York Daily Record--newspaper for fundies

The BBQ Pit
1

My parents have recently moved to York, PA, and, since my wife has dumped me, I came to stay for a while. As usual, my parents decided to get the local newspaper, here called the Daily Record.

I started having some suspicions about the paper from the first week we got it. Firstly, the newspaper seemed to give an awful lot of coverage to anti-abortion demonstrations. Secondly, the paper has a regular “Religion” section which gives loads of coverage to local fundamentalist churches. Lastly, the editorials all seemed personally written by Pat Robertson and his Christian Coalition cronies. I was surprised, because this area is not really a Bible-Belt community. Then on Saturday came the killer blow. The main section promised a third-section front-page story called “Tracts of Life.”

The front page of the third section was completely given over to a story about Jack Chick.

Yes, good ol’ Jack Shit himself got a pride-of-place story, complete with “aliens-from-Mars-invade-Earth”-size headline, not in the “Religion” section of the paper, but in “Living.” “Living in Fear,” more like, as the article gleefully revealed how local pastors were shoving Mr. Shit’s hate-on-a-plate into mailboxes. The article was so trash I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The “journalist” covering the story called up Jack Shit Ministries, but failed utterly to actually speak to Mr. Shit himself, who was “unavailable.” In the interest of absolute fairness, though, the journalist presented a balanced viewpoint by interviewing a local evangelical preacher and…another local evangelical preacher. Preacher #1 loved Jack to pieces and happily described how he tract-bombed his local community. Preacher #2 said that, while he didn’t necessarily approve of using Jack’s trash, he didn’t think the tracts were in any way hateful to Catholics, Muslims or gays, to name a few. Despite the presence of sizeable Catholic, Muslim and gay communities in York, our intrepid reporter sensibly declined to contact any of them.

I have been reading newspapers since I was five years old, and I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it. I hesitate to call it bad journalism, because I don’t think it’s journalism. The really surprising thing is that, though I’ve only been living here for a month, I don’t see York as a particularly Bible-thumping place. Instead, I think the York Daily Record is run by a nutball who wasn’t paying attention when his high school journalism teacher told the class not to put editorial comment outside of the editorial page. That, and he “got” religion along the way somewhere.

Hoo boy. I’m still reeling over that Jack Chick article. What a fucked up newspaper.

2

And your parents subscribe to this? What does that say about them?

Esprix

3

Well, newspapers aren’t run by the government. they’re not obligated to be fair, balanced, or keep their editorial comment in one place. If you don’t like it, don’t read it.

Welcome to the Midwest.

4

Reader’s Digest is a bit better at covering their biases, but it’s pretty clear where their sympathies lie.

5

Our local paper, the Virginian-Pilot, has the opposite problem. People write in and complain all the time that it is too liberal for the area- Norfolk/Va Beach (the home of Pat Robertson.) Personally, I’m glad they’re a bunch of bleeding heart liberals like me, I feel less alone.

6

Duke,
Did they ever catch the person that was forcing you to read the paper? We’ve got to stop that guy! :rolleyes:

7

Things are about as weird over on the other side of the Susquehanna. Lancaster has two daily newspapers, the morning Intelligencer Journal (“the Intel”) and the evening New Era. The Intel is, or at least was when I lived there, conservative, but only conservative. It isn’t a great paper, and it over-emphasizes local news over national and international to my taste, but it’s readable.

The New Era, on the other hand, reads like a small-town weekly (in spite of the fact that it’s a daily) from deep in the Bible belt. Just as you describe, lots of cloying Christianity, heavy coverage of anti-abortion ralleys and other conservative Christian causes, and “human interest” stories that seem like an excuse to get the word “Jesus” into print as often as possible. On a good day, national news gets two pages and international news one. On my last trip back, I read it once in a while in desparation (lack of reading material). Yeargh.

The weird part? They’re both owned by the same company and have been for years.

8

Duke, you could always try The Harrisburg Patriot-News, which is better IMO. Maybe not much better, but better than the Daily Record. At least the Patriot restricts religion coverage to Saturdays.

They may be liberal, but apparently some of their reporters think it’s OK to report uncritically on the actions and statements of their government officials, and to freely smear those who oppose those officials. I’d post links, but the V-P’s archive site is a pay site.

Robin

9

It’s funny that you bring up the VA-Pilot, LunaSea. I read it and the Washington Post to try to figure out what the other side is up to!!

10

Duke,

Many years ago, circumstances forced me to live in York, PA (90-92) and you describe it quite well.

One of the shitheads I worked with spent all of his vacation time in jail serving time after getting arrested at anti-abortion rallies. The judge(s?) would actually let him schedule his jail time to fit within his vacation.

We stopped communicating after I “adopted” him. I told him that I gave Planned Parenthood $100 for every night he spent in Jail, so that supporting his cause actually supported mine. Planned Parenthood got $1500 from me over the next two years

11

Actually, a lot of judges do that for non-violent offenders.

I love your response about Planned Parenthood!!!

Robin

12

That’s not odd at all. If a company owns two papers in the same market, they will arrange each papers’ coverage so that they will never be competing with each other. It’s much more profitable that way. They must have done some market research and found thtat this combination gets the maximum readership. I always thought that was a little slimy and manipulative, but that’s the free-market for ya.

13

Update: Today’s front page headline was about an anti-abortion rally. This was a follow-up to Monday’s story about, yes, anti-abortion protesters from York County going to Washington.

To those who wonder why I’m reading this paper: Firstly, it’s the only York newspaper. If I want to find out anything that’s going on about this town, I have to read it. I think my parents don’t like it much either, but they put up with it. I’m going to probably be moving out soon, and where depends on where I’d get a job–otherwise I’d put up for a Harrisburg Patriot-News or Philadelphia Inquirer subscription. Secondly, I think reading the YDR is like looking at a car wreck: disgusting, but compelling in its own way. It’s in sharp contrast to the other media outlets like the dull but worthy TV channels and the exciting York Public Access Channel, the TV channel that follows up “People who Follow Christ” with “The Atheist Viewpoint.” York PAC just makes your head spin.

And, again, this area is not Bible belt. My parents used to live in rural Indiana and I found that area to be much more fundamentalist. But the local newspaper at least kept the lid on any religious prejudices they had. Again, York has thriving Catholic and Muslim communities. You wouldn’t have any idea from the YDR.

Lastly, yeah, I could just not read the newspaper. What good would that do, though? My parents will still get it, and it will be continue to be a load of crap. On second thought, I think I’ll continue not to read it. Somehow, however, I feel I shouldn’t have to lose on reading about what goes on in York because of bad, prejudicial journalism. Not everyone around here is fundamentalist, and I should be able to know about them.

If you want to amuse yourself with the Jack Chick article, it’s currently under the paper’s website.