Talk:Ted Baehr

message: *The controversy was my starting point for researching the article. If there are significant parts of Dr. Baehr's career which have been omitted, then you (or anyone else) is invited to contribute to the article.
*As for the statement, "It is evident that the CFTC's mission of advocating for Christian-friendly movies affects the objectivity of its analyses." I believe this to be a statement of fact drawn from the almost ludicrous analytical shortcomings of the CFTC's annual "Report". I restrained myself from expounding further on those shortcomings because they did not pertain to a biographical article. I stand by my statement as an objective conclusion, but again, other editors are welcome to edit.
*Yes, I am biased against Baehr's "research". He is an ideologue trying to pass off the junkiest of junk science. The "analytical" technique of the CFTC report is a much better example of "pure editorializing born of bias and predisposition." than this article. That said, I did endeavor to present factual material with as little POV as I could manage. Again, other editors are welcome to edit.
*Please correct any spelling errors which I have overlooked. Consider contributing to articles rather than merely complaining about them. And also, it is considered good etiquette to sign your posts on discussion pages. Dystopos 18:31, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Editor's Response

message: I did some math. I took the 20 films mentioned as in the report as having either "strong moral messages" or "promoting anti-moral agendas" and researched their gross domestic box office receipts and their estimated budgets. For several of the "low budget" films no estimate was available through IMDB.com or Box Office Mojo, so I plugged in an arbitrary amount of $2.5 million (which is probably high). The gross box office for the moral films listed was $1,330,814,365, minus an investment of $651,000,000, yields $679,814,365, or $1.04 return for each dollar invested. Performing the same calculation on the "anti-moral" list gives a gross figure of $365,452,473 and a combined budget of $170,300,000 for a net profit of $195,152,473 or $1.15 per dollar invested. Using only the films highlighted in the report, one could draw the conclusion that Hollywood UNDERINVESTS in anti-moral movies and that the public, given the chance, supports these films at a higher rate of return than films with "strong moral messages"
Of course there are a lot of holes in my methodology. The success of "The Passion of the Christ" made 2004 an exceptional year for Christian-friendly film. The calculation of "moral value" for these films is itself suspect. I am a Christian and I have read the Bible more than once. I see more sound biblical messages in anti-capitalist films like "The Motorcycle Diaries" and "The Corporation" than I see in "National Treasure" or "The Aviator". Moral judgments notwithstanding, the report omits six of the top ten grossing films of 2004 (Shrek 2, Meet the Fockers, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Bourne Supremacy, The Polar Express, and Shark Tale) while ferreting out minor films for inclusion on the "anti-moral" list.
Conclusion: The premise that a box-office analysis indicates that Americans prefer movies with "worldviews" that Baehr considers moral is hooey. The CFTC reports are not analysis, they are propaganda to support an avowedly pre-ordained ministerial message. Dystopos 23:57, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Box Office Analysis

message: Thank you for so openly admitting your biases. They certainly seem strong in a number of arenas, and I will definately take up your offer to edit and elaborate on the piece.
I will change any remaining spelling errors. There's no reason to get touchy about this. I think we're all working together to develop a stronger and stronger resource in Wikipedia. I think we're all trying to "contribute."
Forgive me for not signing my tag to my opening comment. Again, I am a new user here, so I hope you'll forgive any oversight of etiquette.
javascript:insertTags('--Highbrowcow 22:56, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wow. 

message: Most of the first section of this article was drawn from Baehr's published biography .  One paragraph from that biography states:
:During his tenure at the University, Baehr worked closely on communications with academia, researching the impact of the media in education. The subject became a primary topic at the Annenberg Conference on Communication at Temple University, where Baehr received national recognition.
In following up on this information (so a citation of the published proceedings could be listed here) I was unable to find any conference by that name. Temple University did sponsor annual "International Conferences on Culture and Communication" since the mid-1970's. I contacted the organizer who told me that selected proceedings from those conferences were published (in house as "Working Papers
in Culture and Communication"), but Baehr's research was not among the published work. Furthermore, the conferences at Temple were not supported by the Annenberg School (at neighboring U. Penn) and were national only in the sense that invitations for participation went out nationally. There was no national publication or press covering these events. Therefore I have removed mention of this conference from this article pending verification by others. Dystopos 03:25, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biography 

