Hagiography

Hagiography - Mass media has a way of either deifying or vilifying people, often in a way that defies the balanced reality of the subject being discussed. For example, often when someone is the victim of a serious crime, in the media, their families' tend to remember them only in saintly terms. Recently there was an article in the media in which the famous journalist Glenn Greenwald called the NBC news anchor Brian Williams a "top hagiographer". In modern usage hagiography is the practice of describing someone in unrealistically glowing terms, eliminating all negatives from the chronical of the subject's life. Historically, hagiography began as the literal means by which the lives of canonized people were written about in purely saintly terms.