The Da Vinci Spin?
On Sunday I stumbled upon a story in the Toronto Star by the paper’s faith and ethics reporter, Stuart Laidlaw, titled Christ’s tomb found?
Talk about an attention-grabbing headline. It struck me as something you’d see in the tabloid racks at your local grocery store. But this was the Star, so I read on.
The article reported how documentary director Simcha Jacobovici and Titanic director James Cameron planned to shake the Christian world to its core by revealing that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a son, Judah, and that they had evidence of it in the form of the ossuaries in which Christ’s family was buried.
My first reaction was ‘wow.’ But this was soon tempered by my urge to verify the nuances of the story by looking at other sources.
I used Google News to source other stories dealing with the same issue. I found an article in an Israeli e-zine, Ynetnews, titled ‘Jesus’ burial site discovery is just PR spin. This article took another approach to the story by reporting the view of a dissenting Israeli archeologist, Professor Amos Kloner.
Even though the Star article did mention Kloner and even quoted him, it’s interesting to see the different impressions that each article leaves — or attempts to leave — on the reader. The Star’s article gives you the impression there is good chance the tomb of Christ has been found. However, the Ynetnews article gives you the impression it’s all just a hyped-up marketing ploy designed to promote a documentary.
This is an excellent example of why it’s important to monitor the media and not just assume everyone will report the news in the same way.
I’ll be interested to see what comes out of Jacobovici and Cameron’s much anticipated news conference revealing some of the findings. Whatever the truth may be, their timing is impeccable. Not only is The Da Vinci Code still fresh in people’s minds, I also noticed chocolate Easter bunnies being neatly stacked at our local grocer.
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