Kellerism

Thoughts from a reader: What I wish my Christian friends knew about journalists (like me)

Several weeks ago, I heard from a GetReligion reader named Rob Vaughn who wanted to get something off his chest.

I was immediately interested in what he had to say because he was a mainstream television journalist — 30-plus years as an anchor at WFMZ in Allentown, Pa. — who also happens to have two graduate degrees from a seminary.

The proposed title of his piece: “What I Wish My Christian Friends Knew About The News Media.” I told him that GetReligion has never run guest pieces — maybe one or two in 17 years — but that I would welcome a chance to look at his text and get back to him.

A day or two later I made a few suggestions and noted that I am constantly getting requests to write and speak on a related topic — how modern news consumers can seek out and find news sources that are still trying to do old-school news that attempts to be balanced, fair and accurate. I suggested that he lean that direction, perhaps with a bullet-list of some strategies about news consumption.

Vaughn ended up with a commentary fit that was a natural fit for Religion Unplugged, operated by my former colleagues at The Media Project. Here’s a crucial chunk of what he wrote:

My church friends are right: many journalists don’t “get” religious conservatives; many don’t even know any personally. Reporters, like all humans, flock together socially with like-minded people. But the reporters I know want to learn, to overcome their ignorance. …

One day an editor with whom I worked at Associated Press Radio phoned a well-known liberal group for comment on a “women’s issue” she was covering. When I told her about a conservative women’s group she didn’t know of, she was glad to call them, too — even though she was personally very liberal. She was a professional and wanted to make her story better.

The problem is what conservative (but fiercely #NeverTrump) writer David French calls the “ideological monocultures” found in many, especially elite, newsrooms. The bottom line: most journalists in those environments hold “progressive” views — especially on social issues.

That’s old news.


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Lots to think about: Weiss and Sullivan on rise of illiberalism in news media and America

If you were going to nominate the public-square “think piece” of the month, it would have to be the latest salvo from former New York Times scribe Bari Weiss. You remember, of course, her earlier letter to the Gray Lady’s Powers That Be when she hit the exit door, after lots of Slack channel pressure from colleagues?

The headline on her new Tablet piece proclaims, “Stop Being Shocked: American liberalism is in danger from a new ideology — one with dangerous implications for Jews.” Trends in American journalism get quite a bit of attention in this essay.

Reading it made me think of a problem that I’ve been having here at GetReligion for a decade or more. Here is the opening of a piece five years ago entitled, “Short test for journalists: Label the cultural point of view in this commentary.

One of the big ideas here at GetReligion is that we live in an age in which many of our comfortable journalistic labels are becoming more and more irrelevant. They simply don't tell readers anything.

For example, there is this puzzle that I have mentioned before. What do you call people who are weak in their defense of free speech, weak in their defense of freedom of association and weak in their defense of religious liberty (in other words, basic First Amendment rights)? The answer: I don't know, but it would be totally inaccurate – considering the history of American political thought – to call these people "liberals."

You can call use the term “illiberal,” of course. A Muslim human-rights activist I interviewed a few years ago said that he is considering reaching back to the French Revolution and calling them “Jacobins.”

The key is that Weiss is suddenly being called a conservative for defending the beliefs and traditions that surrounded her as she grew up in old-school liberal Jewish circles. Now, she’s a conservative of some kind because she is saying things like this:

Did you see that the Ethical Culture Fieldston School hosted a speaker that equated Israelis with Nazis? Did you know that Brearley is now asking families to write a statement demonstrating their commitment to “anti-racism”? Did you see that Chelsea Handler tweeted a clip of Louis Farrakhan? Did you see that protesters tagged a synagogue in Kenosha with “Free Palestine” graffiti? Did you hear about the march in D.C. where they chanted “Israel, we know you, you murder children too”? Did you hear that the Biden campaign apologized to Linda Sarsour after initially disavowing her? Did you see that Twitter suspended Bret Weinstein’s civic organization but still allows the Iranian ayatollah to openly promote genocide of the Jewish people?


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Yin-yang of Washington Post on Amy Coney Barrett: Wait. Pope Francis embraces charismatics?

