Atheist Bus - Official Website » Journalism

Mary Kenny – FAIL!

Ariane — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:33:15 +0000

II: not dependent on facts, either

If Mary Kenny is a journalist, I am a brass rooster collector. (And I promise you, I’m not a brass rooster collector.) I didn’t think it was possible to get every single fact wrong in an article, but reading through Kenny’s latest piece in the Irish Independent is like playing a game of “spot the error”. I honestly think there’s one in every line, and it’s not a short piece:

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/atheist-bus-more-like-a-bandwagon–on-highway-to-hell-1550742.html

But it’s not just Kenny’s errors which are startling – it’s the way she attempts to equate atheism with all that is wrong with the UK, including child abuse, unforgivably using the tragic case of Baby P to generate emotion with no relevant context (Kenny has no evidence to suggest that his killers didn’t believe in God, or that their religious beliefs (or lack of them) were a factor in the case in any way).

In addition, Mary Kenny is a Roman Catholic, so she’s on very shaky ground indeed when writing about any link between religion and child abuse. Catholic priests, anyone? Magdalene Laundries? Kenny seriously believes the world would be a better place if we all believed in God. 9/11, Mary? Iraq? The Middle East? The Balkans? Northern Ireland?

You can write a letter to the editor of the Irish Independent here:

independent.letters {at} independent(.)ie

Here’s one from an atheist:

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/so-whos-really-intolerant-mary-1552011.html

News Round-Up 3

Jon - Webmanager — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:41:05 +0000

This is our second quick summary (first one here) of all of the press coverage the campaign has received so far. If you know of more then please post the links in the comments, or contact us.

Country	Publication	Link
UK	BBC Radio 4, Today	Link – 1.50 into programme
US	NBC	Link
Sweden	Dagen	Link
Italy	La 7	Link
Italy	Gazzetta di Parma	Link
Spain	El Mundo	Link
Spain (Catalunya)	El Periodico	Link
Spain	Publico	Link
Portugal	RTP	Link
Poland	Gazeta	Link
Poland	Onet	Link
South Africa	Dispatch	Link
Ireland	Irish Times	Link
UK	The Spoof (satire)	Link
Netherlands	Dagblad	Link
Italy	RAI	Link
Italy	La Stampa	Link

A Bit Like That Feeling Before Getting A Nightbus In London

Jon - Webmanager — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:49:14 +0000

It’s been a long day, you’ve worked hard and maybe had a beer or two somewhere and then you’re about to get a nightbus home in London. Welcome rest awaits soon, but you’re content looking back at the day.

That’s more or less how I’m feeling as the webmanager of atheistcampaign.org after this manic and brilliant first day of the campaign to get atheist ads on the buses. As I write more than £43000 has been donated, almost 8x the target, and that does not even include any match funding from Richard Dawkins. This website has received more than 15000 individual visitors today, even prompting the hosting firm to contact me to ask me what was going on with such a spike in traffic.

The campaign has been covered all over the place – BBC, ITN, Telegraph, Times – and more will surely await tomorrow. We’re also very thankful for all the messages we’ve received, and the bloggers that have written about the campaign – we’ll link to you just as soon as we get a moment.

Ariane and I are voluntarily giving up our time to run this website and campaign, so today marks the culmination of weeks of hard slog to pull everything together doing this alongside our regular work. It’s been very, very worthwhile, and I’m super grateful to everyone that has donated so far. I’ll log off for now and be back at it afresh tomorrow morning.