The recent coverage of the life and death of Richard Mellon Scaife, a transformational figure in recent American history, was pretty underwhelming.
(Fortunately, our own Bill Berkowitz provided some alternative critical perspectives.) The situation was reminiscent of the truly horrible coverage of the life and death of Sun Myung Moon two years ago. It is worth recalling how quickly we forget. -- FC
The reporting and punditry in the wake of the death of Sun Myung Moon left a lot to be desired. Even long, seemingly comprehensive treatments of Moon's life and empire, such as the one that ran in The New York Times, did not delve deeply into Moon's profound far right and criminal involvements; antidemocratic politics; or even the mysterious sources of foreign cash for The Washington Times, and extensive political operations in the U.S. for decades, let alone the Moon organization's broad, insidious affects on American culture and democracy. There has also been some embarrassingly credulous material published about the nature of life in the Church itself, and some odd, unsubstantiated
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