MRC Press Release: Cold Case or Cold Heart? CBS Show that Maligned Christian Teens Exploits Amish During One-Year Anniversary of Nickel Mines Slaughter

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 4, 2007

CONTACT: COLLEEN O’BOYLE or TIM SCHEIDERER AT 703.683.5004

Cold Case or Cold Heart? CBS Show that Maligned Christian Teens Exploits Amish During One-Year Anniversary of Nickel Mines Slaughter
According to its Website, the CBS forensics drama Cold Case this Sunday will feature a plot about the murder of an Amish girl.

ALEXANDRIA, VA – “CBS’s timing is abysmal, given that this week marks the one-year anniversary of the massacre of five Amish girls and the wounding of five others in a Pennsylvania school on October 2, 2006,” said Robert Knight, Director of MRC’s Culture and Media Institute.

“The makers of Cold Case seem to have a fetish for linking Christians and murder,” Knight said. “Last Sunday, they smeared Bible-believing abstinence club teens as sex-obsessed, stone-throwing murderers. This Sunday, they’re offering up a plot about an Amish girl who is murdered while on ‘rumspringa,’ the period in which the Amish allow teens to explore worldly ways before committing to an Amish way of life.

“We’re not accusing the Cold Case makers of being insensitive,” Knight said. “We’re accusing them of acting hatefully toward religious believers. Regardless of how the plot unfolds this Sunday, they might have waited to run this piece another week. But heck, why wait? So what if the Amish are mourning? If you can make youth pastors out to be masturbating perverts and portray an abstinence club as a coven of stone-wielding murderers, as they did on September 30, why not run an Amish murder theme this week of all weeks?

“CBS still owes an apology to Christians, youth pastors, and abstinence educators for last week’s abominable program. After Sunday, they can add the Amish community for exploiting them for shock value,” Knight said.

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