When Truth is the last thing you want to report

[RonCorson]

When truth is the last thing you want to report

By Ron Corson

It seems every time I read an article from Adventist Today I read false information. It seems as if they have no filter at all by which they can test the truth of writers of their articles. It seems to me it is really now all about pushing a political leftist view upon the readers of AToday.

 

Take this recent article. Abortion Is Terrible, but Abortion Laws Are Worse by Lindsey Abston Painter  14 September 2021 

“Only if you have been living under a rock would you not have heard that at the beginning of September the state legislators in Texas passed a draconian law criminalizing abortions past six weeks of pregnancy. Not only the woman who has an abortion will be treated as a criminal, but anyone involved in any way, including any doctor or medical personnel involved—and even a person who drove her to the clinic or offered her shelter. Women who leave the state to have an abortion are to be immediately prosecuted when they return.” 

Is that paragraph true? Does the Texas law criminalize abortions past 6 weeks? Are the women treated as a criminal, is everyone peripherally involved treated as criminals? Are women who leave the state for an abortion immediately prosecuted when they return?

The answer is no to all of those assertions. No one has to look too hard to see that those statements are all untrue. Pretty much a few paragraphs from an NPR article can show just how wrong the Lindsey Abston Painter’s article is.

“The law allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone else who helps a woman obtain an abortion — including those who give a woman a ride to a clinic or provide financial assistance to obtain an abortion. Private citizens who bring these suits don't need to show any connection to those they are suing.” 

“Groups who oppose abortion rights have pushed for this Texas law, hoping that it will be harder for federal courts to knock it down. Instead of requiring public officials to enforce the law, this law allows individuals to bring civil lawsuits against abortion providers or anyone else found to "aid or abet" illegal abortions.”

“Anyone who successfully sues an abortion provider under this law could be awarded at least $10,000. And to prepare for that, Texas Right to Life has set up what it calls a "whistleblower" website where people can submit anonymous tips about anyone they believe to be violating the law.”

"These lawsuits are not against the women," says John Seago with Texas Right to Life. "The lawsuits would be against the individuals making money off of the abortion, the abortion industry itself. So this is not spy on your neighbor and see if they're having an abortion."

As a fact checking website states:

““On May 19, Abbott signed a law stating that ‘a physician may not knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman unless the physician has determined … whether the woman's unborn child has a detectable fetal heartbeat.’ The law creates an exception if the physician determines a medical emergency makes an abortion necessary. Critics have noted that fetal heartbeats can be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, limiting the window in which a woman can legally seek an abortion in Texas.”

“The law allows citizens, rather than the state, to sue anyone who performs or assists in procuring an abortion. Those found to have done so will, thus, be civilly instead of criminally liable, and will be made to pay “statutory damages in an amount of not less than $10,000 for each abortion.” Notably, SB8 does not allow for suits to be brought against women who recieve abortions after a heartbeat is detected.”

Reading the Facebook comments there are loads of people who praise this AToday article even though it begins with clearly false information. My point is not for or against the Texas law but simply pointing out the lack of factual information in the Adventist Today article. Most of the article is typical political progressive arguments for abortions. So the article is trying to be a persuasive argument for the leftwing views on the subject. This points out again that the major focus of Adventist Today is the spreading of political progressive, Democrat philosophies.

 

 

 

 

[RonCorson]

Adventist Today just announced that their CEO is leaving. In part the article says:

Quote

The foundation is grateful for all Paul has done in expanding our ability to provide reliable and timely journalism services across more channels and for more Seventh-day Adventists than ever before. https://atoday.org/adventist-today-ceo-paul-richardson-to-leave-organization/

 

Reliable journalism. I wonder do they think that printing outright lies about the news of the day is reliable journalism. I can see why the CEO would resign. The question is why does not the rest of the board resign. This lack of accuracy is not something new!

[bonnie]

3 hours ago, RonCorson said:

Adventist Today just announced that their CEO is leaving. In part the article says:

Reliable journalism. I wonder do they think that printing outright lies about the news of the day is reliable journalism. I can see why the CEO would resign. The question is why does not the rest of the board resign. This lack of accuracy is not something new!

