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Mormon Media Monitor: Time to grade LDS coverage

Some of these authors who excel in Yellow Journalism have certainly vindicated Rush Limbaugh's label of "Drive By Media". It causes one to doubt the veracity of even their day-to-day reporting.

Fair and balanced reporting would include the correct meaning of the the word MORMON=More Good.

A long time ago I leaned that you can not trust what a reporter has to say. It seams that all the news people care about is what will sale their paper or who will watch their new brodcast. It like they don't care about truth anymore, and this is a said state of afairs.

"I've been critical of reporters who depend solely on sources outside the LDS Church for information. I believe good reporters will not allow others to define LDS beliefs but instead go to genuine, believing church members."

I wonder if Mr. Campbell applies this same logic to stories that appear about the FLDS church, its leaders and practices.

News isn't about finding out how biased parties think of their own religion. It is about getting actual facts about how that religion affects a candidate or the issues in the presidential campaign in the stories linked here. I care a lot less about fair coverage for the Church of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints than I do about an accurate story that accurately portrays the affect of the church on the election.

Quit whining and get back to the business of providing useful news instead of propaganda for the church.

A teacher's grading says a lot about that teacher's integrity and character.

I generally think that this is a good article except for some of the explanations of why he graded some of the media as he did.

Mr. Campbell,
I would also suggest for your course two recent N.Y. Times editorials commenting on Romney's "Faith in America" speech. Coming from a prize-winning editorialist, Maureen Dowd's article is remarkable in that she admits to getting most of her information from a single, biased and non-expert source (Jon Krakauer). By contrast, David Brooks's editorial, though also critical of Romney, was at least balanced in its sources, and I think it represents good journalism.

It's hard to be objective when it comes to these matters.

I have noticed that even our apostles argue differently than some of the people in the political world.

It makes for tough calls all the way around.

I am glad we are an officially neutral church when it comes to politics.

Thanks for giving us this review. I find it worthwhile and insightful.

LDS Member, Baptized 1978

Dear Mr. Campbell:

Brigham Young University's journalism department is certainly entitled, if not obliged, to assess news media coverage of its sponsoring organization-- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One would expect these periodic reviews to be as comprehensive as they are thorough and thoughtful.

Your introductory piece overlooked a number of important reports -- in the "New York Times," "Boston Globe," "Washington Post" and "LA Times, " publications that heavily influence the reportage of other journalists. Moreover, it missed the point that "Editor & Publisher's" misbegotten interview with cartoonist Steve Benson was a rather shameless example of a trade rag attempting to manufacture real news by deliberately provoking a controversy. It would have been informative to read E&P's official explanation for such irresponsible and unprofessional tactics.

RB Scott
Boston, MA.

Thank you for an interesting article. It was refreshing to read something actually put in print, a "grade" for the "drive-by media". I become more disgusted with the reporting that is done - not particularly to impart truth but to color the issue - both in print and television/radio reporting. Thank goodness for talk radio which lends some credibility to reporting the issue you have raised as well as news in general.

I enjoyed your article. I guess us Modern Day members of the church will have our testimonies strengthened. My ancestors, gave their all for the gospel, including crossing the plains, burying their dead on the plains. Helping the Handcart Companies on their last leg into Utah. I have lived away from the center of the Church all my life. Regardless of what other people think, the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored, and with this sinful world, they just don't want to understand it. Good luck to any member of the Church who will put themselves through the trials of running for public office.

"Several academic articles available on the Web at the Neal A. Maxwell Center for Religious Scholarship at BYU explore this issue and give evidence of pre-Columbian horses."

This evidence ranges from extremely weak to spurious. It is certainly insufficient to overturn the scientific consensus that pre-Columbian horses were absent in the Americas after about the end of the last ice age. I don't think citing the Maxwell Center's scholarship on this subject would be doing the LDS Church any favors.

Dear Mr. Campbell:

Most articles and editorials published in The Economist appear without bylines. You might want to consider rewording future references to uncredited material appearing there, as this does not carry the same negative implications it would in other major publications.

dennyG-
1. Mr. Campbell's point had nothing to do with what the reporters saw.
2. Reporters aren't supposed to write about what they feel. That's bad journalism all around.
3. Research - the whole point of the article was that many reporters either didn't research, or didn't research well.
4. Truth - there are many sides to truth. Mr. Campbell just pointed out the multi-faceted stories of some reporters, and one-sidedness of others. It's a fair argument.

