Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Salt Lake Tribune Tripe #2


            It looks like if I can keep up the energy to do it, these exposés of the Salt Lake Tribune’s long-standing miserable reporting record on things Mormon could well become a series. Sometimes it simply comes down to how aggravated I get at the false or misleading information contained in one of their sorry stories. Most long-time Utah LDS residents are aware of the Tribune’s critical bias against the Church, and many others besides me have noted and been annoyed by it.

In doing a little online surfing I came across this fine piece on another website: “Of 'MormonLeaks,' intellectual property and The Salt Lake Tribune – recipe for bias?” by a former Deseret News reporter that keeps an eye on things and evidently knows what he is talking about. The blog reviews a little history of the two Salt Lake City newspapers, then names some of its more prominent current reporters (such as Peggy Stack), and rightly concludes that “This newspaper has often run pieces critical of, if not hostile to, the LDS Church, mostly in the opinion pages, but occasionally elsewhere.” “Elsewhere” is, of course, the religion section or the front page, where Stack runs amuck with her activist agenda critical of the Church she purports to be a member of.

In the case of the commentary found in the linked blog about the Tribune’s bias against the Church, a different Tribune reporter is rightly taken to task for bungling and slanting the story he covered—strongly favoring an anti-Mormon copyright-infringing organization to the detriment of the LDS Church. A fine example of the Tribune’s recipe for bias coming through load and clear. “The journalistic issue is balance – the latest Trib story is heavily weighted towards [the anti-Mormon’s] perspective and downplays the church's viewpoint….”

It seems that fairness and balance must be ignored when writing stories about the Mormon Church, where the real goal is to criticize and advocate for change: conformity with our modern wicked world and political correctness. (Also, to placate and cater to their significant anti-Mormon audience.) There was a time a few years ago when I thought the Tribune should be renamed the Kate Kelly & John Dehlin Tribune, because its pages were constantly filled with stories about their noisy excommunications. These numerous stories portrayed the real villains, Kelly and Dehlin—as the heroic victims. In Stack’s stories, they were cast as righteous crusaders for social change, not the rebellious apostates they really were/are. Meanwhile, the Church became the big bad (and wrong) bully, being mean to the poor little (but very loud) innocents. Extremist feminist and LGBT activism exuded from every story she wrote. Why bother with balance and accurate reporting when you have an agenda, a cause to crusade for? (I don’t much care at this point, but it is my opinion that Kate Kelly doesn’t even believe that the very priesthood she wanted to be ordained to even actually exists now that she has been out of the Church for a few years. For her, it just may be that all that time and energy was wasted on something she cares nothing about now.)

I have not read the story in today’s (2/27/2018) edition of the Tribune, but from the title is seems that one of the Tribune’s columnists, a vigorously self-proclaimed lesbian, is using her column/pulpit to castigate a reader who was offended that the lesbian has children. Is this really necessary? Not knowing the facts and having not read the piece (I don’t care what loud activist lesbians have to say), I cannot comment further, except to remind readers that there are only three ways that a lesbian can become a mother: through the use of modern biological science, through the adoption courts, or by not being a lesbian for long enough to get pregnant. If a child of such same-sex parents were to be baptized and attend LDS church services (like primary), they could become deeply confused by what they learn from the prophets and the scriptures about how God defines families, versus what they see in their parental examples at home. No wonder it is now formally defined as apostasy for same-sex member couples to marry. But pushing LGBT activism has long been the Tribune’s cause, and therefore they want such pieces to be hailed as good and proper. Line up and conform to the wicked world surrounding us, is their mantra. What tripe!

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