"Increasingly," Chase added at a national news conference, "millions of U.S. Christians have grown weary of having their more-inclusive, more-progressive values silenced." Chase bases his comments on a survey of the three network programs over the past 8 years, conducted by Media Matters for America. Chase now operates a web site, Accessible Airwaves, to urge the networks to include more mainstream religious views.  

The UCC's complaint that the networks are silencing mainstream religious voices does not stop there. They are also having trouble with the advertising departments of the networks. The church is currently engaged in a multiyear outreach campaign that includes television advertising. But unless you have cable you won't get to see their new ad -- because the networks won't run them. The ads are part of a $1.5 ad buy that begins on April 3 on a dozen cable networks including CNN, A&E and the Discovery Channel, and in Spanish on the Teledmundo and Univision networks. But ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX, reports Religion News Service, deemed them "too controversial."

"The 30-second "Ejector" ad features several people -- a black woman, a gay couple, a Middle Eastern man, an elderly man in a walker -- who are ejected from their church pews. "God doesn't reject people," the ad says. "Neither do we." The new ad, which cost about $1.5 million to make, will debut on April 3, but not on ABC, NBC, CBS or Fox. The three networks rejected the commercial as an inappropriate "advocacy" ad because of its references to homosexuality, race and ethnicity. Last year, the networks rejected a similar ad featuring bouncers behind a velvet rope keeping various people out of a church. "The message of the commercial is simple," the Rev. John Thomas, the UCC's general minister and president, said Monday (March 27). "No matter who you are, or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here at the United Church of Christ." Thomas said he found it "odd and bewildering" that the ads would be rejected.

Chase says that the exclusion of mainstream religious perspectives in the news media is a "trend we have been witnessing for decades."

When the UCC first sought to buy TV ad time at CBS in 2004 in the run up to Christmas, the network claimed that they could not run the ad because it conflicted with the White House view on same sex marriage. As Pastordan recounts at Street Prophets, the official CBS statement on the rejection read in part:

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations, and the fact that the executive branch has recently proposed a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast..."

I suppose this kind of calculus may go on all the time behind the scenes -- but I had never before heard of a broadcast television network publicly stating that they make their advertising decisions in deference to what the current occupants of the White House might think.

Meanwhile ABC, citing a policy of not accepting religious ads in response to the UCC's first ad buy, then turned around and accepted ads from James Dobson's Focus on the Family. At same time, ABC was incorporating also Focus on the Family's child-rearing dogma into a major network program. "The show was all about Focus on the Family principles," according to Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family regarding the prime time ABC feature "Supernanny."

Max Blumenthal told the whole