Most polling data suggest that the Wright controversy has not damaged Sen. Obama’s presidential bid. But Harold Ickes, a senior advisor to Sen. Hillary Clinton, his competitor for the Democratic Party nomination, is quoted as saying that the Clinton campaign would use it as a way of persuading Party insiders – known as Super-Delegates – that Obama is not electable.
Meanwhile, theologians in Texas expressed support for Wright at a symposium last weekend on the “State of Black Church.” Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, associate professor of ethics and director of black church studies at the Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, said, ""What is eminently clear is the degree to which the black church is still largely misunderstood and routinely caricatured in U.S. popular culture.”
She added, “If Wright is guilty of anything, (he is) guilty of loving the U.S. enough to tell the United States the truth. Patriots and prophets are "often called to speak harsh words to their nation, not out of a place of hatred, as some suggest, but from an impassioned place of profound love and the highest of expectations.” Wright is a former member of the U.S. Marine Corps.
In contrast to the Wright/Obama furor, criticism of right-wing clergy has been muted or non-existent.
For example, Mike Huckabee, a former candidate for the Republican nomination for president, has said, "I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives...I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ." Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, is a former governor of Arkansas.
Also attracting little attention in the U.S. mainstream press are endorsements by prominent conservative clergymen of the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
One of them, Rev. John Hagee, has said Roman Catholicism is ‘A Godless theology of hate that no one dared try to stop for a thousand years.” He said that the Catholic religion has “produced a harvest of hate.” Hagee has confirmed that McCain sought his endorsement. McCain has said he was proud to have Hagee’s support.
Another prominent McCain supporter, Rev. Rod Parsley, has said, “America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion (Islam) destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.”
There has been an avalanche of criticism of “citizen journalism” on the Internet – and much of it is true. The Web can be a fact-free zone. It is home to myriad inaccuracies and conspiracy theories about just about any subject you care to name. Professional journalists use Web sources at their peril – and most don’t, at least not without checking the credibility of their sources and the truth of the cyberfacts.
Citizen journalism has always been with us, but the Internet has magnified it by an order of magnitude and increased its decibel level to a shrill shriek. How it will ultimately evolve is anyone’s guess.
That’s the Web. But how should we explain the irresponsible reporting of much of the mainstream media – especially the TV cable news channels? The people who earn their living there are supposed to be professionals. They are supposed to care as much about getting the story right as they do about getting it first. Yet this is clearly not happening.
Even if we’re willing to give a free pass to Fox News – which I don’t consider to be a news outlet in the first place – are we just supposed to forget that channels like CNN and MSNBC, to say nothing of the broadcast networks, have an enormous and growing influence on public perceptions and people’s attitudes and convictions?
I understand that they have a gigantic news hole to fill. And they need to fill it 24/7, which is not easy. Yet their poor performance can’t be attributed to lack of resources – after all, they are all owned by corporate giants. It is difficult to reach any conclusion other than that they care a lot more about ratings and profits than about accuracy.
And even when they get the facts right, they consistently miss the part of the story that every conscientious journalist knows is just as important: Context. Without it, we may be able to understand what happened, but we’ll never understand why it happened.
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