Well, it’s official—I’m a Chicagoan once again after moving May 1 into a tiny studio (that’s smaller than my place in Manhattan!) just off Wilson Avenue on the northside.

I’m actually only about 10 blocks west of the old North Shore Church made nationally famous in the ’40s by preacher J. C. O’ Hair’s radio sermons. For those who don’t already know, my church, Shorewood Bible Church of Rolling Meadows, Ill., carries the legacy of North Shore, taking its name from both North Shore and the old Norwood Bible Church.

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All the news coverage the last few days on media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who’s offered an insane amount of money to add The Wall Street Journal to his portfolio, has shown me once again how the press can’t be trusted to give the complete story anymore.

In a biography from the ’90s called Murdoch, written by William Shawcross, the “colorful character” of today’s newspaper articles is equated to Satan by earlier journalistic peers, some of whom are quoted saying such things as:

“a pornographer . . . totally internationalist . . . never before had I seen evil so clearly expressed in a human face . . .” (p. 423)

“Rupert is here . . . Lucifer has come trailing smoke and sulfur.” (p. 361)

“I spent my time trying to convince the staff that Murdoch was not Satan.” (P. 215)

The Chicago Tribune once referred to Murdoch as “the Prince of Darkness.”

What I didn’t find mentioned in any of the Tribune articles, or in any of the coverage by The New York Times, is how Murdoch is owner of the exclusive printing rights to the Catholic-perverted New International Version of the Bible.

As author Gail Riplinger points out in her 1998 book, The Language of the King James Bible, “The liberal Los Angeles Times (Jan. 12, 1998) even questioned why the Pope would give Murdoch the honorary title ‘Knight Commander of St. Gregory,’ ‘since Murdoch’s News Corp. is known for sensational tabloid newspapers.’ St. Paul’s Pioneer Press (Jan. 3, 1998) explains that the Pope bestows the title on people who have ‘promoted the interests of the (Catholic) Church and have contributed heavily to church institutions.’ ”

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Speaking of my newspaper consumption this week (boy, have I missed reading a big-city paper!!!), here’s a great outtake from a Wednesday op-ed piece in the Times written by Mike White, a movie screenwriter in Los Angeles:

“The notion that ‘movies don’t kill people, lunatics kill people’ is liberating to us screenwriters because it permits us to give life to our most demented fantasies and put them on the big screen without any anxious hand-wringing. We all know there’s a lot of money to be made trafficking in blood and guts. Young males—the golden demographic movie-makers ceaselessly pursue—eat that gore up. What a relief to be told that how we earn that money may be in poor taste, but it’s not irresponsible. The average American teenage boy knows the difference between right and wrong and no twisted, sadistic movie is going to influence him.

“My own experience as a teenager tells me otherwise. For my friends and me, movies were a big influence on our clothes and our slang, and how we thought about and spoke to authority figures, our girlfriends and one another. Movies permeated our fantasy lives and our real lives in subtle and profound ways.”

Oh, how I wish I could clip and send this one to all my New York acquaintances/friends/co-workers who pooh-poohed me at the outset of the Harry Potter craze for even suggesting the cute Hogwarts wizard was warping the minds of children into worship of all things occultist.

We still haven’t seen the tip of the iceberg on the fallout from all of that, even as Universal Studios Florida draws up architectural plans for the likely construction of an entire Harry Potter area to their amusement park