The Media And Obama Handle Christianity Poorly – According To One Atheist

q&A

by Steve Krakauer | 10:30 am, May 3rd, 2010

» 9 comments

Mediaite: Let’s talk about cable news, starting with Fox News. Do you think Fox News handles religion in a completely fair way?

Cupp: Completely fair? I don’t think any of them are completely fair. I think Fox News, if we’re talking about cable news, is certainly the best at handling religion stories. They have a religion reporter, Lauren Green. Most others do not. They’re not afraid to address Christian stories that other liberal outlets ignore, avoid or sort of mock when they report on them. ABC News is one example, I wrote about this, in 2006 they were covering Christian businesses. The thing liberal media loves to do when talking about Christians is to use sort of funny puns and plays on words. In their coverage they said you can ‘work your thighs while you proselytize’ at a Christian fitness club. That’s the kind of stuff I just find really demeaning.

“Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are very much the same. They’re ugly in the way they handle Christianity.”

Mediaite: How about MSNBC? You talk a little about their aversion to covering Christian issues but then you’ve got Chris Matthews who certainly brings it in every now and then but obviously with a liberal bent there.

Cupp: I wouldn’t call it a liberal bent. I don’t want to say all liberals are anti-Christian. Chris Matthews purports to be a Catholic. But I would call it anti-Christian when you say of someone like Sarah Palin or Michael Steele that praying on big decisions is dangerous. That’s really out of touch with the majority opinion. What he said was ‘she’s saying it openly on secular television shows, this isn’t the religious hour, talking about God in a political setting is troubling to a lot of people.’ Well she was being interviewed. I don’t know what kind of political setting that is. And the idea you pray on a big decision is probably something 90% of this country does. He just goes after it in a really I think ugly way. Obviously Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are very much the same. They’re ugly in the way they handle Christianity.

Mediaite: You make a very compelling case about movies. Christian-themed movies like Chronicles of Narnia often perform well despite negative press and anti-religious movies like The Golden Compass perform poorly despite positive press. What is it that Hollywood doesn’t get about its audience?

Cupp: Hollywood has always been a fairly secular place. A place that really doesn’t like the fixed value system of Christianity judging them. They’ve always had this kind of attitude towards Christianity, and the media only really in the last 10 years have really picked up that rhetoric. I think as a business, and I’ve noticed it just as a writer, when I’m trying to get a book contract and a literary agent. The fact that I was a conservative stopped a lot of literary agents from wanting to work with me. I don’t understand that business model.

Mediaite: You should have told them you were an atheist.

Cupp: Yeah then they would have loved me, I know. But that kind of business strategy is cutting off your nose to spite your face. You see that in the tanking ratings of some of these cable news outlets. The tanking subscription and circ numbers of some of these magazines and newspapers. Again they’re ignoring the fact that 80% of the country is Christian. And it’s not just at the movies. The New York Times imposed and expressed surprise that The Purpose-Driven Life or the Left Behind series did really well. They didn’t understand it. Was it some crazy marketing scheme? I think booksellers, movie makers, all of these industries need to get with the program that in this country these products are going to do well.

Mediaite: Looking ahead, do you see any change on the horizon? How do you think the media will handle 2012?

Cupp: Oh, badly. If 2008 was any example, looking at the way they treated Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, just in terms of Christianity, it’s going to go badly. And I think my point in this book is to get people really angry about the way their media represents them, or doesn’t in this case. I can’t believe it takes an atheist to get angry about this, and the Christian majority is seemingly fairly complacent about this. I want 2012 to be a reckoning. I really do. I want the media to be held accountability for the things that they say and the things that they write. We deserve a better more representative press.

(This has been edited for length and clarity)

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Atheism, fnc, fox news, Losing Our Religion, S.E. Cupp

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Averreauxii

What a clueless wannabe acolyte this woman is. You think there is a war on Christianity in the United States? Are you out of your f’n mind? What would the Christians in Sudan or China say? Demagogic nonsense.
Snipzor

According to one “atheist”, honestly though, anyone who actually believes the whole Christian prosecution thing probably doesn’t have much to say on the topic to start with. How can the mass majority of the population be oppressed when they represent the cultural hegemony?
LittlePurpleUSA

A conservative pundit claiming she doesn’t “have a dog in this fight” and then goes on to spew half-truths about the medias coverage of Christianity and this president?

