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Mainstream outlets ignore anti-Catholic angles in Merrick Garland's Senate testimony

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Mainstream outlets ignore anti-Catholic angles in Merrick Garland's Senate testimony

It’s almost always news when a public official testifies before a congressional committee. Such was the case when Attorney General Merrick Garland faced the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

As expected, it was an important, and often heated, four hours of testimony that was highlighted by the back-and-forth exchanges between Garland and Republican senators on the panel. You can read Garland’s opening remarks on the DOJ website. 

Beyond his prepared remarks, there were plenty of potential storylines tied to religion that surfaced in the hearing. However, depending on which news organizations one follows, these storylines either made it into the news coverage or they were never mentioned. 

The Garland hearing comes at a time of heightened polarization, something made worse by the Supreme Court decision that rolled back the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. The aftermath of that decision has resulted in increased vandalism of Catholic churches, pro-life pregnancy centers and even a now-retracted FBI memo that targeted some traditional Catholics. 

The content of the coverage of the questions asked and the contents of Garland’s responses depended on what reporters, editors and news organizations deemed important. This has been the case for decades, but the shift has changed dramatically in more recent years as news organizations divide themselves into political camps depending on the beliefs of their faithful audiences. 

Did valid religion angles, especially those involving Catholics, make it into the coverage of national legacy media outlets? 

Here is a hint: Prayers by protestors at abortion facilities appear to be considered much more dangerous, and thus newsworthy, than vandalism, or even arson, at Catholic churches and crisis pregnancy centers. News coverage of this Senate hearing seemed to have been produced by journalists living in parallel universes. Once again, this is the dominant news trend in the Internet age.

Here is the top of the New York Times report on the Garland hearing: 

WASHINGTON — Republicans subjected Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to a four-hour grilling before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, a harbinger of the fights that loom ahead as the party targets the Justice Department in the months leading up to the 2024 election. 


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EV charging sites at churches: Which denominational brands will get government $$$?

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EV charging sites at churches: Which denominational brands will get government $$$?

Let me open this post with a confession: I am part of a growing flock of folks (some say “cult”) that attracts lots of nasty social-media commentary from a fascinating coalition of left-wingers and right-wingers.

In other words, I drive an electric car.

Wait. Anger from left-wingers? Remember these four words: Elon. Musk. Bought. Twitter.

Anyway, I have spent quite a bit of time reading about efforts to build EV-charging networks. Things were totally bonkers during the year or two that the Joe Biden White House was refusing to utter the word “Tesla” and seemed poised to pour billions of tax dollars exclusively into networks that are infamous for the stunningly high percentage of time their chargers are broken.

Now, what does this inside-baseball discussion have to do with religion-beat news?

Maybe you saw this Religion News Service headline that ran the other day: “Could churches be prime locations for EV charging stations? One company thinks so.”

You see, EV charging stations require (#DUH) empty parking spaces, and it helps if these slots are in convenient urban and suburban locations — frequently near a highway exit or two. This leads to the totally logical overture for this timely RNS piece:

As more drivers make the decision to switch from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, places to power them remain few and far between in large parts of the country. And with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 incentivizing clean energy and electric cars, as well as providing investments for green technology, the demand will only increase.

Churches, with their large parking lots that often sit empty during the week, could help provide a solution.

Now, imagine yourself driving through a typical American city. In your mind’s eye, where do you see empty church parking lots?

Basically, you will find two different kinds of lots and they tend to be located in rather different kinds of places. This is where I see a potential news hook or two.


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Washington Post looks at 'school choice' bills, and (#surprise) omits 'equal access' info

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Washington Post looks at 'school choice' bills, and (#surprise) omits 'equal access' info

For a minute or two, I thought that the Washington Post was going to publish a fair-minded news feature about the complex issues involved in “school choice” legislation.

Alas, it soon became clear that this was another business-as-usual piece that was, for the most part, committed to featuring the voices of activists on one side of the story. The story also avoided a key church-state legal term that is shaping recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings on this subject.

Thus, it’s time — once again — for readers to grab some highlighter pens. Hold that thought.