No offense but don't you think you are being to optimistic . I dont read Adventist Today but if this is nothing  new why expect the whole board to resign. Especially on this topic. Abortion is accepted as a sad but necessary procedure. At least in our area a good portion of SDA are not opposed to abortion.It usually goes something along the lines" I am pro life but don't feel I can make that decision for someone else. It is sad when abortion has to be."

It is a little convoluted that a decision can be made to force vaccine on these women.

And what is sad about not wanting to carry a  clump of cells. I dont get that

But the article as false as it maybe I am sure garnered more support and sympathy for "these poor women" than the evil monsters wanting to prosecute any and all.

Those kinds of stories work. Look at the whoppers told about the BP whipping people. Has been proven false but those BP that have been identified lost their position anyway. Why would they want to louse up a good thing?

[RonCorson]

31 minutes ago, bonnie said:

No offense but don't you think you are being to optimistic . I dont read Adventist Today but if this is nothing  new why expect the whole board to resign.

No, I am not being optimistic as I don't know why the CEO resigned though from their statement it appears they are not in agreement. I also am only asking the question why the rest don't resign seeing their lack of being even close to reliable Journalism. My problem with the AToday article is not the subject it is the fictional account of the Texas law that set up the foundation for the entire subjective, personal opinion part of the article. I am all for persuasive articles. But if their attempt at persuasive begins with lies it is not going to persuade. Of course those who already are of the opinion the same as the writer of the article may not even notice the lies. But really in journalism you should have an editor that can point that out to the author. If you have an article with lies and no editor corrects those lies and they publish those lies that it is far from reliable journalism. 

You are very correct about the border patrol and the accusations of striking Haitians with the reins of the horse when people like Maxine Waters think it is worse than slavery. Sure no one was struck and no witnesses including the photography say anyone was struck it can't be pointed out that it did not happen. Something must be done so Biden says no more horses can be used in the area and deep consequences. The attempt is not to look at the truth but to protect the useful tools like Maxine Waters. At least we know that these Democrats are not even trying to be truthful or to present reliable journalism. They are just attempting to protect their biased viewpoints. That is indeed what Adventist Today has become. That is why on all the comments, and I read them all earlier this week, there was not a single one that noted that the report of the Texas law was wrong. They write for political progressives and don't care one bit about truth anymore. I used to write for them so I am really sorry to see what it has become.

[bonnie]

Wherher mainstream media or something like the article in Adventist Today, I dont think they care so much what the truth is. But more what they want it to be for their purposes. I am sure that article served the purpose of the author. Regardless of a unlikely retraction the purpose has been served. Just like the.media and admin lies about the  BP and the blatant lies about Ivermectin. The actual truth makes little difference. Someone like yourself will simply be seen as negative or worse. 

[GHansen]

The whipping incident reminds me of the OJ trial. His defense team managed to put Mark Fuhrman on trial for using a racial epithet. His use of a racial epithet became the issue, not two people murdered. At the border, all these people assembled, thousands and the issue becomes border patrol on horses.

As for abortion, the Bible itself introduces requires abortion  when conception is the result of adultery. The "trial by ordeal" in Numbers 5 would result in an abortion if an adultness was pregnant, regardless of who the father was. Modern society is concerned about abortion when the real issue should be sexual irregularity. 

[bonnie]

14 minutes ago, GHansen said:

The whipping incident reminds me of the OJ trial. His defense team managed to put Mark Fuhrman on trial for using a racial epithet. His use of a racial epithet became the issue, not two people murdered. At the border, all these people assembled, thousands and the issue becomes border patrol on horses.

As for abortion, the Bible itself introduces requires abortion  when conception is the result of adultery. The "trial by ordeal" in Numbers 5 would result in an abortion if an adultness was pregnant, regardless of who the father was. Modern society is concerned about abortion when the real issue should be sexual irregularity. 

I don't think Ron was arguing for or against abortion but the lying in the article. 

As for abortion, the Bible itself introduces requires abortion 

 

I believe it is quite a stretch to claim the Bible requires abortion  but the right or wrong of it again is not the focus of Ron's post.

all these people assembled, thousands and the issue becomes border patrol on horses.

