Wednesday, June 23, 2010

More Lousy Reporting from Mirko Petricevic

Mirko Petricevic, the religion reporter for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, is at it again.

I previously criticized his coverage of a local creationist group. I pointed out that Petricevic -- unlike a good reporter -- never asks any hard questions of believers. Instead, his "reporting" is mostly just taking dictation.

Now he's got an article about the local Christian Science church, and he's employing exactly the same modus operandi: local believers are allowed to prattle on, and not a single skeptical word in the entire article.

Reading it, you would never know that there is no good evidence that prayer works to heal people of diseases. Nor would you know that Christian Science practitioners have been implicated in dozens of cases of medical neglect, where simple and safe treatment could have saved lives.

This is not just shoddy journalism, it's morally culpable.

1 comment:

crf said...

I searched the reporter, and one the results was a twitter from him that he's leaving the religion beat at his paper.

So perhaps this is his parting shot.