Kellerism

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Washington Post Catholics vs. trans rights story summons up whopping sense of, yep, Deja Vu

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One of the benefits of having been among the first wave of Monty Python fans when the BBC comedy first hit these shores is that some of their skits, such as the one about Déjà Vu, hang around in the dim recesses of one's memory.

Then, a modern-day news article pops up to bring this to the forefront.

My thanks, then to the Washington Post for reminding me of a funny bit of comedic brilliance. Sad to say, brilliance is not the word that comes to mind when reading their recent report on a group of Roman Catholic business owners suing to block an Obama administration rule it claims would force Catholic doctors and hospitals to perform "gender reassignment" surgery in contravention of church teachings.

From the article:

Gay and transgender rights groups said the health rule offers critical protections for transgender people because they often struggle to receive appropriate care from physicians and hospitals.
“What the rule says is if you provide a particular service to anybody, you can’t refuse to provide it to anyone,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign. That means a transgender person who shows up at an emergency room with something as basic as a twisted ankle cannot be denied care, as sometimes happens, Warbelow said. That also means if a doctor provides breast reconstruction surgery or hormone therapy, those services cannot be denied to transgender patients seeking them for gender dysphoria, she said.

To its credit, the Post doesn't introduce the pro-directive side until the fifth paragraph, but the HRC attorney gets to share their viewpoint before the Catholic side gets its spokesman heard.

Couple that with a photo of trans-rights protestors leading the online version, and it's not difficult to imagine a soupçon of "Kellerism" (click here for more on this GetReligion term) had jumped on the Amtrak Acela express train from the Manhattan quarters of The New York Times to drop in on the Post's offices.


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That cushy Bart Campolo profile: Why weren't the tough, logical questions asked?

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A lot of folks are talking about a piece in the New York Times Magazine that profiles Bart Campolo, the born-again atheist son Tony Campolo, famous progressive evangelical activist and media-friendly buddy of President Bill Clinton.

This is a very readable, albeit totally non-critical, look at a new spokesman for a growing movement that is linked to the whole coalition of atheists, agnostics, religiously unaffiliated "nones" and the old religious left.

The writer, Mark Oppenheimer, wrote the “Beliefs” column for the Times for six years, at which point he did his own exit interview this past summer. (The most astonishing thing in that interview was his remark that he’s paid $3/word for his freelance work. Maybe .00001 percent of all freelancers get paid sums like that).  

Oppenheimer also did a Q&A with GetReligion back in 2012. The bottom line is that he is a brilliant columnist and magazine-style writer. Those looking for hard-news content are going to be frustrated.

The Campolo article begins with a long intro about a bike accident he had in the summer of 2011 and then:

For most of his life, Campolo had gone from success to success. His father, Tony, was one of the most important evangelical Christian preachers of the last 50 years, a prolific author and an erstwhile spiritual adviser to Bill Clinton. The younger Campolo had developed a reputation of his own, running successful inner-city missions in Philadelphia and Ohio and traveling widely as a guest preacher. An extreme extrovert, he was brilliant before a crowd and also at ease in private conversations, connecting with everyone from country-club suburbanites to the destitute souls he often fed in his own house. He was a role model for younger Christians looking to move beyond the culture wars over abortion or homosexuality and get back to Jesus’ original teachings. Now, lying in a hospital bed, he wasn’t sure what he believed any more.

After the accident:


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'Twas the week before Christmas and all through The New York Times, the Kellerisms were ...

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If there's a cliché we might do better without, it could be the phrase "War on Christmas." As we head out of cultural Christmas and into the actual 12 days of the Christmas season, let's reflect on that just a bit.

Actually, The New York Times and I might agree about that cliche thing. Of course, the difference is that my opinion is expressed here as a blogger. The Times, on the other hand, puts its position forward in a news article. (And while I write this on the Third Day of Christmas, it's still worth looking back a bit, I believe, as we brace for next year.)

Such an adherence to Kellerism -- the journalism "doctrine" that editors at the Times know who is right and who is not on moral, cultural and religious issues -- isn't surprising. Coming a few days after top Times editor Dean Baquet admitted his reporters "don't get" issues of religion, however, it is a bit of a chin-scratch: Do editors over there, you know, talk to each other?

Here we go:

The idea of a “War on Christmas” has turned things like holiday greetings and decorations into potentially divisive political statements. People who believe Christmas is under attack point to inclusive phrases like “Happy Holidays” as (liberal) insults to Christianity.
For over a decade, these debates have taken place mainly on conservative talk radio and cable programs. But this year they also burst onto a much grander stage: the presidential election.
At a rally in Wisconsin last week, Donald J. Trump stood in front of a line of Christmas trees and repeated a campaign-trail staple.

(Along with the whole talking-to-each-other thing, I also wonder if it is now standard operating procedure for each and every Times article on controversial subjects to have a mandated reference to the soon-coming 45th President of the United States, one Donald J. Trump. If so, it's gonna be a long four years, I'm guessing.)