You can sense what’s going on in the headline: “More states are paying to send children to private and religious schools.”

Ah, but private schools are private schools, too. Some are secular, some are openly religious. Some of the religious schools are on the left, in terms of doctrine, and some are on the right. But they are all “private” schools. Are all private schools created equal? Did the Post team “get” this angle of the story and include some diversity in the sourcing?

The bottom line: What we have here is another one of those “highlighter pen” stories that GetReligion digs into every now and then. What readers need to do is print a copy of the story and then grab three pens with different colors — maybe red, blue and some variation on purple. The goal is to mark quotes representing voices on the cultural left, right and, maybe, even in the middle.

But first, here is how the story opens:

For years, school-choice advocates toted up small victories in their drive to give parents taxpayer money to pay for private school. Now, Republican-led states across the country are leaving the limitations of the past behind them as they consider sweeping new voucher laws that would let every family use public funds to pay for private school.


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Death of old-school journalism may be why Catholic church vandalism isn't a big story

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Death of old-school journalism may be why Catholic church vandalism isn't a big story

The start of 2023 has brought with it renewed discussion about the role of journalism in society and, more importantly, how it should be practiced and for whom.

At the same time, more Catholic churches and crisis-pregnancy centers have been the target of vandalism.

You may not have noticed this trend — because it is receiving little elite-news coverage.

I can’t help but think these two things are linked. Here’s how.  

Journalists and news organizations are increasingly abandoning old-school objectivity — think basic standards of accuracy, balance, fairness, etc. — in favor of an ever-changing worldview linked to whatever is fashionable politically or culturally, especially stances that are popular with paying customers. These news organizations are increasingly focused on how to influence the now and future rather than report on basic facts surrounding events.

Journalism, however, is not solely about predicting the future — see, for example, the heavy coverage towards polls trying to predict the outcome of elections — but observing the present and the on-the-record facts that surround us at the moment on a particular topic or issue.  

This growing activism among journalists has led reporters to lose most of their curiosity, a crucial element in news coverage.

Instead of asking questions, many already think they have the answers on an array of issues. In the process, this sense of activism among this new journalist class (and their Gen X editors who suddenly think that journalists have been doing things all wrong for decades) has led it to loss its curiosity. Debates? Who needs debates? Tropes based in secular society’s current values, for example, automatically trump thousands of years worth of Judeo-Christian tradition.

This brings us to the continuing trend that has seen many churches vandalized over the past few years. It’s a story that has received very little news coverage in the national press. Why?


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Plug-In: Yes, the March For Life faithful gathered, marking a new era after fall of Roe

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Plug-In: Yes, the March For Life faithful gathered, marking a new era after fall of Roe

Good morning, Weekend Plug-in readers! We open with Dolly Parton, who celebrated her 77th birthday Thursday and gave the world a gift — a new song.

“I had a dream about God standing on a mountain, looking down on us, saying ‘Don't make me have to come down there,’” she said of her inspiration.

Give it a listen as we dive into the top headlines and best reads in the world of faith.

What To Know: The Big Story

Yes, opponents of abortion gathered for the annual March for Life on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Click here to see a research file on the mainstream coverage of this year’s event.

Fifty years after Roe v. Wade — and seven months after its overturning — the anti-abortion movement has “multiple reasons to celebrate — and some reasons for unease.”

That’s the assessment of The Associated Press’ David Crary. The movement has reached a crossroads, as The New York Times’ Ruth Graham notes. And since last year’s ruling, the fight has moved to statehouses, as noted in this report from Religion News Service.

Stand for Life: A new organization with Southern Baptist ties “will bridge anti-abortion groups … as the larger movement redirects focus in a major way,” The Tennessean’s Liam Adams points out.

More: In Missouri, religious leaders who support abortion rights filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the state’s abortion ban, AP’s Jim Salter reports. At the same time, Indiana’s top court is weighing a challenge to that state’s abortion ban.

Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads

1. Family slain in Utah: “The seven caskets sat in a neat row at the front of the quiet chapel.”

That’s how The Salt Lake Tribune’s Courtney Tanner begins her sensitive, nuanced coverage of the funeral for a Latter-day Saint family — five children, their mother and their grandmother.

The man who killed his family had been investigated two years prior for child abuse, according to AP’s Sam Metz.


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Another day, another RNS First Amendment story with zero focus on the First Amendment

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Another day, another RNS First Amendment story with zero focus on the First Amendment

Another day, another Religion News Service report about clashes between the First Amendment and the doctrines of the Sexual Revolution.

As is the norm, this news story about a crucial First Amendment issue does not include the term “First Amendment.”

As is the norm, this RNS story does not include material about how many, not all, private faith-based schools — they exist on left and the right — require students, faculty and staff to sign covenants in which they choose to join a community that is defined by a set of core doctrines that members promise to follow or, at the very least, not to attack.

It is always crucial for journalists, when covering these stories, to ask if a private school has a covenant of this kind. If one does not exist, then this radically strengthens the case of students who argue that the school is discriminating against them.

As is the norm, the RNS story includes one tiny bite of information from the bad-religion people, while framing the conflict in the arguments of the good-religion people. In this case, alas, the bad-religion people won. The headline: “Federal court dismisses LGBTQ students’ class-action discrimination lawsuit.”

As always, let me stress that there is an important story here. Some Christian schools do a bad job — when recruiting and orienting students — of being honest about their covenants or handbooks. As I said, there are schools that do not have covenants, which means students (and parents) may not know what they are getting into when they choose to enroll at one of these private schools that are“voluntary associations” under the First Amendment. Hold that thought. Here’s the overture:

There is no legal remedy for LGBTQ students who claim they were discriminated against at their religious universities, an Oregon federal district court ruled in a high-profile case late Thursday (Jan. 12).

The judge dismissed the class-action lawsuit filed in March 2021 on behalf of about 40 students and former students at religious schools nationwide. The case, Hunter v. the U.S. Department of Education, claimed that the department failed to protect LGBTQ+ students at religious schools from discrimination.


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Final 2022 podcast: What parts of the Roe v. Wade story deserved additional coverage?

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Final 2022 podcast: What parts of the Roe v. Wade story deserved additional coverage?

Everyone had to know that the fall of Roe v. Wade would be the top pick in the Religion News Association’s annual poll to determine the Top 10 religion-beat stories of 2022. That would have been the case, even if the RNA hadn’t created two lists this year, one for U.S. stories and one for international stories.

Why? I’ve been following this poll closely since the late 1970s and once interviewed the legendary George Cornell of the Associated Press about his observations on mainstream religion-news coverage trends during his decades on the beat.

Let’s briefly review some of the factors that shape this list year after year, since this topic was discussed during the final 2022 “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). This episode was recorded while we wrestled with rolling power blackouts here in the frigid hills of East Tennessee. See if you can guess where we had to do a patch and start again!

First of all, the RNA top story will almost always be a hot political event or trend — with a religion angle. Politics, after all, is REAL news. Think White Evangelicals and Bad Man Orange. Second, it helps if stories feature clashes between religion and sex, usually in one of the progressive Mainline Protestant churches or, ideally, Roman Catholicism. Think Joe Biden, Catholic bishops and just about anything (especially if Pope Francis is involved). After that, you have slots for wars, natural disasters and newsy papal tours.

The fall of Roe v. Wade had it all, putting a core Sexual Revolution doctrine at risk, to one degree or another, depending on the blue, red or purple state involved.

I will not run through the contents of the whole RNA list. However, it’s interesting to note the wordings in some poll items, paying attention to what is included and what is NOT included therein. For example, here is No. 1 in the U.S. list:

The Supreme Court overturns the 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent and says there is no constitutional right to abortion, sparking battles in courts and state legislatures and driving voters to the November polls in high numbers. More than a dozen states enact abortion bans, while voters reject constitutional abortion restrictions in conservative Kansas and Kentucky and put abortion rights in three other states’ constitutions.

What is missing in that complex item?


