Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

According to a new book from a professor at UCLA, the media's left-wing bias is so overwhelming and pervasive that the few balanced news outlets appear to have a conservative slant.

"It's like concluding that six-three is short just because it is short compared to professional basketball players," writes Professor Tim Groseclose. He asserts that by a neutral standard, Fox News and the Drudge Report are centrist, with perhaps even a minor left-wing tilt -- but due to the steep liberal bias of every other major outlet, "commentators mistake relative bias for absolute bias." From the article:

Groseclose opens his book quoting a well-known poll in which Washington correspondents declared that they vote Democratic 93 percent to 7 percent, while the nation is split about 50-50. As a result, he says, most reporters write with a liberal filter. "Using objective, social-scientific methods, the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass—a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see."

If the liberal media tends to "shrink" conservative facts, this is true to a still more extreme degree with anything concerning religion. The Deseret News, the commercial paper of the Mormon Church, recently published a two-part series on news coverage of religion -- or the lack thereof. Journalists not only tend to be much more liberal, but much less religious, then the American population.

A 2002 survey (the most recent data available) of 1,149 randomly selected journalists conducted by the Indiana University found that 34 percent of journalists say they have no religious affiliation, compared with 13 percent among the general population who said the same in a 2002 Pew Research Center survey.

The journalists were also asked how important religion or religious beliefs were to them. Roughly a third (35 percent) said they were “very important.” By comparison, the figure among the general population, as measured that same year by Gallup, was nearly double at 61 percent.

It's not just stories about religion, but stories with a religious component, that are given short shrift if not ignored entirely. The religious angle of a news story is likely to be ignored, even when it is obvious:

“Journalists are afraid of religion not because they don’t understand it’s a big part of the story, but because it can be so contentious, especially when it’s a situation they haven’t been exposed to,” said Elizabeth Tenety, editor of The Washington Post’s On Faith forum. “It feels like a landmine, and when they have so much else to report on the story, it’s easy to say, ‘I’m on a deadline. This is relevant, but I don’t have time to get to it.’ ”

While I agree with the Deseret News about the ignorance, they do not give adequate coverage to the issue of bias, which is certainly as present with religion as it is with politics. Let me start with an example.

Recently, the Yediot Acharonot published a story that the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court (for financial matters) had sentenced a dog to stoning. It wandered into the court building, and one of the judges recalled that they had cursed a secular lawyer, one known to fight against the court over religious issues, that he be reincarnated as a dog. The judges concluded that this was in fact the very dog bearing the reincarnated spirit of the lawyer, and that local children should stone the dog to death.

The only true element of the story is that a dog did, in fact, walk into the Rabbinical Court building.

Every other line of the story, from beginning to end, was fiction -- and only a fool would call it an innocent mistake. There was no secular lawyer. He didn't exist, so, needless to say, he was not cursed to be reincarnated as a dog. The judges did not say that the dog should be stoned, and they certainly did not say that children should deliver the punishment. Ma'ariv quoted Chief Justice Yehoshua Levin in its retraction, translated by HonestReporting:

“There is no basis for the abuse of an animal, neither from the Halacha nor common sense.”

If ignorance was the only factor at work, then this was an ideal story to ignore. A trivial tale of antiquated rabbis demonstrating cruelty to animals is hardly worthy of being called "news" -- or is it? Apparently, not only other Israeli papers, but the AFP, BBC, Daily Telegraph, Time Magazine and others all thought this worthy of international news coverage. Drudge Report linked to it, and readers lapped it up [pardon the pun], making the BBC story the most shared item of the day. The BBC admitted, "We should never have written the article and apologise for any offence caused."

The underlying problem is not the simple publication of an obviously false story. It is that the reporters were so ignorant in matters religious, especially with regards to Orthodox Judaism, that they found the story even remotely believable. It is, further, that no one bothered to fact check with an Orthodox Rabbi. There are tens of thousands of Orthodox rabbis, not one of whom seems to be reachable when it comes time to fact check a story like this.

The people most injured by this sort of "news coverage," which trumpets the real and imagined misdeeds of any religious person or organization while ignoring or sidelining much more typical acts of selfless generosity and spiritual greatness, are those who know no better than the journalists who so poorly serve them.

The Mishpacha magazine of June 15 included a feature story on Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of the Kosel, the Western Wall. His father, Rav Chaim Yehuda Rabinowitz, is Chief Justice of the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court. He gave an example of the incredible damage done by negative coverage:

"Let me give you an example. An elderly couple came to Beis Din[Religious Court] asking for a divorce. It turns out they had been separated for seven years. After a long, drawn-out conflict in the secular courts, they decided to come to Beis Din. The husband, however, did not want a divorce. Yet after analyzing the case thoroughly, the dayanim finally ruled that he was required to grant one. Then I asked the wife why she had waited seven years to come to us. She replied, "Because of the public image of a Beis Din in the secular world!"

After the get was concluded, the couple admitted that their perception of Beis Din had changed. A case that had been drawn out in secular court for seven years was resolved in a single day! The woman was in shock. "Why didn't we know about you?" she asked. "This didn't cost us a single shekel, but the courts wiped us out. We spent all our resources on lawyers who squeezed the last cent out of us over seven years."

