Manya Brachear is the Chicago Tribune’s faith issues reporter.

Early last year, just after Sen. Barack Obama announced his presidential bid, Ms. Brachear helped write an article which had the unfortunate effect of promoting a fringe view that completely misrepresented the now-well known Trinity United Church of Christ. In other words, Ms. Brachear unwittingly helped a bunch of partisan Obama opponents info-pimp their misinformation campaign, an effort that (given the amount of explanatory information available with a 0.21 second Google search) can only be described as an intentional attempt at distorting Trinity’s beliefs and deliberately working to foment discord against both Obama and his church.

That article’s title says all that needs be said:

Race is sensitive subtext in campaign
South Side church’s tenets spark criticism of Obama by some conservatives

With articles like that and others the traditional media inadvertantly helped bolster the conservative partisans’ efforts to paint Obama’s church as somehow “other” — illegitimate, racist, anti-American, …simply “wrong” according to their partisan politicking.

Trinity’s tenets didn’t “spark criticism”. Deliberate partisan attempts to misrepresent a theology with which many Americans were unfamiliar manufactured an info-pimped “controversy” where none, when all the facts are on the table, actually exists. But that theology — based on Christ’s own teaching found in Luke 4, Matthew 25, etc. — was in and of itself not at all wrong.

In later weeks and months conservative talker Sean Hannity (among many other conserv-o-partisans) subsequently labeled his church “separatist” and “segregated” while conservative WorldNetDaily columnist Erik Rush referred to it as a “cult” on Hannity’s FOX show. Whether Ms. Brachear cares to acknowledge it or not, that Trib article helped set the stage for such bullshit by lending the smears an air of legitimacy with the implication being “If the Chicago Tribune is covering some controversy over that church then it must be controversial….”

In that February 2007 article, Ms. Brachear and her Trib colleague quoted one Fran Eaton. Long-time Illinois conservative activist Ms. Eaton is well-known to readers of this blog as an ardent Obama Hater. She worked for Alan Keyes’ Senate campaign and had long opposed Sen. Obama before, from his State Senate days, and has continued to scratch and claw against him to this very day in anyway she can manage, even going so far as to label him “dangerous” at one point. She routinely writes and promotes misinformed and out-of-context bunk so long as it is detrimental to Sen. Obama (see here, here, here, here, here, and here, among other incidents).

Ms. Eaton herself was upset with Ms. Brachear reportage also. Instead of being pleased that Ms. Brachear was helping to promote Ms. Eaton’s intentional smears against this Christian church, Ms. Eaton was instead perturbed that out of a 45-minute interview only a few of her misrepresentations were quoted. Even though her mud-throwing was given quite the helping hand, Ms. Eaton’s partisan hatred for Obama left her still greedy for more.

Now, more than a year later, misrepresentations and out-of-context malarkey about Obama’s church and its recently retired pastor abound. CNN and the like cannot play the grainy half-quotes enough in their zeal for evermore manufactured controversy; distilling a 20 year career in the pulpit overseeing 70 ministries doing God’s Work down to a 30-second caricature to the point where CNN anchors are now boxing themselves into calling Jesus Christ Himself a communist…

And so Ms. Brachear has written another article and come half-circle from where she was 13 months ago. (I say only “half-circle” because full-circle would involve Ms. Brachear publicly recognizing her role in giving this vile falsification the air of legitimacy she did in the first place.)

In yesterday’s Trib, Ms. Brachear wrote of Trinity United Church of Christ’s efforts to battle against the smears and attacks with which it is being pummeled as both Clinton and conservative partisans work night and day to distort the church’s good works and many Christian deeds. Again, the headline says what needs be said:

Prayers to defend a legacy
Obama’s new pastor confronts media glare

In this newer article, we learn that the recently installed head pastor of Trinity, Rev. Otis Moss III, is now praying for guidance to combat against the negativity with which his fellow congregants are being bombarded. Unlike the often self-fulfilling martyrdom many conservatives complain of, Trinity’s faithful (along with many other UCC congregants) are legitimate modern-day martyrs being tossed by the Colliseum full of traditional media to a ravenous horde of partisans hellbent on destroying a presidential candidate and willing to literally destroy anyone and everyone associated with him.

Clearly, from this recent Brachear article these Trinity congregants recognize themselves as such (even if they don’t come right out and say it). These Christian men and women joyfully take on the calling of witnessing Christ’s true teachings to a wider audience as they simultaneously defend the Godly Work their many ministries do day in and day out in Chicago, around the nation and across the world.

And as for black liberation theology, these lines from the article goes a long way toward succinctly explaining it (even though a full article on the history and modern-day application of this application of faith — and the recent partisan-induced attacks against it — would go much further):

I’ve always found it to be so much hogwash that conservatives continuously rail against the media, falsely claiming there is some sort of “liberal” bias, and these two Brachear articles illustrate exactly why. The 2007 article served to give legitimacy to a purely partisan attack against a presidential candidate. This 2008 article has taken steps to acknowledge those attacks, but still leaves reasonable folks wanting further balanced investigation into the roots and applications of Christ’s teachings in this historic American church (among other traditionally African-American churches) and the rationale and effect of those partisans’ smears against these Christians.

Given that anyone can point to any selected number of factors — snipped quotes, studies cited, even voting records of reporters — it’s easy to create whatever “evidence” you want to declare the media to be this or that. The bottom line on most of the modern media seems to be not that the reporters are intentionally biased but that they have grown lazy — relying on partisan press releases, returning over and over to the same biased sources, or heading to Sen. McCain’s Sedona mansion for deep body massages and bbq bribes ribs.

And unfortunately this ongoing story on Sen. Obama’s Christian faith, now in all its myriad facets, appears no different. In their efforts to misrepresent Obama’s Christianity and delegitimize his faith by attacking his church and pastor partisans whose only goal is to defeat Obama are relying on the media’s limp-wristed efforts to be “fair and balanced” (which apparently excuses them from being thorough).

As Larry Handlin noted last year when these sorts of anti-Christian slime stories first started bubbling up out of the muck:

I have a lot of respect for many journalists and while I criticize the profession, I’m glad the good reporters are there for the very reasons Madigan cites, but too often we are dealing with freak show stories that shouldn’t even be in the media and the media reports on them because of the ‘controversy.’

What the media ought to focus on, difficult though it may be, is actually investigating the facts behind any partisan’s “criticisms” and claims lest the journalists continue down this river of laziness which, sadly, is likely playing a part in destroying their very livelihood.

(Tricky Dick Nixon was a big proponent of this so-called liberal media meme as the staunchly conservative Tribune and others went about publishing records of his and his campaign’s nefarious activities. Only in America could reporting the truth get you labeled with epithets… which, I suppose, is better than other countries where it gets you imprisoned or worse. I digress.)