Honesty

Ok, I'm more than a little upset about this, because things like this are wrecking the testimony of Christians on the internet.

Yesterday at about 6:30 pm, a satire piece was posted at Blogcritics. A pretty funny piece about President Bush mobilizing the Salvation Army to fight in Iraq. Clearly marked "Satire" at the top in big letters. Clearly someone else's work.

By this morning, the story had been picked up by The Christian Post. Now this isn't normally a big deal -- but the Post apparantly put their writer's name on the story, publishing it as an original work. The fact that they thought the story was true is incredibly funny; the fact that they effectively stole the piece from Blogcritics is far from funny.

The story has been removed from their site. No apology has been issued at all. They are pretending that it never happened.

Anyone who is familiar with Blogcritics will know exactly how this has been received there. Put it simply -- many of the folks there have no use for Christians at all, and a situation like this adds fuel to the fire. The original author is pointing out the fiasco here, including screen captures.

I'm calling on The Christian Post to issue an apology. An email to the original author would be appropriate, I think. A comment at the original posting would also be in order. Some sort of acknowledgement on their site would be appropriate also.

This kind of thing happens. But when Christians do it, and then ignore the consequences, it causes problems. The efforts of other Christians are compromised by a poor testemony like this.