Hugh Hewitt MEGA PING!!
Posted on 05/01/2003 12:06:47 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
On Saturday night, President Bush spoke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. He included in his remarks a moving tribute to Michael Kelly, columnist and editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and NBC's David Bloom, both of whom had died in the war in Iraq.
The president quoted Kelly's father and the praises of his colleagues, and held Kelly's intellectual honesty and fearlessness up for the approval of the audience, and the audience clapped.
The president then read from David Bloom's last e-mail home, in which the rising star of NBC wrote to his wife that he cared not much for his professional achievement compared to his love for three things: Jesus, her and their daughters. The audience again expressed approval of the president's tribute.
Moving words by a world leader to a moved audience. But I doubt you saw them on your television or read of them in a prominent place in your paper.
I suspect it was Bloom's reference to Jesus that sealed the decision of the news directors to skip the speech in their broadcasts Sunday. Perhaps some stations did air the speech, but I didn't see it. My radio audience was just as surprised as I was to hear the tape when I played it on Monday and Tuesday. They too, had been covered by the news blackout.
This is an odd and troubling development. Either news producers do not understand what connects with the American audience, or they are purposefully blocking its transmission. My radio audience self-selects for a center-right talk show, of course, but their reaction to the president's quiet but absolutely sincere salute to these two journalists tells me that it would be a widely shared reaction. It would have interested at least the 40 percent of America that went to church on this past Sunday, and perhaps closer to the 90 percent of the country that believes in God.
My suspicion is that the news executives who decided not to run it did so out of a personal disapproval of the message, generally, and Bloom's last letter, specifically. I have worked in newsrooms for a dozen years, and the hostility to religious belief within those quarters is intense and widespread. The president's remarks did not get much airtime because they were so powerful, not because they were dull.
This is just another example of an alarming development: For many years now, the herd that is the elite media is developing a mindset both hostile to faith and intent on its silencing. Rarely, if ever, do voices from the community of the religious get a decent hearing, and bookers seem to work overtime to elevate the marginal and marginalize the mainstream. When enormously powerful statements are made about faith, such as the president's remarks or David Bloom's e-mail, they are shunted aside to the cable channels and they may not even see the light there.
This happens again and again. A couple of months ago, the National Security Adviser gave a wonderful address at the National Day of Prayer which addressed her faith and its origins. I played the entire speech and again my audience loved it.
I doubt you heard or read a word of it. Producers seem to have agreed that it couldn't be newsworthy because it addressed matters of faith.
This is a pernicious and deeply bigoted approach to the news, but it is not likely to end soon. The rise of talk radio and the Fox News Network are partially tied to the decades of censorship of center-right political views from the news. These outlets are not yet comfortable with faith matters either.
But the audience is there. The first network that begins to honor the sensibilities of the 40 percent of Americans who attend church weekly or the 90 percent plus who believe in God will find its reward in the ratings.
The coverage doesn't have to be uncritical or even frequent. But it is wrong for news elites to project their tastes and nonbelief onto a vast audience that shares neither.
It's both .. they don't get it and they don't care
Regretably it is not "odd" in the sense that it is uncommon. In fact it is all too common, witness the fate of GODS AND GENERALS.
It is a phenomenom which surfaces all too often when the left speaks. I attended a lecture in Germany by a visiting professor from Innsbruck who implied that George Bush was some how too simplistic because he believed in God. European intelligensia are often trying to explain otherwise unfathamable American policy with this condenscion.
Fortunately, President Bush did not have to rely on CNN for his knowledge of the last e-mail from David Bloom to his wife."...The president then read from David Bloom's last e-mail home, in which the rising star of NBC wrote to his wife that he cared not much for his professional achievement compared to his love for three things: Jesus, her and their daughters. The audience again expressed approval of the president's tribute.
Moving words by a world leader to a moved audience. But I doubt you saw them on your television or read of them in a prominent place in your paper.
I suspect it was Bloom's reference to Jesus that sealed the decision of the news directors to skip the speech in their broadcasts Sunday..." - Hugh Hewitt
See, for instance, a COMPLETE version of that e-mail in the Star Tribune:The POWER of that quote is somewaht diminished in the CNN version, eh?And from the CNN version - WITHOUT the reference to Jesus:The son of Harold and Laura Bloom of Edina "wasn't just reporting the news, he was telling a story . . . speaking to something inside each of us with his enthusiasm and his boyish charm" said his brother John, also of Edina.
