by any other official body, never disputed by the Pope. · 1 minute ago
During the Iran-Iraq war, there were lots of heavy breathing statements saying that "the Pope condemns US action" and during the Reagan administration, the USCCB released multiple documents condemning US defense measures, various welfare reform measures, etc etc.
Traditional teaching on just war doctrine, the right to self defense etc still existed and were left to the prudential judgement of the individuals responsible for making those decisions.
I don't see where this is terribly different.
Jan '11
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
Paul A. Rahe
The trouble is that nation's bishops have allowed these committees to speak for them. Has a single bishop spoken up to repudiate the stand of the pertinent committee?
No more than the Republican Party "allowed" Todd Akin to speak for them.
What we have is a predatory press who specialize in latching onto whatever they can, magnify it out of proportion, and then present it as their enemies' "official" position.
The problem is that the tarring brush only works on conservatives. They never tar Democrats with the rantings of their own lunatics.
The press is Wormtongue.
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
KC Mulville
Paul A. Rahe
The trouble is that nation's bishops have allowed these committees to speak for them. Has a single bishop spoken up to repudiate the stand of the pertinent committee?
No more than the Republican Party "allowed" Todd Akin to speak for them.
What we have is a predatory press who specialize in latching onto whatever they can, magnify it out of proportion, and then present it as their enemies' "official" position.
The problem is that the tarring brush only works on conservatives. They never tar Democrats with the rantings of their own lunatics.
The press is Wormtongue. · 15 minutes ago
You are no doubt right about the press. But the USCCB and its committees speak for the American hierarchy, and the bishops have conferred on the loons in their number control of the crucial committees. Todd Akin was shot down by his fellow Republicans. Has a single bishop disavowed the statements made on their behalf by the pertinent USCCB committees?
Think about it.
Sep '10
Re: NYTimes Falls For Soros Group's PR Stunt Against Pro-Lifers
The core problem is that it is individual Bishops who have authority in their diocese and archdiocese not their national conferences. National committees are notorious all over the world for creating wonky documents not only on matters they have no competence in but even in matters they are supposed to.