Riiiiiight.

BTW, Mediaite, way to fact-check her.
LittlePurpleUSA

She’s hot though. I gotta give it to the Right. They have the hottest airheads.
Integr8d

As someone that works in Hollywood and with all of the major studios, I concur with this woman. What little mass media I decide to take in, where dealing with Christianity, I can subjectively say also comes as a slap in the face. The media doesn’t think twice about taking jabs at Christianity. If I had to speculate on her comments about Christians taking this, I’d say it mostly comes from the whole ‘turning the other cheek’ thing.

I would guess that the majority of liberals stereotype Christians as being on the right; they’re probably correct. It probably also has something to do with the media lumping Christian values in with right-wing values (abortion et al). And they see a jab at Christians as a jab at the right. So they don’t have a problem with it.

@LittlePurple: ‘spewing half-truths’? Really? Spewing? Like vomit? Something so abhorrent that your eyes bleed from reading it? Emotional much?

As for fact-checking, does Mediaite have access to some special equipment that you don’t? And who’s to say that they didn’t? Or would it just bother you if everything she said was accurate? I’m guessing it would/obviously does.

This lady seems particularly sensitive to this issue. She uses atheism as a tool to present an unbiased point of view. Whether or not she has a stake in the game, outside of a book, is anyone’s guess. But I’d say the odds are quite high that she’s paying attention and, at least, has her facts correct. As for the facts, we’ll view them all through our unique lenses, spew-sensitive or otherwise.
the visionary

interesting interview. good job
ErinM

Wah. She may be right, that Christianity doesn’t get treated with respect by some people in high places and by some media outlets. So what? There are plenty of worldviews, political opinions, ideas, faiths and personal tendencies in this country that get short shrift from people who don’t share them.

Respect is earned, and Christianity isn’t special. If it has something worthwhile to bring to the marketplace of ideas, the respect issue will take care of itself.
Badger1911

Why should I respect religion? It certainly doesn’t respect me.

And which religion anyway?

Christianity? How many people have been butchered in the name of the Christian god? It’s 2011, in 3 years it’s 2014, then it’ll be 100 years since WW1 began. How many men have been sent to battle “for god, king/kaiser/tsar and country”? Millions. How many have died for the same? Millions.

Islam? 1,400 years of warfare against “infidels”. Probably the biggest genocide in history was committed by mohammedans in India in the name of their god (important hint here: Allah and the Christian god are NOT the same, Allah goes back to a pre-islamic moon deity.)

Judaism? With their penis envy? Seriously, read the bible/old testament/thora. It’s a hit piece on other cultures. The Jews invented the weirdest things in this piece of propaganda just to make themselves look better and superior over others, completely violating their own commandments – you shall not lie. The tower of babylon, for example, is an absolutely ridiculous fairy tale, or the great flood, absolutely preposterous.

The list is essentially endless.

And which god?

JHW? Allah? Zeus? Thor? Izanagi? No, they are not all the same. And there are, right now, a few million of them around (thank Japanese shinto for that one.)

Speaking more positively about god? Why? What for? What’s the goal here? And again which god?

Back to respecting “religion”.

No, religion doesn’t respect me. One tells me that, if I don’t join it, I’ll end in hell. Another tells me that, if I don’t join it, its god will destroy me. And another tells me that, if I don’t join, its followers will kill me. Now that’s just great, isn’t it?

Religion exists for only one purpose: to execute power over people. It always works the same way. You have a small group of clergy, who have access to all the “secrets”, who are the ones allowed to perform all rites. And you have a large group of followers, also known as sheep, who get to listen to the rantings and ravings of their leaders and who also get to pay for them. Always the same pattern. And religions come and go. In 2,000 years Christianity, Judaism and Islam will be gone. Something new will be around. That, too, is part of the pattern.

So, why should I respect this again?

Oh, it might hurt somebody’s feelings if I don’t do it? Oh grow a pair. That’s no argument. That’s just an excuse to force politically correct Newspeak on us.