Social Issues

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News coverage of Los Angeles Dodgers drag-nuns story reveals plenty of bad habits

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News coverage of Los Angeles Dodgers drag-nuns story reveals plenty of bad habits

Sports have always brought people together. That’s a big reason that they have been so popular for decades.

But in our ever-polarized world around political lines, sports have taken a hit. Whether it involved NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem or NBA players supporting Black Lives Matter, sports and sports journalism have become increasingly political the last few years.

Baseball, and specifically the Los Angeles Dodgers, became the focus of controversy over the last two weeks when the team invited, then un-invited and then issued a welcome once again a group known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a well-known San Francisco group of queer and trans people dressed as nuns at the team’s annual Pride Night on June 16.

As many noted, there’s no way a sports franchise would have given this kind of salute to a group of traditional Catholics opposed by cultural progressives, a group like the Little Sisters of the Poor.

What took place during this entire saga is a series of predictable news-media coverage twists and turns guided by professionals who, it appears, saw this issue from their own left-right vantage points. Modern journalism is often criticized for building narratives and reading minds rather than reporting facts and interviewing both sides. This story fit that mold.

While the news coverage lacked voices from both sides in this debate, most of the reports also lacked another very important term — anti-Catholic.

Are these “nuns” anti-Catholic? It certainly depends on which side of this debate you are on and many news outlets made that clear and, thus, ignored citizens whose views were found to be heretical, in terms of current newsroom dogmas.

Take, for example, the Los Angeles Times feature that ran on May 25 that included a photo shoot with the “nuns.” Here’s how that piece opened:

Ask the L.A. Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence why they decided to join the order of drag nuns, and most of them will tell you it’s because they felt the call.

Sister Tootie Toot (glitter green lips, dark beard, emerald cocktail dress) felt it like a ton of bricks when she walked into a leather bar where several sisters had assembled.


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Podcast: Beer drinkers and soccer moms -- changes in boycott 'woke' corporations wars

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Podcast: Beer drinkers and soccer moms -- changes in boycott 'woke' corporations wars

In the summer of 1997, the Southern Baptist Convention called for a boycott of the Walt Disney Company, acting in response to some early power mouse gay-rights decisions.

Eight years later, the leaders of America’s largest non-Catholic flock quietly called off the boycott, which was a bit of a dud. The news coverage was, well, joyfully muted.

Why did this boycott fail? Well, for one thing, lots of SBC guys probably found it hard to ditch ESPN and lots of parents who were “conservatives” found it hard to stop using Disney movies as babysitters.

This brings us to the current headlines about Bud Light and Target, which served as the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).

Baptists vs. Disney? Kind of a big deal, but not really. Then again, Disney executives may be aware of box-office issues with some of their recent LGBTQ+ themes in big-screen products for children. You think?

Ah, but what about beer drinkers vs. Bud Light? That battle over in-your-face corporate support for trans performance art appears to have legs. See this update from NBC News: “'Nobody imagined it would go on this long': Bud Light sales continue to plummet over Mulvaney backlash.”

Suburban parents (especially in red states) vs. Target? That’s a more complex subject, but there are signs that Tarjey executives have started doing homework on the watered-down beer battles.

This raises a perfectly valid question: Are there religion ghosts in the Bud Light and Target backlash stories? I mean, how many Southern Baptists are Bud Light fans?

The actual question is this: Are there religion ghosts in the neverending wars between Middle America and “woke” corporate support for the ever-changing doctrines of the Sexual Revolution?

I would say, “yes.” But it’s clear that the cultural battles now involve armies larger than people in conservative pews.


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Tim Keller sought 'winsome' Manhattan apologetics, a goal that became more difficult

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Tim Keller sought 'winsome' Manhattan apologetics, a goal that became more difficult

If one looks up the word “winsome” in a dictionary, here is a typical example of what shows up, via Merriam-Webster: “generally pleasing and engaging often because of a childlike charm and innocence.”

