Religion reporting seems to attract some of the very worst elements of the journalism profession. Some, like my local paper's Mirko Petricevic, have never met a religion they didn't like; they never ask a single hard question of a believer. Others, like NPR's Barbara Bradley Haggerty, apparently view their profession as a means to convert others to their religion. (She's a member of the World Journalism Insititute, whose goal is "to recruit, equip, place and encourage journalists who are Christians in the mainstream newsrooms of America first and then the world.")
Haggerty's at it again, with a story about how academia supposedly discriminates against religious conservatives.
Unfortunately, her poster child is Mike S. Adams, a first class looney-tune who has called for "atheist-haters" to join atheist student groups at universities and hence destroy them. Poor Mike S. Adams, who was discriminated against by getting tenure at his university.
That's the best that Haggerty can do to support her claim? Pathetic.
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If you think she's bad at religious reporting, check out her attempts at science reporting. Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?
I found this interesting cos I was reading another article criticising the piece for rather different reasons.
So in general do you think religion reporting is too sympathetic to religion?
A graduate student was thrown out of a counseling program after she declined to conduct relationship therapy for gay couples.
And rightly so. Imagine if this were the case:
A graduate student was thrown out of a counseling program after she declined to conduct relationship therapy for inter-racial couples.
I'd say those are logically and ethically equivalent scenarios.
Stoo:
Your link is broken.
Oops let me try again: link to Getreligion
The article is link free, but I found the conseling case: http://chronicle.com/article/Judge-Upholds-Dismissal-of/123704/
The student in Michigan refused to counsel a gay student for depression if except by telling him that being gay was immoral, and asked to have the student assigned to another counselor. The school said, not the point of this training is to ensure you can counsel anyone: it is your behavior not your beliefs we are concerned with. The judge agreed with the school.
Academia should rule out everyone, every academic, who is using religion to advance their position. To wit, in the University of Texas at Austin, it was (it still is?) perfectly acceptable for someone to add religious activities in their CV in order to "make it stronger".
Religion has nothing to do with universities and should be left out. Not only that, but I think it is our obligation to try to make sure that the mixing between religious "ethics" and academic achievement be kept as separate as possible.
By the way, here is a link to a posting on Mike S. Adams from Pharyngula.
> "Mike S. Adams...That's the best that Haggerty can do to support her claim? Pathetic."
Funny, I saw that she mentioned Cary Nelson and asked the same question.
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