Religion

Don't Touch the Priests

Tom Fox, publisher of the National Catholic Reporter, explains why it took more than a decade before journalists exposed the Catholic priest sex scandal. "We were seeing cases of this pedophilia stuff in a number of dioceses in a number of cities," Fox says. "The secular press wouldn't touch it because they didn't want to be seen as anti-Catholic, and the Catholic [press] wouldn't touch it because they weren't independent."

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Leaked Catholic E-mails Discuss Priest Scandal

The email correspondence of Los Angeles' Roman Catholic cardinal as he struggled to contain a scandal over child-molesting priests was broadcast across the city after copies of his correspondence was leaked to radio station KFI-AM's popular talk show hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou.

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Saudi Editor Admits that Jews Aren't "Vampires"

Thanks to Saudi Arabia's generous willingness to sell oil to the United States, politicians generally turn a blind eye to its repressive government and frequent anti-Semitism, which surfaced again recently when Al-Riyadh, the Saudi government's daily newspaper, published an article claiming that Jews celebrate the holiday of Purim by eating special pastries filled with "the blood of Christian and Muslim children under the age of 10" extracted using slow torture with sharp needles --

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PBS Looks at US Propaganda Aimed at Muslim World

The PBS NewsHour aired a report tonight titled "Public Diplomacy: U.S. Outreach to the Muslim World." 'Public diplomacy' is a euphemism for government propaganda, and this report is an overview of US efforts already reported elsewhere, with no new insights or perspectives.

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Prime-Time Smear Campaign

"By pandering to anti-Arab hysteria," writes Eric Boehlert, "NBC, Fox News, Media General and Clear Channel radio disgraced themselves -- and ruined an innocent professor's life." University of South Florida computer science professor Sami Al-Arian received death threats and lost his job after conservative Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly revived discredited, years-old allegations from self-styled terrorism expert Steve Emerson th

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Arab Businessmen Launch Their Own PR Campaign

PR trade publication O'Dwyer's PR Daily reports: "The Arab Intellectual Foundation plans a $2 million media drive to counter what it feels are the 'negative images' of Arabs and Islam that are presented in the Western press in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks." Saudi Prince Khalid Al-Faisal is the president of AIF. Arab businessmen have been asked to contribute money to the campaign which will "promote the Arab perspective on the war on terror."

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"American Advertising Goes to War"

Advertising Age asked a top Middle East ad man about the difficulties of selling the US to the Arabic and Muslim world. Roy Haddad, the Beirut-based CEO of WPP Group's J. Walter Thompson, warns that the current political situation makes the US a hard sell. "The long-standing Israel issue is the biggest hindering factor. ... There's been a lot of reaction in the US, feeling that Arabs were pro-bin Laden. It's not so much a pro-bin Laden as an anti-American attitude, anti-Western.

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