It would appear that the goal on the cultural and religious left is to find a way to link Judge Amy Coney Barrett to all of that strange charismatic Christian stuff like healing and speaking on tongues while avoiding anti-dogma language that would raise warning flags for Sunday-morning-Mass Catholics. She may as well be a fundamentalist Protestant!

Here is the Big Idea that is right up top, in a story that uses the term “handmaid” 11 times — early and often.

Oh, this will also require tip-toeing around the awkward fact that millions of charismatic Christians are found in Latino and Black pews — Catholic and Protestant.

Will this play a role in the hearings that are getting underway as I type this? We will see.

In the branch of the Democratic Party known as Acela Zone journalism, the key to the news coverage has continued to be a steady drumbeat of references to the word “handmaid,” which in cable-television land calls to mind all kinds of horrible fundamentalist terrors, starting with sexual slaves in red capes and white bonnets.

It’s hard to know what to write about the People of Praise-phobia angle of this story right now, since your GetReligionistas have been on it for some time now. See my podcast and post here: “Why is the 'handmaid' image so important in Amy Coney Barrett coverage?” Also, Julia Duin’s deep dive here into 40 years of history linked to the People of Praise and charismatic Christian communities of this kind. There there is Clemente Lisi on three big questions that reporters need to face linked to Barrett’s faith.

There are too many elite news stories on the handmaid angle to parse them all, so let’s focus on that recent Washington Post feature from a team led by the scribe who brought you the hagiography of Christine Blasey Ford during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

For starters, this would be a good time to remind readers that reporters rarely play any role in the writing of the headlines atop their work. The headline on a piece such as this one primarily tells you the angle that editors thought would launch it into social-media circles among the newsroom’s true believers. Thus we have: “Amy Coney Barrett served as a ‘handmaid’ in Christian group People of Praise.”


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Brace for SCOTUS wars: Three big questions people keep asking about Amy Coney Barrett's faith

It’s been two weeks since President Donald Trump officially nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Right on cue, Barrett’s Catholic faith and religious life became the focal point of news coverage, particularly by the secular press.

What has ensued is an exercise among journalists — particularly in elite newsrooms — to question Barrett’s fitness for the lifetime position, particularly because of her religious beliefs.

For many people in elite zip codes, this is life-and-death territory, since Barrett would give the Supreme Court a solid 6-3 conservative majority on some issues.

The nomination — taking place just weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential election — has already triggered a nasty tug-of-war between Republicans and Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has pledged to hold a vote, leaving Democrats with very few options to halt it. In retaliation, Democrats have threatened to pack the Supreme Court with as many as 15 members (from the current nine) should Joe Biden win the race and his party gain a Senate majority in 2021.

Barrett, 48, currently serves on the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, a position she attained after being nominated to the bench by Trump. Barrett, who also teaches at Notre Dame Law School, was one of Trump’s finalists for the Supreme Court two years ago, but he instead went with Brett Kavanaugh.

As Election Day draws near in an atmosphere of near chaos, both the Trump and Biden campaigns have made appeals to communities of faith — particularly Catholic voters in the Rust Belt states of Ohio and Pennsylvania — by highlighting issues they believe resonate with them. In Pennsylvania, Biden has seen his lead widen in recent weeks. It remains a key battleground state with a very large Catholic voting bloc that Trump needs to win.

Overall, Catholics, according to recent polling, favor Biden — but traditional Catholics do plan to join evangelicals and vote for the president. Trump’s pick will certainly serve as an overture to faith voters like evangelicals and a segment of white Catholics who tend to be politically conservative.

With religion so crucial to this campaign season, here are three things you need to know about Barrett’s faith:


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Podcast: Political facts about evangelicals make news, but what about all the nones?

Let’s assume, faithful readers, that you have heard that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Citizen Donald Trump in the 2016 election. It’s been in all the papers.

Now, if you have been reading GetReligion over the past 17 years you are also familiar with another important trend, which is the growing number of Democrats who fit into a very different faith-defined (sort of) political niche. That has been part of our call for increased coverage of the Religious Left, especially on the evolution of doctrine over there (including the whole “spiritual, but not religious” theme).

