Category Archives: Media

THE NEED FOR SHREWD SKEPTICISM

You have surely heard by now. “Jesus may have been married.” At least, the media has come to this “scholarly” conclusion based upon a papyrus fragment written in Coptic that surfaced last week at a conference on Coptic texts.

Karen King, Harvard Divinity School Professor, presented the fragment to the conference that is held in Rome every four years. She gained access to the artifact in 2011 when an anonymous dealer brought it to her for translation and analysis. It was authenticated at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University according to its director, Roger Bagnall. Other scholars are awaiting more testing to rule out a possible fraud. Continue reading

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TRUTH AND THE NEWS

Can television news report the truth? This is not a rhetorical question. It can generate opinions on both sides and in the middle. Millions of Americans watch network and cable news, hoping to learn the truth about events in the world each day.

In his latest television drama, The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, The Social Network) contends that this is not happening. Set in the newsroom of a nightly cable news program, a news anchor and newly hired executive producer swim against the current of corporate sponsors and commercial interests to reveal the naked truth about current events as they occur. Continue reading

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