However, a Google search for the term “winsome,” when combined with “Tim Keller,” opens up a window into a completely different world — one closely linked to debates about the meaning of the word “evangelical” in a Donald Trump-era culture.

Frankly, I am not going to go there. What I will do is urge GetReligion readers who visit Twitter to follow the #TimKeller hashtag and check out the waves of tributes in the wake of the passing of one of the most important American evangelicals — defined in terms of doctrine — in recent decades.

Instead of looking at the tsunami of news coverage, I will simply note the obvious — Keller is receiving much, or even most, of this attention because he lived, worked, preached and wrote in New York City. If his career had unfolded in the Bible Belt, mainstream journalists would never have heard of him. Thus, here is the New York Times double-decker headline on its obituary (which ran quickly, but inside the print edition):

The Rev. Timothy Keller, Pioneering Manhattan Evangelist, Dies at 72

Shunning fire and brimstone, he became a best-selling author and founded Redeemer Presbyterian Church, which drew young New Yorkers.

The Gray Lady’s lede offered this:

The Rev. Timothy J. Keller, a best-selling author and theorist of Christianity who performed a modern miracle of his own — establishing a theologically orthodox church in Manhattan that attracted thousands of young professional followers — died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 72.

Yes, we can talk about the accuracy of the word “evangelist” in the headline. Once again, there are mainstream journalists who believe that is simply another way to say “evangelical.” Unless I missed something, Keller was not active in holding the kinds of public events — think Billy Graham “crusades” — normally associated with public evangelism. Were there some Central Park rallies with Keller sermons and altar calls that I missed? Please let me know.

What he was, of course, was a church builder and an “apologist” for small-o orthodox Christianity, of the Reformed form,” both in preaching and in writing — in books and a host of other forms.


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Podcast: A growing army of Americans (#surprise) no longer trusts the news media

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Podcast: A growing army of Americans (#surprise) no longer trusts the news media

Were there tears in Anderson Cooper’s eyes? Did you hear a tremor in his voice?

A clip featuring the CNN superstar (that’s a relative term, these days) went viral after he wore his elite heart on his finely tailored sleeve when responding to woke social-media meltdowns after The. Most. Trusted. Name. In. News. dared to air a ratings-chasing “town hall” with former President Donald Trump.

By all means, watch the YouTube video featured at the top of this post, because it was featured in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), which focused on another set of bleak, hellish poll numbers about Americans doubting the mainstream-news industrial complex. I argued — no surprise if you read my recent Religion & Liberty essay (“The Evolving Religion of Journalism”) — that niche-press coverage of moral, cultural and religious issues has played a big role in this disaster.

Cooper’s dramatic soliloquy included some strong language aimed directly at CNN’s shrinking choir of loyal viewers on what used to be called the “left.” In a way, it’s a kind of niche-news Rorschach test. What do you see and hear?

Meanwhile, here are some of the key quotes, drawn from a rather snarky piece at The Hollywood Reporter (I have added bold text for emphasis):

Echoing some of the points that network CEO Chris Licht had made to CNN staff … (Cooper) attempted to pivot and spin why CNN felt it was important to cover Trump. “The man you were so disturbed to see and hear from last night, that man … may be president of the United States in less than two years. And that audience that upset you, that’s a sampling of about half the country.”

He added, “If last night showed anything, it showed [Trump winning] can happen again. It is happening again. He hasn’t changed and he is running hard. You have every right to be outraged today and angry, and never watch this network again.”

Cooper then rather bizarrely put the onus back on the audience to not remain ignorant of people on the other side of the political divide and incredibly implied that some people were ignorant of Trump. “Do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away? If we all only listen to those we agree with, it may actually do the opposite.”

Yes, the crucial word “silo” was used, in an emotional dermon aimed directly at CNN viewers. At some point, we can expect someone on Fox News to offer some variation of this litany when talking to its post-Tucker Carlson audience.

This is the media dynamic at the heart of trends in the Divided States of America.


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Elite editors often ignore Catholic stories, so why is St. Pope John Paul II a target?

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Elite editors often ignore Catholic stories, so why is St. