As the vast majority of Americans know, we are now in the midst of what has been called "Holy Week" in the Christian religion.  Even for those denominations who don't necessarily "celebrate" lent (as it's sometimes known), it is the week that contains the bookends of Palm Sunday and Resurrection Sunday, with Good Friday coming in between.

Obviously this week holds great religious significance to a large portion of the American population.  And so the mainstream media will clearly honor that reality, right?  Ahem.

Culture and Media Institute findings:

Media Undermine Christian Holiday: Nearly two thirds of all stories about Easter were negative (22 out of 34).

 

Easter Used to Attack Catholic Church: Ninety-one percent of the negative Easter stories were about the pedophilia scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.

 

Love That Mother Nature: 100 percent of Earth Day stories were positive.

Yes, in case you didn't realize, unfortunately for the vast majority of Americans who recognize and focus on the message of Christ's redemptive work particularly at this time of year, it unfortunately came near the same time as Earth Day this year.  And since Earth Day is far more consistent with the media elite's preferred religion of humanism, Jesus is getting the shaft.

As Erin R. Brown notes:

Easter is the quintessential Christian holiday - the celebration of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection. Although it has been celebrated by billions of people around the world for nearly 2,000 years, the mainstream media would rather celebrate the liberal holiday known as "Earth Day" and connect Easter to the abuse scandal that surrounded the Roman Catholic Church.

Holy Week marks the seven days between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Christians around the world mark it by attending services, praying and piously observing the holiday.

But in 2010, ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows mentioned "Easter" primarily in connection to the pedophilia scandals that swirled around the Vatican last year, being sure to highlight the "gravest outrage," "scandal," "sexual abuse" and "crisis."

Instead, the networks chose to worship something else: Mother Earth. In contrast to Easter, the 40-year-old eco-holiday Earth Day that focuses on the "plastic lying around the earth" and "going green," managed to get nothing but positive attention from the broadcast media.

How about a couple actual examples to demonstrate the findings?  Let's start with a couple networks, ABC and NBC.  How did they choose to report on the greatest Christian memorials of the year, you ask?

ABC's "World News Saturday" provided the perfect juxtaposition of how the networks disparaged Easter and praised Earth Day in 2010. "This is the holiest weekend in the Christian calendar," said ABC's Dan Harris on April 3, 2010. "But Easter is providing no respite whatsoever from what may be the gravest outrage in the modern history of the Catholic Church."

...

 

NBC "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams showed the same pattern as ABC in its reporting on the Vatican's scandal. "This, of course, is Good Friday," Williams said on April 2, 2010. "And in a service at the Vatican today there was an unusual defense of the pope and the growing sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church."

Might I make a quick sidebar?  I'm not a Catholic, but I am fed up with the obsessive focus on the Catholic Church's pedophilia scandal.  It needed to be exposed.  It needed to be denounced.  It needed to be rectified.  And it was.  For years now.  But the media has now latched onto it as a way to castigate and run down the church and its message.  They're going for the jugular, and have no hesitation about the transparency of their efforts.

For instance, how many media reports have you heard talking about the pedophilia scandal within the homosexual community?  It is a rampant problem, with major homosexual publications editorializing in favor of sex with children.  Vocal homosexual lobby groups have called for the lowering of sexual consent age.  And horrific anecdotal stories of confused children being preyed upon by homosexual predators abound.  But the media says nothing.  Why is that?  I'll let you see you if you can figure that out, as we transition back to the way the media, contrasting their coverage of Easter, talked about Earth Day:

"As we said earlier, this is Earth Day, the 40th anniversary, in fact, of what's considered the birth of the modern environmental movement," anchor Brian Williams said on "Nightly News." "On this Earth Day there was this item in the news today, a way to remind us all to take a fresh look at something we look down and see just about every day: cigarette butts. Not only are they the most common form of litter, they are filled with toxins, every one of them that can leach out into the environment and make their way into drinking water supplies and pets, among other things."

CBS and ABC did their part as well.  Welcome to the world as liberals would have it.  Easter week is to be associated with the victimization of kids.  Earth Day is far more glorious.  How ironic that the One who offers the only hope to save the Earth is thrown to the curb by those who want to celebrate it.