Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
A passenger who just stepped off the stranded Carnival Cruise ship was in the process of quoting the Scipture that kept her going when an NBC correspondent quickly whipped the mike away and refused to let her finish.
Newsbusters is reporting that the interview occurred late Thursday evening as Carnival Cruise passengers were disembarking their crippled vessel in Mobile, Alabama.
NBC reporter Mark Potter quickly intercepted two passengers, Brittany Ferguson and Kendall Jenkins to interview.
“It sounded like you guys handled it pretty well,” Potter said to the passengers. “Were there some passengers who seemed to have a really rough time on board?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Ferguson said. ” . . . (I)t was just really frustrating. There’s rumors going around because we’re completely disconnected. We had no idea if like, ‘Oh my gosh, do people even miss us? Do people even know about this?’”
When the Cruise line offered people credit for the cruise, Ferguson and Jenkins were not among the takers.
“Absolutely not,” Jenkins said. “We’re thinking about teaming up and selling our [tickets]. So if anyone is looking for a discounted cruise, we got one.”
He added, ” . . . (B)ut one thing I do want to say that really made a huge difference in my time versus some other people’s time is we knew where hope was. We knew the Lord was in complete control of the situation. Our verse for the trip was Joshua 1:9 which is…”
At that moment, the NBC reporter took the microphone away and abruptly ended the interview.
Just before walking away, Jenkins said: “Joshua 1:9, look that up.”
At almost the same time, Fox News was also interviewing disembarking passengers and handled a similar situation in a much different way. In this case, the reporter interviewed a young family who spoke about how the Lord worked to calm their fears during a prayer meeting. They were reading verses from the Bible when they came to Psalm 55 – “Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you.”
” . . . (A)fter that we had a peace,” the mother of the family said. “The Lord gave us a peace that was like no other. And I’m thankful that he protected us.”
Instead of cutting her off, the Fox reporter then asked the daughter which of the Bible verses brought her the most comfort.
“I think the one it was, ‘When I am afraid, I will trust in thee’,” the girl said.
These two incidents are a graphic example of the stark difference in the way news is covered in the U.S. Even though a majority of the population professes Christian beliefs, one of the largest mainstream media outlets in the country sacrificed accurate reporting on the altar of political correctness.
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