message: I haven't been on Wikipedia in forever and never got a chance to rework the article to minimize your admitted non-neutral perspective. I'm making some changes.
I'm going to expand the article and cut some of the perspective elements: "It's obvious that Baehr's opinion affects the objectivity of his analysis" and the jabs against FOXnews, etc.
javascript:insertTags('--Highbrowcow 9 July 2005 18:53 (UTC)',,);
*For the record, I have admitted that my personal perspective is not neutral, but I have not admitted that my contributions to this article are non-neutral. Nor are they the last word, as your participation demonstrates. Welcome aboard. Dystopos 01:44, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editing Changes 

message: The following changes were made to the above Biography section by Mretb. The remainder of the section was deleted. I have restored the above section and reproduced the changes here as a record of Mretb's contribution. The original text is in black, and Mretb's edits are in bold red.
:During his tenure as President of the Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation, Baehr worked closely on communications with academia, researching the impact of the media in education. The subject became a primary topic on his talk on Televison and Realtiy[sic] at the April 9, 1981 Conference on Culture and Communication convened by Dr. Stewart Hoover at Temple University, where Baehr received national recognition.
:Baehr's research was published by the Episcopal Radio-TV foundartion[sic].
*comment. Baehr's biography at mediawisefamily.com reads as I have quoted it. In the future, please do not edit other people's comments on discuss pages. (See Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines for more information.) Dystopos 02:33, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update on Bio 

message: * David Neff, editor of Christianity Today has responded specifically to the question of whether a retraction of Allen's article was issued by the magazine:
In its May 2004 issue, CT printed in its “Readers Write” department a letter from Pat Boone defending Ted Baehr against allegations in the March 2004 article that was cited by the Wikipedia editor. In the same issue, we published a one-page response to the article by the editorial staff of Ted Baehr’s Movieguide. In the editor’s note introducing that response, we explained that CT stood by its report and continued to be concerned about the conflict-of-interest issues raised in it.CT never published any retraction. It did, however, on advice of its attorney, remove from the web the electronic version of the article’s sidebar, which dealt with the conflict of interest questions. Perhaps that is what the source of the Wikipedia article intended by the word “retraction.”David Neff • editor & vice-president
I have therefore removed reference to a "retraction issued within three months" from this article. --Dystopos 21:43, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: CT did not issue a retraction

message: *There's a conflation of ideas in this section. To my knowledge, Movieguide has never chosen films based on box office. Movieguide chooses films based on their moral content. Year and year again, moral movies happen to also be good perfomers at the box office (a fact which is not odd considering you can sell 6 tickets to a family for a family film, and only 1 or 2 tickets to a niche group (a teenager, etc.) for a non-family film). 
Additionally, this section implies that bad performers alone are calculated into the annual report to the industry. This is equally untrue. All 250-300 films released on the big-screen in a calander year are calculated into the annual report (inluding your group of '5 out of 6') and the numbers still come out in Movieguide's favor.
**Also, King Kong was not one of the top six performers for 2005. The sixth best performing film in 2005 was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at $206,459,076. King Kong came in at number 13 with $174,559,825.
* I was using the "2005 Domestic Grosses" from this site, which lists King Kong at number 5 with a gross of $218,080,025. It would be appropriate to use whatever source is used by Movieguide, so if King Kong is 13th by that accounting, that's fine - we would just need to cite the source.
:As to the point at hand, I was under the impression that Movieguides calculations only factored in the movies cited. It may be informative to better summarize their method. Is there a way for me to get a copy of the full report without paying the $40 subscription? My local public library does not carry Movieguide.
:But truly, It is not our place to criticize or re-analyze CFTVC's methodology here, except as such criticism may be reported by others. If you feel that the entire section should be deleted, or replaced by a much shorter summary, I will consent. --Dystopos 15:55, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: 5 of the 6

