We have a situation, alright

One of the CNN news shows has the slogan “No Bull, No Bias”. It’s not this one.

Get Religion with this account:

On my way to church tonight, a media friend living in another country called me to tell me she couldn’t believe what she just saw on CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer. She said it was so dismissive of Christian prayer that she almost wondered if she’d misheard.

She hadn’t.

The story comes late in the show and deals with Notre Dame student and donor protests of the school’s invitation to and honorary degree bestowal upon President Barack Obama. Or, as the goldenmouthed Blitzer says, “they’re asking God to keep the president away.”

That’s ridicule, and should be beneath a high caliber newsman on a leading global network. But this is what passes for news reporting these days.

SUSAN ROESGEN, GULF COAST CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, it seems as if some of these protesters are actually praying that President Obama won’t even step foot on the campus of the University of Notre Dame…

ROESGEN: Like many presidents before him, Obama has been invited to give the commencement address at this Catholic university in May. But hundreds of devout Catholics on campus and off are outraged that Notre Dame would welcome a president whose public policies lean pro- choice on abortion.

BISHOP JOHN D’ARCY, DIOCESE OF FORT WAYNE: The Catholic Church’s position is that — that taking a life in a womb is an intrinsically evil act.

ROESGEN: Bishop John D’Arcy, whose diocese includes Notre Dame, is especially shocked that the university plans to give the president an honorary law degree.

D’ARCY: But to honor someone with a doctorate of laws and the only laws he has made are laws which are against innocent life — no one is allowed to say who is going to sit at the table of life and, more important, who’s not going to sit at the table of life. God didn’t give us that privilege. He gave us many other privileges. That belongs to him alone.

ROESGEN: A spokesman for the university says there no plans to un-invite the president, but protesters say they will say one million rosaries until graduation day — praying that the president will become pro-life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROESGEN: Can you believe that, Wolf, they’re actually praying that God will change the heart and mind of President Obama to make him pro-life?

Makes you gasp, alright. How could major news people be so uninformed about Christian prayer for conversion of heart?

As Get Religion says…

it seems to me that a reporter covering the Notre Dame controversy should be either vaguely aware of how Christian prayer works or the pro-life community in general. Or maybe she should just be a little bit more respectful of the subjects she covers. I’m also wondering how CNN might have covered Moses’ prayers that Pharaoh might change his heart toward the Israelites.