The lie concerning the Border Patrol served it's purpose as surely as Adventist Today had their purpose to be served . In either story which version do you think will be the first to come to mind?

 

 

[RonCorson]

On 9/24/2021 at 5:32 PM, bonnie said:

I don't think Ron was arguing for or against abortion but the lying in the article. 

There is an additional issue however, If it was just one person lying in an article that would not be so bad. But we have a whole group of people who read the article take the time to comment on the Facebook comment section, the only place you can comment on Adventist Today, and yet they don't recognize the lies and in fact praise the author. That is why I pointed out that these articles are being directed to political progressives. That there is even such a class of people that are so manipulated as to not even be able to recognize truth from error is a serious problem. That this is carried on inside a church that at least much of the time says they stand up for truth indicates they don't stand for truth and perhaps even worse cannot even tell the difference between truth and lies at least when it deals with a subject they have a political passion for. If they can't tell the difference between fiction and fact, fact can become fiction and fiction becomes fact and after that Christianity will have no purpose as it will be supplanted by political propaganda.  Even the left acknowledges that their politics has replaced religion. See this article which I think was first published in the Atlantic but the article is now behind a pay wall. https://www.carolinajournal.com/opinion-article/how-politics-has-replaced-religion-in-america/

 

[B/W Photodude]

1 hour ago, RonCorson said:

But we have a whole group of people who read the article take the time to comment on the Facebook comment section, the only place you can comment on Adventist Today, and yet they don't recognize the lies and in fact praise the author. That is why I pointed out that these articles are being directed to political progressives.

Yeah, I reviewed one of their articles on Facebook and it was removed and I was banned from their site! So much for serious discussion! (You shall only agree with our beliefs!)

[RonCorson]

4 hours ago, B/W Photodude said:

Yeah, I reviewed one of their articles on Facebook and it was removed and I was banned from their site! So much for serious discussion! (You shall only agree with our beliefs!)

Yes I was banned in 2017. I wrote the article I posted here earlier, here https://adventistan.com/forums/topic/80893-response-to-atoday-article-ellen-white-or-the-bible/

Since it was a direct response to one of their articles I thought maybe they would post it as they occasional posts letters in response to one of their articles. I sent it to Loren Siebold and he replied that I could easily post it to the Facebook comments. I told him I could not do that because I had been unable to post any comments since 2017. Never heard back from him. Since then I saw Dr. Tim Jennings posted a response to an article against him on the comments section. I am sure it got posted but I looked through the comments and I could not find it. The way comments work on Facebook it is very easy to have things get lost if there are more than 30 comments. Of course as the comments are usually  only 50 characters wide any 2 page article becomes pretty unwieldy in the comments section. But no that has not been serious discussions or even an other side of the story on Adventist Today for quite some time.

[pierrepaul]

I got banned by AToday a few weeks ago. I had mentioned 1 Timothy 4:1-5, Colossians 2:16, Romans 14:5 and a handful of other texts which are inconvenient for SDAs. In a way they did me a favour, since I was spending too much time on their site.

[phkrause]

On 9/24/2021 at 7:02 PM, RonCorson said:

I don't know why the CEO resigned though from their statement it appears they are not in agreement.

Could you show me the statement that appears they are not in agreement?

 

On 9/24/2021 at 7:02 PM, RonCorson said:

as I don't know why the CEO resigned

Does it matter? Maybe he's also tired of all the lies and false stories as you are!!

[RonCorson]

2 hours ago, phkrause said:

Could you show me the statement that appears they are not in agreement?

Here is why I get that from in the last paragraph: 

"“Paul has made enduring contributions on many fronts with Adventist Today over the years, each of which we embrace with gratitude. While our once common sense of our future diverges,..."

[phkrause]

13 hours ago, RonCorson said:

Here is why I get that from in the last paragraph: 

"“Paul has made enduring contributions on many fronts with Adventist Today over the years, each of which we embrace with gratitude. While our once common sense of our future diverges,..."

Wow!! OK