Religion in Media

Evangelists Destroy Rt. Wing Network?

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Article in Raw Story by Matthew Chapman, 7/3/25

Headline:  “Dr Phil sues televangelist network for ‘sabotaging’ his bankrupt media company”

“Daytime talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw’s startup right-wing cable network is declaring bankruptcy — and he’s suing a prominent televangelist broadcast network he had partnered with to get it set up.

“According to Variety, “Merit Street filed for bankruptcy and the related lawsuit naming TBN [Trinity Broadcast Network] as a defendant with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Northern District of Texas on Wednesday (July 2). The complaint alleges that TBN, which was Merit Street’s broadcast partner, reneged on its obligations and instead ‘abused its position as the controlling shareholder.’. . .”

Read the full article at:

https://www.rawstory.com/dr-phil/

Media and the Vatican

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Article in Columbia Journalism Review by Jon Alsop, 4/21/25

Headline:  “The Pope and the Press”

“In late February, with Pope Francis critically ill in the hospital, CJR’s Sacha Biazzo spoke with members of the Vaticanisti, the Italian term for the press corps that covers the pope.. .”

“From his early days as pope, however, he appeared to be savvy about countering negative narratives while, intentionally or not, cultivating an image as a common man (by doing things precisely like canceling his own newspaper subscription); he didn’t put the papacy on Twitter—that was Benedict, at the very end of his tenure—but as the years rolled by, he harnessed it as he ‘revolutionized the Vatican’s media strategy with his direct and personal approach to communication,’ as my colleague Biazzo put it, “making him one of the most accessible popes in history. . . .”

“In 2018, he made a major intervention on “fake news,” which he likened to the serpent in the Garden of Eden; his analysis, the Times wrote at the time, was partially “questionable,” not least in its apparent conflation of disinformation with “an incremental and sensational style of journalism he dislikes,” but otherwise “offered a largely cleareyed assessment of the problem, its social impact, and the responsibility of social media giants and journalists. . .”

https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/pope_death_journalists_media.php

Covering the Messiah

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Article in Media Matters by Payton Armstrong, 2/27/25

Headline:  “Right-wing media cheer Trump’s anti-Christian bias task force after years of laying the groundwork”

Subhead:  “Right-wing commentators have spent years claiming that the Biden administration was ‘waging spiritual warfare against Christianity’ and that ‘the left wants to drive Christians out of the public square’ “

“A task force created by President Donald Trump to eradicate alleged ‘anti-Christian bias’ is drawing praise from right-wing media figures — some of whom have spent years baselessly claiming that Christians are a persecuted group in the United States, even though experts say there’s no such widespread bias.

“Right-wing commentators celebrated Trump’s task force as  ‘a cultural resurgency’ and declared that ‘this is the counter-revolution against their color revolution that occurred in the summer of 2020’.

“In one instance, Christian nationalist media figure Lance Wallnau joined Steve Bannon’s podcast to praise the task force as the first step in the ‘recapturing of institutions,’ . . .

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-media-cheer-trumps-anti-christian-bias-task-force-after-years-laying-groundwork