NewsBusters (conservative media watchdog group) is crying “tyranny of the minority” in the Washington Post’s and MSNBC’s coverage of Michael Newdow’s inauguration suit. The complaint? Not enough counterpoint.

In the NewsBusters piece, Colleen Raezler laments that WaPo’s (very short) article includes only one counterpoint. Of course the quote in question is the only independent analysis of the suit in the article (no neutral legal scholars for example) and it is characteristically dismissive and condescending:

Scott Walter, executive director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, called the lawsuit a “publicity stunt” in a statement yesterday. The Becket Fund promotes free expression of religion and has opposed Newdow’s Pledge of Allegiance efforts.

“Newdow’s lawsuit over the inauguration is a lot like the streaker at the Super Bowl: a pale, self-absorbed distraction. And anybody who looks at it carefully can see there’s not much there,” Walter said.

The MSNBC piece, meanwhile, is a tiny stub from a local affiliate; a quick wire-type piece not intended to be in depth or analytical. Much ado about nothing, but if course, righty organizations need to take all the shots they can at their cable bogeyman.

So I honestly don’t understand what Raezler’s problem is, unless of course she doesn’t like the story being covered at all. Perhaps she wants a true counterpoint based on the legal merits and shortcomings of the case. She cites Fox News and the Washington Examiner as good examples of coverage, though the Examiner’s piece merely has this quick dismissal, and it’s not exactly thorough:

Prof. Ron Allen, a constitutional law expert at Northwestern University,
disagrees.

“You can understand the impulse, it seems as though it’s a governmental
activity imbued with religious symbols and a certain sect of religious
symbols, Christian obviously, in particular,” Allen said. “No one thinks the
government is establishing a church by the president saying ’so help be God’
at his own initiative when taking the oath. I don’t think the courts will
intervene.”

The Fox News example is a long radio interview, not a small written piece, so there was plenty of time for explicit argument–very apples and oranges.

Counterpoint is important, of course, but eventually we have to remember Susan Jacoby:

Genuine fairness does not mean the kind of bogus objectivity that always locates truth equidistant from two points, but it does demand that divergent views be understood and taken into account in approaching public issues.

And the counterpoint to an event is not necessarily its denigration by an opposition, especially when the very culture in which the lawsuit emerges is a counterpoint (near universal theism). True counterpoint would not be raw insult, but a legal argument that took apart the merits of the case in question. That level of analysis is rare in any instance, be the event in question from the left or right.

Perhaps she would be happier with Lisa Richardson blogging for the LA Times:

But back to Newdow et al. If you don’t believe God exists, then why doesn’t it follow that phrases like “so help me God” have no meaning? And if that’s the case, then why does something meaningless matter? I have news for Newdow — even if he managed to bar all religious references from public life it wouldn’t matter. The Soviet Union tried that; all it did was send religious fervor underground until communism ended and it came roaring back. Besides, what would Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts be expected to do if Obama were to defy a ruling in Newdow’s favor, snatch away the Lincoln Bible and swat him on the hand?

Maybe it’s not fair to use this example; it’s an opinion piece, not a news article. But it is typical of the quick-draw, unthinking approach usually taken to atheist issues. It is also an amazing example of a writer managing to stuff several anti-atheism canards and clichés into one paragraph: alleged atheist nihilism, the Soviet Union/Stalinism, and the it’s-hopeless-so-why-bother-even-if-you’re-right dismissal.

Cross-post at Bloc Raisonneur: On atheists’ precarious place in American politics and culture.