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NBC News is all over an icky COVID-19 cash scam linked to, well, some kind of 'pastor'

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NBC News is all over an icky COVID-19 cash scam linked to, well, some kind of 'pastor'

In the past decade of so, your GetReligionistas have written a steady stream of posts about how America’s rapidly growing flocks of nondenominational believers have made the vague and complicated world of evangelical/charismatic Christianity even harder for journalists to understand and, thus, cover with some degree of accuracy.

That was complicated, wasn’t it? For more info, surf this massive file of URLs linked to the work of chart-master Ryan Burge and then this recent Memo from religion-beat patriarch Richard Ostling, “Story of the Year: Rise of the 'Nons' — put them alongside Nones, NIPs, Nonverts, etc.”

This trend has affected some incredibly important news stories, such as the Jan. 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol and attempts to find justice for victims of clergy sexual abuse.

This brings me to an email that I received the other day from a journalism professor friend that addressed an essential issue in this important NBC News report: “Florida pastor and his son are arrested in alleged $8 million Covid scam.”

This jprof asked this question: “What made him a pastor?” That isn’t an irrelevant question, since this man’s ministerial status is mentioned in the headline and the lede. Here’s the overture:

A Florida pastor and his son were arrested … on charges of fraudulently obtaining more than $8 million in federal Covid relief funds and attempting to use some of the money to buy a luxury home near Walt Disney World. 

Evan Edwards, 64, and his son, Josh, 30, were taken into custody five months after an NBC News report raised questions over why they hadn’t been charged in the alleged scam, which federal prosecutors first identified in court papers in December 2020. 

No one really knows the number of scams that were linked to the billions and billions of government dollars spent in COVID-19 relief programs. It’s a huge story with untold local, regional, state and national angles. International angles? Don’t go there.

Scams linked to religious ministries deserve coverage, obviously, in part because of the hypocrisy angle that reporters may not attach to similar scandals involving businesses and secular nonprofit groups. That word — “pastor” — is crucial.


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Lots of bad news about Dave Ramsey has been published. Now's the time for fresher stuff

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Lots of bad news about Dave Ramsey has been published. Now's the time for fresher stuff

A lot has been written about Dave Ramsey, the Franklin, Tennessee-based Christian finance guru whose multi-million-dollar company, Ramsey Solutions, attempts to keep track of the private sexual activities of its employees — as a matter of religious doctrine.

For the longest time, Bob Smietana, former religion editor for The Tennessean and now a national writer for Religion News Service, has been pumping out stories about Ramsey’s antics.

As one of Smietana’s stories stated earlier this year, “Ramsey Solutions, former employees and their spouses say, is run more like a church than a business.” And, he wrote, it’s not only the sex stuff that can get you in trouble. It’s whether you have consumer debt, if your spouse makes a withering comment about the company on social media or whether you gossiped about life inside the company.

There was blowback, of course. When Smietana covered these stories, he got personally attacked.

Now it looks like Liam Adams, who came onto the Tennessean’s staff in mid-2021, is picking up the mantle with more ink about Ramsey’s “righteous living” rules. It takes time to get the sources to put together such an article and I’m guessing it took more than a year for Adams to find an cultivate his own whistleblowers.

 The piece, which ran in USA Today as well, began:

After rededicating his life to Christ following a yearlong struggle with addiction, the man saw Ramsey Solutions as a company where he could grow and live out his faith-inspired values.

When he started working there, “We were seeing the faithfulness of God … begin to restore our son’s life back to our family, back to Him and the values he was raised with,” the employee’s mother said in a letter to Dave Ramsey, Ramsey Solutions CEO and the driving force behind the Franklin-based personal finance company.

Everything changed for the employee when his bosses learned his wife was pregnant.

“The issue is that they just got married,” said one executive in an email to colleagues.

After some math, the executives concluded the employee and his wife conceived their child before getting married. Sexual intercourse outside of marriage violates the company’s “righteous living” policy and warrants termination.

This poor employee must have quickly realized this and regretted saying anything about his personal life to his bosses.

They fired him.


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