BTW, is this story "fresh" because of its content, or because of its origin? If a professor from the U wrote the exact same article, would you stand by your guns?

Dr. Campbell, I appreciate your grading system. It is understandable that those who rely on sources that if exclusively used by a reporter would warrant an "F" in your grading system would not be happy about it. A similar grading system could apply to any religion--Catholic, Evangelical Christian, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc. When one relies only on ideological opponents of a faith as the source of knowledge about the faith, one should be criticized for being biased. The truth is that they probably don't know that they are biased.

I love how anti-mormons, based on incredulous stories by people who persecuted the early church and also based on cherry picked statements out of the Journal of Discourses, without understanding what that is or the context of the statements, but decide that it is the doctrine of the church, which it never has been, present a very distorted view of what the members of the church believe. The Journal of Discourses is a compilation of thousands of public talks designed to encourage and motivate and occaisionally reveals notions peculiar to the time, but never presented as doctrine. Most Mormons are not familiar with them, because they have never been so taught.

By Mike Johnson. But I would like to point out that although the "Journal of Discourses" is not what most people believe now; it is what the people believed then! The LDS church and it's beliefs very much comes from these past beliefs. I agree that the strange things people used to believe needs re-evaluated (very much so). But it should not be denied that this is where your church came from! Instead of denying it you should be moving forward and saying "this was a mistake....let's fix it and move on.

The Journal of Discourse has never been taught as church doctrine. for you to imply such and that the church denies this is false. Just because someone believes something doesn't make it church doctrine or true.

Yes, we as Mormons do get grossly unfair press treatment, including much that is just not true. But to be fair, the LDS church is a propoganda machine that certainly is adept at spinning things in its favor. Most LDS folks simply do not know the real unsavory parts of their history, because it is simply not discussed, anywhere, in official Mormon histories, yet it constitutes a large swath of the history. Many people outside the LDS church know this history, and are repelled by it, which translates to a mistrust of LDS people today. This is the "elephant in the living room" which is seldom discussed by the church or it's spokesman. To overcome the biases against the Church, the Church needs to come clean and actually talk, in depth, about its history. Maybe now, during a political campaign is not the right time to do this. But it needs to be done. There are many out there, like myself, who WANT to believe, but can find NO REASONABLE EXPLANATION of the weird stuff that went on in the early days. Whenever we ask questions we get nothing, or gobledigup answers. We need much more.

I was a member of the LDS church for 40 years and heard a variey of beliefs which has now been "taken back" (of sorts). People get confused about what you really believe because there's a large variety of people within your church who don't know for sure what to believe! Of course, you can find the talks and the advice now, but the "old timers" have a hard time sometimes. These teachings that are not doctrine and are obviously not true need to be gone through one by one and officially declared fallible by the church leaders. They even need taken out of your scriptures (such as section 132 of your D & C).

I agree with [Both sides distort the truth... | 12:49 p.m.]. To me, there should be some economy to the truth. My LDS ancestors were asked to believe in and do things that I don't have to believe or do now. Where is the truth in all this? The trouble is that Church doctrines and practices affect people's lives and decisions. When those doctrines change, it makes you wonder why *God* made you do something for so long when apparently it didn't matter.

I also believe we as latter-day-saints need to be accurate describing other faiths and their beliefs. Some of us describe a Catholic belief as "commit any sin as long as you confess it later," or a Protestant belief as "be saved, and then it doesn't matter what you do." This implies that other Christians don't care at all about keeping the commandments. As I understand the Protestant belief, as you sincerely accept Christ into your life, you feel His love and naturally have a desire to serve Him and keep His commandments. The vast majority of Protestants live wholesome lives, and the hecklers at conference and temple dedications are not indicative of the Christian community in general. If a member of a Protestant faith would like to correct me or provide their own description of their faith, please do so. Of course, there are doctrinal differences, but let's focus on our own need to be accurate if we try to portray other beliefs.