message: *This page seems to be a conflation of two topics: 1) Ted Baehr and 2) the CFTVC. While CFTVC seems to be by far the central participant in this topic, Ted Baehr is still listed as the article's focus. In the interest of clarity and consistency (and integrity?), the article should be renamed or divided in two, no?--70.38.144.49 15:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Conflated Page

message: *The phrase you keep deleting about "yellow journalism" is a part of Pat Boone's accusation. Pleasant or not, does it not have as much "right" to page-space as the comment by some unkown ethicist in Tennessee?
**Both items appeared in-print in CT.
** In my editorial opinion it is Boone's right to use inflammatory language, but it is not Wikipedia's responsibility to repeat it. --Dystopos 16:00, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Yellow Journalism

message: His views on the movie V for Vendetta are wrong. He isn't Christian. V for Vendetta is a film based on a graphic novel which has a underlying message FOR freedom, which is approved by Christianity. --69.67.234.220 20:24, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  V for Vendetta 

message: I am new to Wikipedia and did some editing on this page to fill out, include more career information, and add in accomplishments.  I see that page is flagged today, but after reading through the page don't see what "peacock" language is used or where the tone is incorrect.  Would whoever posted those warnings please explain where the article should be improved so that the corrections can be made and the flags removed?  Otherwise, I'd like to remove them. Thank you.14Truth (talk) 19:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: * On the point about "rebuttal", Christianity Todays editor specifically stated that "CT stood by its report and continued to be concerned about the conflict-of-interest issues raised in it." despite having removed the sidebar section from its online service. I don't think there's any need to draw a contrary conclusion about their editorial position. (see Talk:Ted Baehr#CT did not issue a retraction above) --Dystopos (talk) 21:36, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: *Indeed, but the heading is inappropriate. It implies that the controversy has been completely rebutted. Instead, the section heading should reflect the controversy itself, since that is what the thing is about primarily, not the rebuttal. Ironholds (talk) 21:49, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  *How about something like "Conflict of Interest Controversy:  Allegations and Rebuttals"?14Truth (talk) 22:12, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Not really, simply just "Claims of conflict of interest" would work fine. It doesn't say anything either way as to whether said claims are valid or not, which is perfect. The entire section also needs to be referenced - references in a WP:BLP are vital. Ironholds (talk) 23:26, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I went ahead and changed the section heading to read "Alleged conflicts of interest" which seems about as neutral as you can get. Also, note that the section makes use of references in the text rather than footnotes. If you prefer footnotes, feel free to apply them. --Dystopos (talk) 02:32, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

text: *I've re-written the section on the Awards and Report.  Please check tone, etc. and report any issues.14Truth (talk) 22:35, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: *Seems alright, although you need to use Baehr rather than, for example, Dr. Baehr. Ironholds (talk) 20:35, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: *Great.  I'm pulling the warnings down.  Please just let me know if there are any concerns and I'll go back to update and change.14Truth (talk) 22:01, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: *Righto, I'll give it a look over the weekend. Ironholds (talk) 06:33, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Guidance on Warnings? 

message: It seems surprising to me that this article isn't in :Category:American Christians or one of its subcategories, but then I noted the article itself doesn't state Baehr is Christian himself, only that he reviews films from a Christian perspective. Can anyone provide a source where he explicitly identifies himself as a Christian? If so, that category should be added to the article. Robofish (talk) 00:27, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: What's more, he's an evangelical. I've added a couple of references. Anyway, well spotted. StAnselm (talk) 01:02, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is he a Christian himself? 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Ted Baehr. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090717082101/http://www.templeton.org/prizes/ to http://www.templeton.org/prizes/
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:50, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Perhaps the section, "Movieguide and CFTVC" should be moved to its separate page? EomereofRohan (talk) 22:17, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: While that section is unreasonably large here, at least as it exists it is underreferenced for having its own article, in terms of meeting notability guidelines. --Nat Gertler (talk) 22:32, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: On moving "Movieguide"