It should be noted that Rav Levin, speaking to a religious journalist for a religious magazine, was introspective, using this story to underscore the importance of being careful in word and deed because "the way the dayan [judge] behaves will determine how they perceive Orthodox Jews... if one person acts improperly, all of traditionally Orthodox Jewry is blamed for it, so the individual responsibility is great."

The same weekend this story appeared, so did the fictional account accusing the same Jerusalem Rabbinical Courts of gratuitous animal cruelty, and encouraging it on the part of children, as well. Sometimes, nothing but an individual's twisted imagination is required to further color the false picture delivered by the media.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Nearly half of evangelical leaders want to see Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty win the Republican nomination for president in 2012, according to a poll of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Asked whom they would name the GOP nominee, 45 percent of the leaders said Pawlenty, the association reported Thursday. Fourteen percent said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney; Twenty-two percent were undecided.

Pawlenty met with the association’s board of directors in 2008.

“Tim and Mary are devoted followers of Jesus, bright, articulate, a proven record and have none of the negatives of the other candidates,” said George Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God.

The National Association of Evangelicals posed the question in the June edition of the Evangelical Leaders Survey, its monthly poll of “CEOs of denominations and representatives of a broad array of evangelical organizations including missions, universities, publishers and churches.”

The association asked: “Assuming Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate, if you were to choose a preferred Republican presidential candidate for 2012, who would you name?”

Association President Leith Anderson said Pawlenty’s popularity “might be expected since he is so often identified as an evangelical.”

“Like the rest of the nation, there are still many undecided,” Anderson said. “With more than a year before the national nominating conventions, a lot can change.”

Romney is a Mormon. The association said none of the evangelical leaders polled mentioned Romney’s religious beliefs as a reason for naming another candidate.

“He has the executive experience, business background, moral principles, and electability to become the next President of the United States,” said Ron Boehme, Director of Youth With A Mission, U.S. Renewal.

Four years ago, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was the top choice of leaders polled by the association.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

The good citizens of San Francisco have managed to tear themselves away from a crippling state budget crisis long enough to place a ballot measure outlawing circumcision. Being represented by Nancy Pelosi would unbalance me, too, so I don't want to be too judgmental.

Nah, I do.

What is at stake here is nothing less than the choice between the French and American visions of the social good. Liberté or liberty, sometimes the choice is clear. In San Francisco it couldn't be any clearer.

Our revolutions took place within a stone's throw of one another, chronologically. But while the French sought to institute a creedal secularism, we set out a constitutional vision of church protected from state, and vice versa. Our experiment was a lot less bloody, and a lot more successful.

Fast forward to today and in France Muslim girls are prohibited from covering their heads in school. This approach reflects an understanding of secularism as a militant opposition to religion, a strict requirement of conformity to prescribed standards however much said conformity might violate the consciences of citizens.

When our founding fathers pointed us toward a novus ordo seclorum, they had in mind a worldliness that allowed a variety of religious movements to express themselves in virtually any way that wouldn't impinge upon others. So while we don't allow the recreational use of peyote our society allows it as an expression of Native American religious observance. We'll make you take off the veil for your driver's license picture, but we'll let you wear it in class. And we'll allow you to raise your children according to the dictates of your religion, unless doing so presents an imminent threat to the child's physical health.

How is this definition adjudicated? With care, and with great respect -- at least in this country -- for the deeply held religious convictions of the people involved. If there's no overwhelming medical reason to oppose a practice, we're going to defer to the scruples of our fellow citizens. We do so in part because we would want them to do the same to us; we do so in part because most of us have a hard enough time making difficult decisions for ourselves, let alone for others. But mostly we do so because to be American is to be free to exercise, or not, our religious beliefs, and to have that free exercise protected against the prejudices of our neighbors.

The anti-Semitism of the anti-circumcision movement is impossible to miss, but even if we were able to cleanse the "intactivists" of that taint we would still be right to choose the American rather than the French version of religious freedom. Here we're as concerned about freedom for religion as we are about freedom from it.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)
        

The National Association of Evangelicals is joining Jews and Muslims in opposition to the proposed ban on circumcision of male children in San Francisco.

“Jews, Muslims, and Christians all trace our spiritual heritage back to Abraham. Biblical circumcision begins with Abraham,” Leith Anderson, president of the Christian organization, said Thursday in a statement. “No American government should restrict this historic tradition. Essential religious liberties are at stake.”

Opponents of circumcision have gathered enough signatures to get the ban on San Francisco's city ballot in November. The measure would make circumcision of a male under 18 a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000.

The National Association of Evangelicals says the ban would violate the First Amendment guarantee of the freedom to exercise one’s religious beliefs. The organization says its guiding policy document affirms the principles of religious freedom and liberty of conscience, which it describes as both historically and logically at the foundation of the American experiment.

“While evangelical denominations traditionally neither require nor forbid circumcision, we join Jews and Muslims in opposing this ban and standing together for religious freedom,” Anderson said.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)