He quoted an e-mail David sent to his wife, Melanie, hours before his death: "I'm supposedly at the peak of professional success and I could frankly [not] care less. In the scheme of things it matters little compared to my relationships with you and the girls and Jesus," he wrote, referring to their daughters, Nicole, Christina and Ava.
Also eulogized by two brothers and his best friend, Bloom was described as a man who had battled personal problems in recent years and was at peace with the prospect of dying in Iraq.
Hours before he died, he wrote an e-mail to Melanie saying the experience of covering the war had transformed him, leading him to realize that nothing mattered more than his relationship with her and their daughters, said his older brother, John Bloom.
He quoted Bloom's last message to his wife: "Here I am, supposedly at the peak of professional success, and I can frankly care less."
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(If you want OFF - or ON - my "Hugh Hewitt PING list" - please let me know)
Into the Very Presence of God: Remembering David Bloom
Breakpoint ^ | 4/17/03 | Charles Colson
Posted on 04/17/2003 1:18 PM PDT by rhemaIt was early morning, Iraqi time. Crouched in a modified tank, NBC News correspondent David Bloom picked up his phone and played back his messages. One was from Jim Lane, a New York financier and Wilberforce Forum advisory board member. The two were sharing a daily, long-distance devotional time using Oswald Chambers's classic, My Utmost for His Highest. Lane read the message for April 5, based on Matthew 25: "Because of what the Son of Man went through, every human being can now get through into the very presence of God."Moments later, Bloom climbed out of the tank, took a few steps, and collapsed. Soon after, he was ushered into the presence of God.
David's death from a pulmonary embolism devastated his family, friends, colleagues, and millions of TV viewers. At age thirty-nine, David was a rising star at NBC. Viewers looked forward to watching Bloom file his reports while bouncing across the desert on his "Bloom-mobile," his face streaked with dirt, his hair snapping in the wind. He loved his job, and everyone knew it.
But what most viewers did not know was that David was a committed Christian. David had grown up in a Methodist home. And while he had a strong understanding of the Gospel growing up, it wasn't until two years ago, according to Lane, that Bloom "effectively came to a saving knowledge of Jesus and started a real faith journey."
Bloom joined the New Canaan Society, a weekly men's fellowship group founded by Lane and my former colleague Eric Metaxas. I met Bloom several times as a guest of that fellowship, and we became friends. I was struck by the sincerity of his Christian faith. He was hungry for knowledge of God and how his faith ought to play out in his life.
On the day he died, Lane says, "David was in a very good place, at peace with himself, his faith, and his family." That peace was reflected in the last message he would ever send to his wife, Melanie—one that reveals that, in the middle of a desert battlefield, his own mortality was very much on his mind. Bloom wrote: "When the moment comes in my life when you are talking about my last day, I am determined that you and others will say, 'He was devoted to his wife and children; he was admired; he gave every ounce of his being for those whom he cared most about—not himself, but God and his family.'"
Yesterday Lane spoke at a memorial service at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Speaking before America's most powerful media figures, Lane told a simple story about a man who loved and served Jesus Christ. It was a side of their colleague that many of them had never really known—a side scarcely mentioned in the voluminous media coverage of his death...
CLICK HERE for the rest of the thread
The speeches you never hear:
Hugh Hewitt on elite media's hostile mindset
Excerpt:
This is just another example of an alarming development: For many years now, the herd that is the elite media is developing a mindset both hostile to faith and intent on its silencing. Rarely, if ever, do voices from the community of the religious get a decent hearing, and bookers seem to work overtime to elevate the marginal and marginalize the mainstream. When enormously powerful statements are made about faith, such as the president's remarks or David Bloom's e-mail, they are shunted aside to the cable channels and they may not even see the light there.
This happens again and again. A couple of months ago, the National Security Adviser gave a wonderful address at the National Day of Prayer which addressed her faith and its origins. I played the entire speech and again my audience loved it.
I doubt you heard or read a word of it. Producers seem to have agreed that it couldn't be newsworthy because it addressed matters of faith.
Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my General Interest ping list!. . .don't be shy. 
Not surprised it wasn't reported in the general media, but I'm happy and proud that our President chose to include it in his tribute.
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