Barbara Bradley Hagerty does it again, unfortunately

by Massimo Pigliucci

I’m really getting irritated with NPR reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty. Recently I wrote about her inane piece on miracles, after which I found out that she wrote a book entitled Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality (oh boy), and that — to no one’s surprise — she has been awarded a fellowship by the infamous Templeton Foundation as part of their Journalism Programme in Science & Religion. And now she’s done it again. On Saturday, May 7, she broadcasted an incredibly uncritical and uninformative piece on people who are predicting the end of the world (coming soon: May 21!). Let me give you a taste of the piece, then I’ll comment on why this is the sort of garbage I expect from Faux News, not NPR.

Hagerty starts out by featuring two poor deluded fellows from New Jersey, Brian Haubert, a 33-year-old actuary, and Kevin Brown, the owner of a nutrition and wellness business. We find them handing out pamphlets and trying to convince people that Judgment Day is around the corner. Their prediction is pretty specific:

“[On May 21] starting in the Pacific Rim at around the 6 p.m. local time hour, in each time zone, there will be a great earthquake, such as has never been in the history of the Earth.” This will result in the “rapture” of “true” Christians, while the rest of us will await behind for another 153 days, after which “the entire universe and planet Earth will be destroyed forever.” All right, then, time to convert and pack, not necessarily in that order.

How do these people know any of this? Naturally, because it says so in the Bible, even though theologians and most other (apparently “not true”) Christians disagree. Hagerty puts it this way, talking about Haubert: “Noah's flood to May 21, 2011, is exactly 7,000 years. Revelations like this have changed his life.” Well, he ought to know, he is an actuary, must be good with numbers.

Of course, doomsday predictions aren’t new (and guess what? They have all failed!), but apparently the latest craze was inspired by Harold Camping, the 89-year old founder of the Family Radio network (because as is well known, non-fundies really really hate families). Hagerty reports — without comment, of course — that scores of people have given up their jobs and their families to follow this crazy son of a gun, who’ll likely be dead before too many of his followers can get really upset at the bullshit he pulled on them.

Bradley features one such poor soul, 27-year old Adrienne Martinez, who listened to Family Radio with her husband and decided to quit everything and just wait out the end of the world in a rented place in Florida. And here’s the kicker: they budgeted things so that their money will run out on May 21, despite the fact that they have a 2-year old daughter and that Adrienne is pregnant. Oh well, the baby is due in June, after the Rapture (do they have good health care in heaven? One can’t help but wonder).

Now, as it turns out (surprise, surprise!) Family Radio’s Camping had already predicted the end of the world, for September 6, 1994. As you might recall, it didn’t happen. His excuse? Well, he hadn’t managed to finish reading Jeremiah, because, you know, it’s a big book (and one that to a large extent is concerned precisely with the end of time). Wait, he didn’t do his fracking homework and still went on the air and told the world to prepare for the end? Can we sue him for theological malpractice?

That’s it, that’s all Bradley says in her piece. Now, should journalists not cover end-of-time stories? Or stories about miracles? Of course they should. But they should also put them in perspective: explain to their readers or listeners that most sane people don’t actually believe these things. That faith in miracles undermines trust in science and medicine, and that faith in the coming end of the world can seriously hamper your retirement plans, not to mention the college savings for your children. (Here’s is a free idea to Hagerty for a follow-up story: go back and interview the same people on May 22. That ought to be, ahem, informative.)

Superstition hurts and kills, it is no joke. And serious journalism should at least try to put these human stories in a proper (i.e., sane) perspective. But I suspect if you do that, you won’t be getting much funding from the Templeton Foundation, nor would you be able to sell books about your “spiritual evolution.” Barbara, NPR, please, you really owe us something better than this.