I will admit it: I'm an NPR-aholic. I listen to news shows and talk radio, I listen to Car Talk, I listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Andy teases me for being a left wing hippie, and I take it all in good humor.
I normally appreciate Terry Gross on "Fresh Air," but I just heard a snippet of an interview that really, seriously annoyed me. As some of you might have heard, the
Pittsburgh diocese of the Episcopal Church recently voted to secede from the overall Episcopal church over the appointment of openly gay bishops. I'm not going to say anything about that, because I think my readership is pretty much divided over the issue, but I would like to point out some things about politics influencing journalism.
First of all, Terry referred to this as people "leaving the faith" because they thought the church's policies were too liberal, and making the point that people used to leave the faith because the church's policies were too conservative. Okay, hold your horses. Since when does a diocese splitting off because they wanted to hold to a stricter interpretation of their canonical text (the Bible, in this case) mean that they are leaving the faith? This was a massive leap, and although I understand that she wanted to make the point about a shift in tide, it came out wrong and ended up leading the interviewee instead of leaving her to talk about the issue.
Secondly, the show played a clip where the bishop of Pittsburgh made a reference to God's law saying that it was wrong, but in a followup interview with a bishop of the opposing viewpoint, Terry quoted the first bishop (Pittsburgh) as saying that "Jesus said that it was wrong." Of course the second bishop said that that was strange, because Jesus didn't say anything specifically about it. Through this misleading question and the misquote, the second bishop was steered away from the real question of addressing the Old Testament religious law, and misrepresented the issue to the interviewee.
I felt like her interview was reflecting Terry's personal viewpoint, especially her leading questions, which all had the
a priori thesis that of course the Episcopalian church was right, and the church that's splitting off was bigoted. In fact, I felt that the clip they played from the Pittsburgh bishop showed him to be a gentle, thoughtful man who struggled hard with this issue before presenting this issue to his diocese.
Bad journalism, Terry. Poor form.
I am seriously irritated, and I'm not even close to being Episcopalian.
