Mollie Hemingway

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Got News? President of Egypt calls Jews apes and pigs

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The Jerusalem Post and Times of Israel reported on a video from 2010 that was released by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi speaking against Jews as “the descendants of apes and pigs.” (Transcript here.) It took some time before the U.S. media developed interest. The comments were reported by the Jerusalem Post on January 4. By January 11, Forbes columnist Richard Behar wrote a piece headlined “News Flash: Jews Are ‘Apes And Pigs.’ So Why Is Egypt’s Morsi The Elephant In America’s Newsrooms?” He wrote:


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Manti Te'o, fake girlfriends and confirmation bias

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Way back in my guilt file is a story I wanted to highlight from CNN about Manti Te’o, Notre Dame’s star linebacker. The story is a detailed account of the role religion plays in his life and I found it fascinating. Te’o is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is from Hawaii. My husband was raised Mormon and is from Hawaii, so I’d been following Te’o's story. He’d been a leader in the top-ranked Notre Dame team that went on to the National Championship game. A sample from that story:


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Scientology comes to The Atlantic

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The internet freaked out this week when an advertisement done in the “Sponsored Content” style was discovered on The Atlantic‘s web site. I have to be completely honest that this made little sense to me.


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Pod people: You will know us by the trail of scare quotes

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This week’s “Crossroads” podcast with host Todd Wilken was recorded much earlier in the week. We discussed Dan Gilgoff’s departure from CNN and the lessons he learned there, the lack of coverage of the Passion 2013 conference in Atlanta last week, and that excellent New York Times story on a family forgiving their daughter’s murderer. You may listen to it here.


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Is a blasphemous drag show really 'anti-Catholic'?

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Just yesterday Bobby pointed out a practice of double attribution, asking whether it goes beyond attribution into the dreaded scare quote territory. I wonder the same thing in a few stories I’m reading about the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense.


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Who's this guy giving Barack Obama's benediction?

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Two days ago, I wrote a post in which I suggested that the ginormous Passion 2013 conference down in Atlanta might have received even a tad more coverage. There were, reportedly 60,000 people there and yet there was almost no coverage. I thought it maybe a bit too much in the lack-of-coverage direction.


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