A conservative media analyst points out that it took the wire services and major television networks a year to discover who Reverend Jeremiah Wright was -- yet only 48 hours to begin running "sneering pieces" about Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin's religion. Tim Graham says that shows a glaring double standard.
The Associated Press has written an article claiming that Governor Palin's biography for the National Governor's Association "obscures" her "deep roots in Pentecostalism." According to the AP, Pentecostalism is "a spirit-filled Christian tradition that is one of the fastest growing in the world" and "often derided by outsiders and Bible-believers alike." (Read commentary on the AP report) Although Palin attended a Pentecostal Assemblies of God church up until six years ago, she is currently a member of Wasilla Bible Church, an independent evangelical congregation. Tim Graham of the Media Research Center says he finds it strange to see secular reporters trying to report on Sarah Palin's religious beliefs "when they don't seem to have any" themselves. "For them to sort of suggest that Sarah Palin is an inauthentic Christian, that the churches she's belonged to are derided by Bible-believers -- it reads like opposition research; it doesn't read like news from a wire service," he remarks. Graham says many Democrats in the media are still upset about the Jeremiah Wright story and are trying to "fictionalize a Jeremiah Wright scenario" in Palin's life. "You've already seen these leaked videos of Sarah Palin talking about how our soldiers are hopefully on a mission from God," he notes. "That is the sort of language that scares secular reporters and doesn't really bother Christians at all." The first media attack on Palin's faith was launched by NBC News, which criticized her for once saying that the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq is a "task that is from God."
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