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Mormon Spin at its finest

5/16/2015

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The Pew Religious Affiliation Survey 
and a Tale of Two Newspapers

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These days, calling the Mormon Church-owned Deseret News a “newspaper” is like calling Cap'n Crunch “nutritious.”

That wasn’t always the case. Until recently, the Deseret News held its own as a respected albeit conservative newspaper, garnering many a prestigious journalism award along the way. But as the Internet placed traditional newspapers in peril, the Deseret News saved itself by abandoning journalism and emerging as a blatant Mormon Church mouthpiece. 

Never has this been more evident that in its reporting of the Pew Research Center's 2014 Religious Landscape Study. 

Utah’s surviving real newspaper, The Salt Lake Tribune, reported the study under the headline “Christianity shrinking in U.S. ...” adding an appropriate local note, “... Mormon numbers essentially flat.” Note that the headline doesn’t mention the Pew study. It makes its own claims and in the text cites the study to back them up.

The Deseret News spun the survey into a de facto Pew endorsement of Mormonism. One headline read, “New Pew survey reinforces Mormons' top goals of family, marriage.” Another read, “LDS religious commitment high, Pew survey finds.” In fact, the survey makes no such evaluative claims. Even to infer as much from the study is a stretch.

Disingenuous pro-Mormon spin is par for the course for the Deseret News, whose mission appears to be to make the Mormon Church smell good no matter what. Indeed, Mormon culture tends to label reporting that does not finish by praising the church as “anti-Mormon.” Considering that nearly half of Utahns rely on the Deseret News for their primary news source, this is disconcerting to say the least.

Yesterday, Salt Lake Tribune writer George Pyle added his own pithy perspective to the Pew study under the headline “Utah religion numbers turn out not to be so odd,” which we highly recommend (click here).

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Guess which iTunes reviewer read the book

5/9/2015

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See if you can guess who read the book before writing an iTunes review

We are grateful for the 87 reviews on Amazon.com as of this writing. Now, with the audiobook released, we hope to see reviews on Audible.com, too. Meanwhile, we are at last seeing reviews from iBooks readers. Well, just two. It’s a start.

First there’s this one, from EMcRory:
Captivating! 
★★★★★
by EMcRory


I bought this book while at Heathrow airport on my way back to Vancouver BC. I read the entire book on the flight, which required me to stay up all night to do so. That gives you an idea of how fun this was to read. I think I found it interesting because I went to a dental school where 30 percent of the students were Mormon. I had heard rumors about things Mormons believe but didn't really believe them at the time. This book confirmed my suspicions! You can't believe the craziness until you are a Mormon yourself or until you read this book. Totally fascinating! I was also thrilled that the author came out a better person in the end. Good for her for following her instincts!
Then there’s this one from Tanner77, who appears not to have bothered reading the book:
Wrong Mormons 
★☆☆☆☆

by tanner77

This book is not about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints nor its members who have not practiced polygamy in about 150 years and who have distanced themselves from splinter groups that try to practice polygamy. The difference between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and these polygamous splinter groups is like night and day despite what the bigoted prejudices of some people would fool you into believing.
Tanner77 might have a legitimate concern if the book claimed to be about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints*, suggested that the church practices polygamy today, or didn’t take pains to differentiate it from polygamist splinter groups such as the one that Joanne and her husband joined.**

We welcome all reviews, even negative ones, but we prefer them from people who first trouble to read the book. Ironically, where bigotry and prejudice are manifest is in attacking that which one knows nothing about.
__________________
* Note to Tanner77 and others who wish to defend the LDS Church: get the name right. Per the church, there should be an uppercase T in “The,” a lowercase d in “day,” and a hyphen between “Latter” and “day.”
** We might add that to claim that the difference between the mainstream church and polygamous splinter groups “... is like night and day” betrays a lack of knowledge about the mainstream church. Apparently ours isn’t the only book Tanner77 hasn’t read.
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