Televangelist Jim Bakker died Monday at 86, one week after burying his sister — and the secular press wasted no time defining him by his worst chapter.
Bakker's wife Lori announced his death online. "For 66 years, Jim gave his life to preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ," she wrote. "He was a pioneer of Christian television, but to me, he was my husband, my best friend." His cause of death has not been disclosed.
The man who built "The PTL Club" into a nightly draw of 13 million viewers and launched the Heritage USA theme park lived his last days mourning his sister Donna Puckett, who died September 29 at 91. "Donna, thank you for loving me," Bakker wrote on Facebook. "Thank you for standing beside me through the years." Puckett had worked in PTL's accounting department and famously sobbed in court during Bakker's 1988 trial when asked if he posed a flight risk: "No way, no way," she said.
That loyalty stands in contrast to how the press covered his passing. NPR led its obituary by saying Bakker "lost it all over a sex scandal and financial crimes" and called his downfall "a fitting symbol of the greed and hypocrisy of the 1980s." The New York Post led with Bakker's personal grief — the sister who stood by him — while still reporting the scandal facts.
Both outlets report the same core events. In 1987, a $279,000 hush-money payment to church secretary Jessica Hahn came to light. Hahn accused Bakker of raping her in 1980; Bakker admitted to the sexual encounter but insisted it was consensual. He resigned from PTL; Jerry Falwell took over. A federal investigation into PTL's finances — which had funded multiple homes, a jet, and Rolls-Royces — produced indictments for mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy. Bakker was convicted and sentenced to 45 years, later reduced to eight. Tammy Faye divorced him in 1992 while he was imprisoned.
What NPR buries is everything that came after. Bakker married Lori in 1998. In 2003, they launched "The Jim Bakker Show" near Branson, Missouri, broadcasting for over two decades. He suffered a stroke in 2020 but continued in ministry. The redemption arc gets a sentence; the scandal gets paragraphs.
This is how the press treats Christian leaders who fall: defined forever by the fall. The same institutional media that moralizes about Bakker's financial crimes has its own ledgers — foreign lobbying dollars that shape coverage, think-tank funding that manufactures consensus, revolving-door arrangements between government and the industries they regulate. Those stories rarely get the same treatment.
Bakker's sins were real. The conviction stands. The allegation from Hahn stands. But a man who preached for 66 years, who rebuilt after prison, who died days after thanking his sister for never leaving his side — that man was more than his worst moment. The secular press just can't see it, because redemption is a concept they refuse to understand.
The question isn't whether the press can report the scandal. It's whether they can report anything else.
