MediaWatch: July 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: July 1994
- Christian Coalition Regularly Places on the Right, NAACP Almost Never on the Left
- NewsBites: Dumping on D'Amato
- Revolving Door: Price to Urban League
- Reporters Portray Religious Right as Extreme, Take Moderates' Side
- CBS Mourns Spies, Traitors
- Peggy on Prayer
- Dared to Call ABC News Liberal
- Janet Cooke Award: Liberal Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Pays for Pro-Clinton Health Care Special
Peggy on Prayer
Recently, reporting of conservative Christians has focused on their supposed "takeovers" of local school boards and the GOP. But seldom-used ABC religion reporter Peggy Wehmeyer began a three part series of "American Agenda" segments examining the hostility which Christian children and their beliefs often face in public schools.
On the June 21 World News Tonight, she noted: "The courts banned school-sponsored prayer in 1962 and gradually raised the wall of separation between church and state. Now many believe the wall is too high, squeezing out religious expression that's protected by the Constitution."
Wehmeyer made an often-ignored distinction. "The First Amendment clearly protects the rights of students to pray and to express their religious beliefs at school as long as they've initiated it. It's the teachers or school authorities who aren't allowed to endorse religion." Citing three students afraid to show their faith in school, she realized "religion -- particularly conservative Christianity -- is often unwelcome in the public square" and added "Bill Bennett says anti-Christian bias is fashionable among the nation's elite -- intellectuals who shape the courts, media, and schools."
After airing an opposing viewpoint from liberal Barry Lynn, Wehmeyer concluded that "when...religion is forbidden altogether, children may get the troubling message that faith and spirituality are of no value." Equally troubling has been the rarity of news segments like Wehmeyer's on the networks.
France's Other Face
Running against the trend suggesting that America emulate France's massive government programs, Newsweek's Theodore Stanger and Marcus Mabry noted the other side of those guarantees in a June 20 story: "Labor costs are already higher than anywhere else except Germany...Total social-welfare costs equal nearly 45 percent of GNP, the highest share in the world." Stanger and Mabry concluded that the idea of new state-subsidized menial jobs "is not a solution. But it would be very French."
