| Media Hypocrisy |
02/10/2005 |
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The watchdogs in the media are at it again.
This time they are barking about Republican politicians, especially those
who stand up for moral values, whose campaign coffers have been on the
receiving end of donations from Adelphia Communications. It seems that Adelphia's new management recently reversed a long-standing policy to abstain from littering satellite and cable bandwidth with pornography. The announcement hit the Associated Press on Wednesday, February 2. By the following Monday, ABC News had already dug into Adelphia's political donation list and demanded that Republican recipients return the money. They personally bit into Representative John Peterson, Senator Rick Santorum and President Bush -- all conservative Republicans who publicly stand for "family values." Left-wing news hounds even growled words like "corruption" and "hypocrisy." One headline yelped, "GOP Like Porn When It Pays." But the target is not simply the Grand Old Party; it is everyone who lays claim to absolute values.  These
dirty dogs can howl, but they cannot fool me.The very ones who create these stories and make these accusations are the same ones who demand that we accept all manifestations of sexual deviancy. Week after week ABC pumps soap operas and prime time programs like Desperate Housewives into millions of homes, exposing viewers to the lowest of moral standards. They make heroes out of people who live together, engage in sex outside of marriage, and fight for same-sex unions. The argument peddled by the "no values" crowd goes like this: "You stand for moral values, so we will spotlight any inconsistencies we can find, whether real or not. We, on the other hand, do not insist that the world live by our values" (or in some cases, "we don't believe in moral absolutes,") and "therefore, we cannot ever be considered hypocrites." This then implies, in some bizarre twist of logic, that they are morally superior. Yet these same people -- including Peter Jennings and company -- cry the loudest when something like the Abu Ghraib prison abuses occur. Though they insist that morals are relative, they scream with moral outrage that a terrorist prisoner would be humiliated by being stripped naked in front of a woman! Could it be that Lynndie England had been desensitized by watching too much American television? Perhaps Pvt. Charles Graner, the reported ringleader of the abuse, watched too many violent or erotic movies from ABC's corporate cousin Miramax Films, both owned by Disney Corporation. The media actively promote excessive sexual behavior. But as soon as a conservative or religious leader can be tied in any such way to such material, it suddenly becomes wrong. It's as ridiculous as accusing Christians of failing in their faith for shopping in a store that stays open on Sunday. Much of our audience watches our program LIFE Today on DirecTV, another company that offers pornographic material. For some, it is the only option for receiving Christian programming, news, weather, and other information important in today's world. Are they spiritually two-faced? I think not. Without question, some of the wrongs pointed out by the media are absolutely wrong, at least by traditional values and certainly according to Biblical principles. But the real hypocrisy here is that the media tend to use moral standards as a battering ram for political and ideological gain. If ABC stood for moral absolutes, then the world could believe their reports on moral issues. In reality, the watchdogs in the media are the ones who are inconsistent, hypocritical and dirty. When it comes to morality, they are far too often on the wrong side of the fence to be trusted.
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