The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

How Anti-Christian Bias in #FakeNews Media Is Encouraging Anti-Semitism

Posted on | January 27, 2019 | 1 Comment

 

This is a topic I am reluctant to write about, but in the wake of the Covington Catholic school story, the elephant in the room is now so large that it is more dangerous to ignore it than to mention it:

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.” . . .
You probably won’t be surprised to learn . . . 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. . . .
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.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit via Hogewash.)

Wow. That’s what they call a “bad look,” Dan Levin.

Or perhaps as some would say, it’s a shanda fur die goyim.

As David Harsanyi says, the anti-Christian bias of the New York Times has long been notorious, and this bias is transparently partisan: The Times has always been a propaganda organ of the Democrat Party and, ever since the 1980s, when the so-called “religious Right” was identified as a core constituency of the Reagan coalition, attacking Christianity has become a more or less regular “beat” in Times coverage.

Understanding this as a partisan bias is important. Whenever religion can be used as an issue in favor of Democrats, we find the liberal media singing from the same hymnal, so to speak. When John F. Kennedy’s Catholic faith became an issue in the 1960 campaign, the New York Times became more ardently Catholic than the Pope. When the Southern Baptist Jimmy Carter was the Democrat presidential candidate, the New York Times coverage was almost evangelical in its endorsement. Over and over, we can see it is the partisan political value of religion that dictates how the topic is covered in the New York Times — anything that helps Democrats is good, anything that helps Republicans is bad.

This partisan explanation of why the New York Times hates Christians is important to understand, because otherwise people might notice a name like Dan Levin and then point at the paper’s masthead — nudge, nudge, wink, wink — and you had better believe that this has been happening since the Covington Catholic fiasco. How is it, as David Harsanyi points out, that a New York Times reporter is seeking to “expose” Christian schools while at the same time his newspaper is giving softball coverage to a bizarre racialist cult like the Black Hebrew Israelites? Doesn’t such obvious bias lend credence to hateful stereotypes and conspiracy theories about Jewish influence? As a conservative Christian who is the exact opposite of an anti-Semite, I get tired of dealing with the anti-Semitic comments that crop up online whenever one of (((those names))) features prominently in a story about media bias.

Why Are Jews Liberals? the late Norman Podhoretz asked in a 2010 book that ought to be required reading in political science classes. Anyone can look at the exit poll numbers. In 2004, for example, Democrat John Kerry got 74% of the Jewish vote, which was more than his percentage of union members (61%) or Latino voters (53%).

That Jews voted 3-to-1 against Bush, who had invaded Iraq to crush the Jew-hating dictator Saddam Hussein, should have aroused critical scrutiny from the media, but for (((some reason))) it didn’t. Instead, the media were so blatant in their partisan loyalty to the Democrats that their negative coverage of the Bush administration lent credence to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about “Zionist” neoconservatives.

Am I the only one who sees the feedback loop at work here?

  1. A majority of Jews are Democrats;
  2. Many Jews have prominent positions in the news media;
  3. The allegedly “objective” media are in fact dishonest partisans, consistently promoting pro-Democrat messages;
  4. Republican voters express resentment of the media’s dishonest propaganda;
    and
  5. The media then cite these complaints about bias as proof of Republican anti-Semitism.

Isn’t it obvious, in such a situation, that assigning (((Dan Levin))) to “expose” Christian schools was a very bad idea? And what I fear most is that this feedback-loop effect could create a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. The media uses accusations of anti-Semitism to justify their blind fanatical hatred of Trump, and this might actually (a) increase the partisan skew toward Democrats among Jewish voters while at the same time (b) encouraging avowed anti-Semites to support Trump, and then (c) lather, rinse, repeat with potentially dangerous consequences.

Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) seem to believe that there is no downside to their divisive identity-politics game, so that even if there is some kind of backlash, they’ll be able to exploit this to their advantage, and never mind if innocent people actually get hurt. The media have recently tried to play victim — “Orange Man Bad!” — with CNN’s Jim Acosta actually getting a contract to write a book about how that evil bully Donald Trump is mean to famous millionaire TV reporters. So it can be expected that this media victimhood narrative will be merged with the “Republicans hate Jews” theme to create a new message: Criticism of liberal media bias is an anti-Semitic “dog whistle.”

Meanwhile, of course, Dan Levin will “expose” Christian schools and if you dare mention the hateful bias involved, you’re literally Hitler.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!



 

Category: Media Bias, New York Times, Religion

Comments

One Response to “How Anti-Christian Bias in #FakeNews Media Is Encouraging Anti-Semitism”

  1. Zombie Apocalypse: It Is NOT Our Imagination | The Universal Spectator
    January 28th, 2019 @ 3:42 pm

    […] TOMcC: How Anti-Christian Bias in #FakeNews Media Is Encouraging Anti-Semitism […]