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Words to think about: Al Mohler asks who has the power to define 'truth' in this media age

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During the days since The Washington Post published religion-beat pro Sarah Pulliam Bailey's much discussed essay, "Evangelicals, your attacks on ‘the media’ are getting dangerous," several readers have sent us links to published responses online.

I have declined to post several of them because I don't want to point readers toward often nasty, straw-men attacks on (a) the skills, and even the Christian faith, of a highly talented and respected former colleague and (b) my own profession as a mainstream-media journalist.

Obviously, GetReligion is known for taking shots at organizations in the mainstream media that, as we say, "just don't get religion" (Hello Dean Baquet). There is a difference, however, between attacking, and documenting, case-studies of media abuse and simply saying (to wax theological for a moment) that an entire profession/vocation is Satanic, somehow, and certainly not part of God's good creation.

One of my few criticisms of Sarah's essay here at GetReligion was that I thought it was a bit soft on the fact that many religious believers, not just evangelical Protestants, have been prejudiced against journalism for a long, long time (not just during the Donald Trump melodrama) and that includes academic elites who simply think journalism is a shoddy, shallow line of work. Truth be told, religious readers in lots of academic and denominational buildings need to realize that they are part of the problem, when it comes to a lack of intellectual and cultural diversity in American newsrooms.

But this brings me to an essay responding to Sarah that is worth serious thought, offered by the Rev. Al Mohler, a podcasting commentary star who is also president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Actually, this is an edited transcript of the Dec. 9 episode of his "The Briefing" podcast, which ran with this title: "The Real Consequences of Fake News: Why Evangelicals Should Be Concerned With The Truth."

Mohler opens with some comments on the Bailey text. Let's listen in to that process, with Sarah's quotes in italics:


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Will Trump's America lead to a legal bloodbath for gays? CNN all but predicts it will

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I am not sure why CNN’s Money page recently offered a piece on gay clergy, but in this era of media belt-tightening one is glad for religion news anywhere one can get it. Still a piece titled “LGBTQ clergy tackle tough issues ahead of Trump presidency” does raise the question of why it’s not in the Belief section.

Maybe it’s because the network’s “race and inequality” correspondent is covering the issue. I sure wish CNN had put a religion specialist on the story , as the assumptions in this piece make it obvious this reporter knows little about this subject.

This news feature begins as follows:

Transgender rights. Same-sex marriage. Federal protections against discrimination.
In the wake of Donald Trump's election, some of the hard won rights and protections that the LGBTQ community have gained in recent years are once again in the national spotlight.
President-elect Trump has appointed several members to top government posts that have supported so-called religious freedom laws and opposed same-sex marriage, leaving many in the LGBTQ community concerned that their civil rights hang in the balance.

Now Trump has said post-election that he’s “fine” with the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling on gay marriage, but this reporter notes that Trump could nominate a justice who will help overturn the ruling.

The remote chance of the court, with only one change in personnel, taking that action is not brought up in the piece. The story continues:

"Rather than getting a respite we've got almost an overload of emotion because things are heating up," said Joshua Lesser, a gay rabbi in Atlanta. Rabbi Lesser is one of three openly gay clergy members CNN interviewed who say they are not only worried about their own rights, but they've been busy counseling a number of parishioners about a wide range of issues since Trump was elected.


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What fuels fake news? Major Tennessee newspapers pledge to oppose 'anti-LGBT' bills

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As you would expect, I have been asked more than my share of questions -- in face-to-face encounters and in cyberspace -- about the tsunami of post-Election Day arguments about "fake news."

What do I think of this phenomenon? As it turns out, my answer to this question is directly linked to the work we do here at GetReligion and to my "Journalism Foundations" class that I teach in New York City at The King's College (a class that was also a cornerstone of the old Washington Journalism Center program).

Let me be as brief, because we need to get to a highly relevant case study from The Tennessean in Nashville.

Fake news is real and it's a very dangerous trend in our public discourse. There is fake news on the right, of course, but it also exists on the left (think Rolling Stone). Many Americans are being tempted to consume fake news because they have completely lost trust in the ability of the mainstream press to do accurate, balanced, fair coverage of many of the issues that matter most to people from coast to coast, but especially in the more conservative heartland.

Some of this is political, but we are also talking about "Kellerism" (click here for information on this GetReligion term) and the fact that some elite newsrooms struggle when covering moral, cultural and social issues. Some journalists (thank you Dean Baquet of The New York Times) just don't "get religion."

This brings me to a business story in The Tennessean with this oh-so-typical headline: "Tennessee firms fire warning shot against LGBT laws." Let's see if we can find the key passage that, for many Volunteer State readers, will link directly to their willingness to turn to news sources that mainstream journalists, often with good cause, would call "fake."

