Religious news and information sources

Menu

Religious misinformation, disinformation,
lies, darn lies, statistics, etc. on the Internet

Sponsored link.

Since the startup of this web site in 1995, we have been continually amazed at the level of bias, misinformation, confusing reporting, and disinformation being spread by some religious news sources. This seems to have reached very high levels in late 2009 with the introduction of the federal hate-crimes legislation -- the first of many LGBT civil rights bills to be introduced.

The good news is that these news sources rarely lie.

However, some sources can be seen to:

	Provide only their own assessment of the topic while remaining silent about alternate views.
	Ignore contradictory evidence that shows their opinions to be false, or at least suspect.
	Emphasize part of the news, while simply not reporting other parts.
	Explain the news in a way that often leads a reader to assume that something happened other than what really occurred.
	Blindly reporting information from other news source's without prior fact checking.

It is our hope that people visiting this site will become more skeptical after reading some of the ways in which religious media inject bias into their coverage. If many people Email complaints to these news sources, those companies may realize that they are losing credibility -- the most precious asset of any news or information source.

We also hope that teachers can make use of this material to help students develop analytical techniques -- "bologna detectors" -- to separate real information from disinformation and misinformation.

Topics covered in this section:

	What convinced us to start reporting on religious misinformation on the Internet
	A more detailed explanation of the triggering event
	Urban legends, pious frauds, forgeries, neat stories, relics, etc. (The jury is still out on some of these, particularly the relics)
	Some examples of biased reporting: Misrepresenting an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" sitcom   An unsuccessful attempt to correct an error on a young-earth creationist web site   Are there 3 or 30 or more different sexual orientations? Are prostitution, bestiality, necrophilia really sexual orientations?   Christian web sites that describe Wicca with varying degrees of accuracy

Footnotes:

1. LGBT is an an acronym of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and transgender persons/Transsexuals. So is other variations like GLBT, GLBTQ, GLBTI, etc. where "Q" refers to queer or questioning, and "I" refers to intersexual.
    

Copyright © 2009 to 2011 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Originally written: 2009-NOV-03
Latest update: 2011-AUG-18
Author: B.A. Robinson

Sponsored link

Web ReligiousTolerance.org

Page Translator: This page translator works on Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari browsers only. After translating, click on the "show original" button at the top of this page to restore the page to English.