Media watchdogs contend ABC hurled religious insults in its coverage of death number 3,000 in the Iraq war by suggesting a comforting reference to the afterlife was an error.
Dustin Donica, the 3,000th fallen soldier, left behind a MySpace page that his friends have used to post their condolences to his family. ABC News featured one comment from that page that read, "All my love and prayers go to your family, and I’ll see you again." But the network added the editorial remark "sic" after the comment -- indicating, "There was a mistake made here, but we didn't make it; the author did."
Mark Finkelstein of NewsBusters said the inclusions of "sic" would seem to indicate ABC has a problem with anyone’s belief in an afterlife.
"It was very clear that this was a religiously inspired message -- that the friend was expressing a traditional belief in the afterlife, and that he would see Dustin again in heaven," he said. "But apparently the notion that somebody could believe in heaven seemed so odd or potentially erroneous to ABC that they felt it called for their editorial ‘sic.’"
ABC told Family News in Focus it’s just a big mistake. A spokesman said the original posting left out the apostrophe in the contraction "I’ll" -- so the "sic" referred to that omission. The network corrected the word but said it mistakenly left in the editorial comment.
Finkelstein said that’s a plausible explanation, but added that the mainstream media’s history of hostility toward traditional beliefs leaves him skeptical.
