Thursday, January 07, 2010

More on why journalism is failing

David Blevins, a former Washington correspondent for Sky News, was asked in 2008 whether the media in America and the UK understands "evangelical Christians," [note, in Britain, the term "evangelical Christians" functions as a euphemism for "believing" Christians, since the "mainstream" Christians like Catholics and Anglicans don't actually believe anything,] he said:
“Not at all. It’s important to remember that what appears in the newspapers is not an objective summary of the significant things that happened yesterday but an ideological selection based on the prejudices, agendas and assumptions of a relatively small group of people. Their ideology could be loosely defined as ‘progress will one day meet our needs.’ So as with other forms of thought that deviate from that ideological view, evangelical Christianity is either dismissed out of hand or reported in a manner that serves to reinforce the ideology!


Journalists hate Christianity. Most people who read newspapers and magazines and watch TV news are Christians. Ergo: journalists are failing to communicate intelligently to their audience (ie: their customers, the people who pay their expense accounts).

It's not that hard to figure out why the internet has killed even things as old, huge and fleshy as the New York Times.

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