{"id":3464,"date":"2006-04-02T13:33:21","date_gmt":"2006-04-02T13:33:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/prophet-motive.html"},"modified":"2006-04-02T13:33:21","modified_gmt":"2006-04-02T13:33:21","slug":"prophet-motive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/prophet-motive.html","title":{"rendered":"Prophet Motive"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is a few weeks old, but it just showed up in our local paper today: A WSJ piece on Sony’s tactics for "avoiding" controversy with DVC<\/a><\/p>\n

(Whether or not they really want <\/em>to avoid controversy is a question that is unasked and unanswered. Personally, I’m thinking…no.)<\/p>\n

The article misses something important. The reason for hiring Grace Hill Media to market this film to the Christian community is not <\/em>to "avoid controversy." It’s to…market the film to the Christian community. It’s to generate just the right amount of the right kind of controversy and to make people who are on the other side of the DVC assertions that they really need to see this movie in order to "enter the dialogue."<\/p>\n

(Here’s the answer to that.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Sales. Profit. $$$$$. That’s the reason Sony’s hired all of these folks. Not only to direct the conversation but to convince doubters that they’ll be missing out on something if they don’t enter this cultural moment by buying tickets to see The Da Vinci Code.<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article is a few weeks old, but it just showed up in our local paper today: A WSJ piece on Sony’s tactics for "avoiding" controversy with DVC (Whether or not they really want to avoid controversy is a question that is unasked and unanswered. Personally, I’m thinking…no.) The article misses something important. The reason…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nProphet Motive - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/prophet-motive.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prophet Motive - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This article is a few weeks old, but it just showed up in our local paper today: A WSJ piece on Sony’s tactics for "avoiding" controversy with DVC (Whether or not they really want to avoid controversy is a question that is unasked and unanswered. 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The reason…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/prophet-motive.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-04-02T13:33:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Prophet Motive - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/prophet-motive.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Prophet Motive - Via Media","og_description":"This article is a few weeks old, but it just showed up in our local paper today: A WSJ piece on Sony’s tactics for "avoiding" controversy with DVC (Whether or not they really want to avoid controversy is a question that is unasked and unanswered. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}