The overture, of course, establishes the framing of this 1,300-word report:


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Discuss please: Sarah Pulliam Bailey's letter to evangelicals who are mad at mainstream press

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There are several obvious things that need to be said about the rather brave opinion piece that Sarah Pulliam Bailey -- yes a former GetReligionista -- has published at The Washington Post, where she works as a full-time religion-beat professional.

First, things first: About that headline, which proclaims, "Evangelicals, your attacks on ‘the media’ are getting dangerous." Why address this open letter to evangelicals?

During my years in the Washington, D.C., area I had to look like crazy to find traditional religious believers of any stripe who still subscribed to the major newspapers in Beltway-land. For those who did, talking about the tone-deaf or biased coverage of moral and social issues produced in those newsrooms was something they let me hear about on a regular basis. Hearing D.C.-area people talk about media bias (on moral and social issues more than on politics alone) helped inspire the creation of the weblog.

So why focus on evangelical anger at mainstream news, in a year in which Gallup numbers show that distrust of the journalism establishment is at an all-time high among Americans, period?

Yes, the anger and even hate is real. I know that because of my quarter of a century of work in Christian higher education, primarily teaching journalism and mass-media studies to young evangelicals. Way too many conservative evangelicals have written off journalism -- period. That's really bad theology if one believes that all of God's creation (even journalism) is both glorious and fallen. Meanwhile, many progressive evangelicals (often in higher education) view journalism as a shallow, anti-intellectual, merely "professional" trade that is not worthy of serious attention. Both stances are deadly, if the goal is educating young people to work in the mainstream press, perhaps providing some intellectual diversity there in the process.

Still, Bailey addresses her letter to people in her own culture, which is mainstream evangelicalism. Let's look at this a bit, and then open the comments pages for dialogue. Here is the overture:

Dear evangelicals,
You tease about the mainstream media being “Satan’s newspaper.” When I tell you I’m a journalist, I hear your cynicism.
Listen, I was raised in an evangelical home. I know the media is supposed to be the butt of many jokes and the source of many of our problems.


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False balance: As New York Times reports on divided campuses, only left has 'real' concerns

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In the wake of Donald Trump's stunning election as president, the political divide between right and left has hardened on campuses nationwide, the New York Times reports.

At first glance, the Times seems to put aside Kellerism for a day and provide an evenhanded account of what college-age Republicans and Democrats are feeling and saying.

The Old Gray Lady even opens with an anecdote featuring a young Trump supporter:

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Amanda Delekta, a sophomore at the University of Michigan and political director of the College Republicans, was ecstatic when her candidate, Donald J. Trump, won the presidential election.
But her mood of celebration quickly faded when students held an evening vigil on campus — to mourn the results — and her biology teacher suspended class on the assumption, Ms. Delekta said, that students would be too upset to focus.
She was outraged. “Nobody has died,” Ms. Delekta said. “The United States has not died. Democracy is more alive than ever. Simply put, the American people voted and Trump won.”
She circulated an online petition and accused the university president of catering to the liberal majority by suggesting that “their ideology was superior to the ideology of their peers,” as she put it, when he sent out an email publicizing the vigil and listing counseling resources for students upset by the election. Three days later, she was invited to meet with the president in his office.

But read a little closer, and the piece's "balance" becomes less impressive.


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Thanksgiving podcast break: But lots of GetReligion links in radio visit with Metaxas

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There is no "Crossroads" podcast this week, seeing as how our friends at Issues, Etc., are off for the holidays. Lutherans do need to party every now and then.

However, I saved something that I thought may be of interest to GetReligion readers/listeners on this Black Friday, a day in which my family has a sacred tradition of staying as far as we can from shopping malls.

This is a radio interview between my self and a man -- Eric Metaxas, by name -- who has been my friend for two decades. The subject of the interview is the debate inside The New York Times staff about the quality and direction of its coverage of, well, non-New York City America during the recent election. Click here to tune that in.

Metaxas is, of course, a New Yorker and a Yale University man. I am a prodigal Texan who has spent most of his life and career -- other than a decade-plus as an outsider in Washington, D.C. -- deep in "flyover country."

What makes the interview interesting, I think, is that Metaxas and I are coming from two different points of view about the status of Citizen Donald Trump. (We also disagree on the Bee Gees.)

As GetReligion readers know, I was outspokenly #NeverHillary #NeverTrump. Metaxas was, of course, portrayed in the mainstream press as one of the Donald's strongest evangelical supporters (forgetting this lovely bit of classic Eric satire in The New Yorker). However, anyone who was paying close attention knew that Metaxas was a strong advocate of VOTING for Trump, based on his conviction that Hillary Rodham Clinton was a uniquely dangerous threat to religious liberty in this country.

Eric and I disagreed on the wisdom of voting for Trump. You'll hear hints of this in this Eric Metaxas Show hour, even though that isn't the subject of the interview. What we agree on is that this whole campaign was not a shining hour for the mainstream press and the great Gray Lady in particular.


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