Evidence of an Orchestrated Anti-Christian Campaign at the Globe and Mail

In the print media, there’s supposed to be a line of distinction between the editorial pages and the news pages. It’s a good policy, when it’s observed, because you don’t want newspapers to influence the news coverage to suit their editorialists’ opinions. But in a recent series of stories on Christians in the Conservative party, there’s evidence of exactly that happening at the Globe and Mail.

It appears from the chronology of editorial columns and news stories that the Globe editorial pages are pushing the paper’s news pages to cover politics in a certain way, to favor anti-Christian political views that first appeared in columns and later appeared on the front page as so-called “news” stories.

That’s right: At the Globe and Mail, the editorialists are leading and the news reporters are following – and that’s a clear violation of the separation between the church of opinion and the state of ethical news reporting.

Here’s the chronology:

May 18: In a column entitled “What drove Belinda out,” Jeffrey Simpson writes about four Conservative nominees who have – horrors! – Christian connections. It was just too much for poor Belinda, according to Simpson, so she had no choice but to buy her way into Cabinet.

May 27: In a follow-up column, called “Why Stephen Harper is going to lose more sleep,” Simpson expands his attack to point the finger at other Christians in the party.

May 27: On the very same day as Simpson’s second column – what a coincidence! – a front page “news” story appears by Gloria Galloway, called “Christian activists capturing Tory races.”

May 30: Keeping the story alive, Galloway publishes a second “news” story under the title, “Single-issue candidates on wrong track, Tories warn.” The next day, one of her sources, Tony Clement, complains on the letters page that Galloway had misrepresented his views to torque the story.

May 30: The same day as Galloway’s follow-up – another amazing coincidence! – a mealy-mouthed editorial appears called “Candidates who wear religion on their sleeves.” In it, the Globe’s editorial board claimed incredulity about how it’s “difficult to understand the fuss about Christian activists helping to secure the nominations of at least eight federal Conservative candidates.” Sure, it’s no big deal – that’s why your paper has been torquing the story. The editorial then repeats the old news, which they had just claimed was no news, before concluding that they were happy to leave it to the â€?the public to decide who’s right for the job.” This editorial is a real piece of work – smirking innuendos and finger-pointing (”at least eight Conservatives,” and the like) hiding under the thin cover of smarmy double-speak (”difficult to understand the fuss” — yeah, right). One of the worst examples of journalistic insincerity and bad-faith writing you’ve ever seen in a Canadian newspaper.

June 13: Another front page story, this time by Michael Valpy, called “Spreading the gospel of political evangelism.” By now, you don’t even have to read it to know what it says.

When you look at this chronology, does it look like an orchestrated campaign to you? Does it look like those on the editorial pages are pulling the strings of those writing on the news pages? Does it all look smelly to you, too?