Of course, we are talking about the famous “nones” — “religiously unaffiliated” is the better term — who crashed into American headlines in 2012, with the release of the “Nones on the Rise” study by the Pew Research team. That launched thousands of headlines, but not many — this is actually pretty shocking — on how this trend has affected life inside the Democratic Party.

That was the subject of our discussion on this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). The podcast chat grew out of my post earlier this week with this headline: “How powerful are 'nones' in Democratic Party? That's a complex issue for reporters.

The talk, as often happens, took us back through quite a bit of GetReligion history, much of it linked to the work and wisdom of pollster and scholar John C. Green of the University of Akron and the now omnipresent political scientist (and GetReligion contributor) Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University (must-follow Twitter handle here).

Here are a few crucial dates on this timeline.

First, there were the studies done by political scientists Gerald De Maio and Louis Bolce, who were intrigued with the rise — inside the machinery of Democratic Party life — of what they at first called the “anti-fundamentalist voters,” but later changed that to “anti-evangelical.” Here’s a bite of an “On Religion” column from 2004.

Many are true secularists, such as atheists, agnostics and those who answer "none" when asked to pick a faith. Others think of themselves as progressive believers. The tie that binds is their disgust for Christian conservatives.


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New podcast: Why is the 'handmaid' image so important in Amy Coney Barrett coverage?

The question for the week appears to be: Are you now, or have you ever been, a charismatic Catholic?

In a land in which citizens are divided just as much by entertainment as they are by their religious and political choices, that question leads directly to cable television and a certain blue-zip-code hit focusing on, to quote IMDB, this story hook: “Set in a dystopian future, a woman is forced to live as a concubine under a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship.”

This leads us to the word “handmaid” and strained efforts by some — repeat “some” — journalists to attach it to the life and faith of Judge Amy Coney Barrett. This topic was, of course, discussed at length during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). How could we avoid it?

It’s crucial to know that the word “handmaid” has radically different meanings for members of two radically different flocks of Americans.

For Catholics and other traditional Christians, this term is defined by its use in the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, during this encounter between Mary and the Angel Gabriel. This is long, but essential:

… The angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.

Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?

And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. …For with God nothing shall be impossible.

And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

In this context, the word refers to a “female servant.” However, its use in Christian tradition has, for 2,000 years, been linked directly to St. Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Now, let’s move to mass media, where the Urban Dictionary defines the term as:


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Speaking of people being praised: New York Times offered solid, old-school story about Barrett

Guess what? Judge Amy Coney Barrett is being considered, once again, for an open chair at the Supreme Court, the only branch of the United States government that seems to matter in this tense and divided land.

The odds are good that you have read about this development in the national press or even in the few remaining pages of your local newspaper.

We all know what this means, in terms of press coverage. Many of the same reporters who are perfectly comfortable calling Joe Biden a “devout” Catholic — while his actions clash with church doctrines on marriage and sex — are going to spill oceans of digital ink warning readers about the dangerous dogmas that dwell loudly in the heart and mind of Barrett. I am following all of that in social media and elsewhere.

However, let me start these discussions with a post that might surprise many readers. I would like to praise the recent New York Times story that ran with this headline: “To Conservatives, Barrett Has ‘Perfect Combination’ of Attributes for Supreme Court.” Also, I think it was wise to have a religion-beat professional take part in reporting and writing this story.

I am sure that combatants on both sides of this debate will find some sections in this story rather troubling. But here is the key point I want to make: Unlike many Times stories in recent years, almost all of this material comes from qualified sources (left and right) whose names are attached to their opinions and the information they provided. There are attribution clauses all over the place, just like in Times of old.

Near the top there is this short summary:

“She is the perfect combination of brilliant jurist and a woman who brings the argument to the court that is potentially the contrary to the views of the sitting women justices,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion political group, who has praised Mr. Trump’s entire shortlist.

The nomination of a judge whom Mr. Trump was quoted last year as “saving” to be Justice Ginsburg’s replacement would almost surely plunge the nation into a bitter and divisive debate over the future of abortion rights, made even more pointed because Judge Barrett would replace a justice who was an unequivocal supporter of those rights. That is a debate Mr. Trump has not shied away from as president, as his judicial appointments and efforts to court conservatives have repeatedly shown.

