"This is Africa we are talking about. An entire continent that is filled with tribes and small villages that at least at one time, were ruled by witchdoctors. "

"This is Africa we are talking about. An entire continent that is filled with tribes and small villages that at least at one time, were ruled by witchdoctors. " Woah, woah, woah, hold your horses there, fella. I grew up in Africa and whilst I am a member of a tribe, I did not grow up in a small village governed by the friendly local witchdoctor. And no, most Africans do not use witchdoctors as their HMOs either. The trope that Africa is what you see on the Discovery channel is something that I, and a lot of my African friends, find somewhat irritating. It would be like showing video of a couple cowboys in Montana and playing it over and over to a non-American audience as definitive proof of what life in America is like for the average American. Yes, the video will represent what life is like for a group of Americans so it is true(-ish) but not close to being representative for the average American and so definitely paints a misleading picture. As for the original issue of witch burning, I do agree with you that the idea of mainline churches in America promoting witch burning in Africa is ludicrous. Would it be possible to find one example of an American missionary doing this? Probably. But it would be a real stretch to say this would be acceptable to any church other than a very, very, very fringe group. Kind of like how the Westboro Baptist Church gets outsized media attention but no one seems to mention that the "church" consists pretty much entirely of just the family members of one kooky guy. One media pro tip I found that works. Whenever you see a story with the format <person/group I know very little about / don't really have positive feelings for> did/said <something outrageous, 6σ deviation from normal behavior>, dig a little below the headlines and quite often you will find (a) it didn't happen the way the headline purported it did or (b) there is some context or reasonable viewpoint that shows what happened is not quite as outrageous as it appears. For example, there is this NPR story about a woman suing her 12 year old nephew for $100k because he broke her wrist whilst jumping into her arms when greeting her as she arrived at his birthday party (http://www.npr.org/2015/10/14/448544919/woman-sues-nephew-for-127-000-over-her-broken-wrist http://www.npr.org/2015/10/14/448544919/woman-sues-nephew-fo...). Your first thought will likely be "holy cow, what kind of monster would do such a thing. Where's my pitchfork?" Then you read the follow-up from CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/13/us/aunt-nephew-lawsuit/ http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/13/us/aunt-nephew-lawsuit/) which explains that in Connecticut, where the incident took place, you can only sue individuals and so for her to get paid by the parent's homeowners' insurance, she had to name the nephew on the lawsuit and in fact, the boy and his family were supportive of her lawsuit. News media is broken. The news has always had an element of info-tainment but our nature as an audience is driving the media to focus more on the entertainment side of news and so we are being led down this path where stories cater more to our need to stroke our biases and encourage us to pat ourselves on the back for being good and better than "those" people