Media Bias and “Evan Almighty”

I went online this morning for my daily fix of news with my two year old on my lap. (So if there’s any mistakes or misspellings blame him) He likes watching a hippo and a dog sing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” every few minutes so I typically have a brief window of time to take in the news. One of the windows I opened today was movie reviews of today’s new releases.

I looked at the reviews of Evan Almighty which came out today wondering if it was something I would see, possibly even take the kids too.

“Oh, my God, this movie sucks.” That’s how Richard Roeper opened his review in the Chicago Sun-Times. Have you ever seen a reviewer open a review with such…vitriol. I began wondering what would cause him to write a review as if this movie somehow offended him.

I started wondering if the movie’s religious message turned him off. I looked at another one and got to read this line from MSNBC, “The more serious Steve Oedekerk’s script becomes, the more uneasy the mixture of comedy and religiosity feels. (By John Hartl, Film critic, MSNBC)

I see. As long as religion is treated without seriousness it’s fine. But if the movie seems like they mean it then it’s problematic.

Something hit me this morning because of this. I don’t trust the media. At all. I realized that for years I’ve read every news story through two lenses. The first is looking at the actual news story and the second is me attempting to find the bias in the story -like a weird “Where’s Waldo” game.

I worked in the newspaper business for years and defended it to my friends and family. But I realized that I fully expect the media to look down on my perspective –even though my views closely mirror the views of a rather large sector of America –if not a majority. I fully expect the media to distort the news in order to further an agenda.

I don’t know if Evan Almighty is a good movie. The problem is that after having read reviews from several newspapers I still don’t know if it’s a good movie.

This is exactly why I think the blogosphere is so crucial in America right now. It is an irony that the supposedly “backwards” religious and conservative Americans have been forced to go high-tech to reconnect to their culture. Progressives are still stuck selling newspapers and shoving more talking heads in front of the television cameras. We’ve taken to talk radio and the internet and the progressive media do not like it. Know this -they will try to stop it.

My little piece of rebellion this weekend will be a trip to the movie theater to see “Even Almighty.” Even if it stinks it’ll send a little $10 message that we the people want more movies which connect with our point of views. I just wonder if everyone else in the movie theater will mind the two year old sitting next to me laughing at the hippo and the dog on my laptop.