As you would expect, Barrett’s critics are given plenty of space to respond — which is totally appropriate. It is also good that these voices are clearly identified, along with information about their organizations.

In other words, the story contains evidence of debate on a serious topic in the news.


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Arizona columnist 'gets' GetReligion, reacting to thin coverage of attacks on Catholic churches

Arizona columnist 'gets' GetReligion, reacting to thin coverage of attacks on Catholic churches

It’s nice, now and then, to read an article that totally “gets” what this website has been trying to do for the past 17 years or so. In this case we are talking about a op-ed feature in the Arizona Daily Star, which is in Tucson, that ran with this headline: “The press and anti-Christian bias.”

Don’t let that blunt statement scare you away. This piece wasn’t written by an angry local preacher. Instead, it was written by Renee Schafer Horton, a veteran journalist and community activist who is one of the newspaper’s regular opinion columnists. Click here for her Renee Wrote This weblog.

She was responding to a recent Clemente Lisi post that ran with this headline: “Catholic news outlets reporting on church vandalism when mainstream media won’t.” Here is the overture for Horton’s piece:

In late July, I received an article from GetReligion.org, a blog by former religion reporters who highlight both well-done and poorly executed religion coverage in the media. The article claimed that there was scant national news coverage of vandalism at U.S. Catholic parishes between July 10 and 16.

This destruction included the beheading of a statue of Jesus at a Miami parish, graffiti on a monument to unborn children at a New York parish, defacements of statues of the Virgin Mary in four different states and a man setting fire to a Florida parish on July 11 while a handful of parishioners were inside getting ready for mass.

I thought GetReligion had gotten it wrong. As a former religion reporter, I have a homing pigeon instinct for Godbeat news, and surely, I thought, if nearly a dozen Catholic churches were attacked in a six-day period, I would have heard about it.

Still, I don’t check my digital subscriptions to national papers every day, so I realized I could have missed the coverage. I did a quick internet search to check the accuracy of GetReligion’s claim.

It was correct.

Literally, the only thing that I would correct in that opening is that most of your GetReligionistas are, to varying degrees, still active as religion-beat specialists, to one degree or another — writing as columnists, freelancers or in the church press. This small team does have quite a bit of experience covering religion news (something like a combined 150 years or so).


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New York Times considers free speech wars in Hong Kong, while ignoring religious issues

The locals had few illusions, back in 1997, when I spent a week in Hong Kong during the days just before the handover ceremonies that put one of Asia’s most important cities under the control of Chinese authorities.

The purpose of my trip was to attend a conference about religion and the news (click here for the text of my presentation during that event), so it was understandable that participants talked to quite a few leaders in Hong Kong’s diverse and prominent religious community.

But that really didn’t matter. Secular human-rights people I met were saying the same things as the church leaders. They were all digging into the fine details of the new Special Administrative Region's Basic Law and seeing ominous loopholes.

Article 23, for example, was causing concern, with its language stating that Hong Kong's new leaders "shall enact laws ... to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition (or) subversion against the Central People's Government, ... to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies".”

Did that include the Vatican? Would Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans and others be allowed to maintain ties to their global fellowships or communions?

Global issues were sure to surface, activists told me. But that would not be the first place where the hammer would fall. Activists warned that free-speech issues would be the first war zone — free speech about politics, of course, but also about religion, an area of life that troubled government leaders.

This brings me to a recent New York Times feature — a mix of text and graphics — that ran under this headline: “What You Can No Longer Say in Hong Kong.” Surely this story about the impact of new laws in Hong Kong would address religious speech issues as well as politics? Here is a crucial summary:

The police have since arrested more than 20 people under the new law, which lays out political crimes punishable by life imprisonment in serious cases, and allows Beijing to intervene directly if it wants.

Hong Kong was once a bastion of free speech. It served as a base for the international news media and for rights groups, and as a haven for political refugees, including the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing. Books on sensitive political topics that are banned in mainland China found a home in the city’s bookstores.


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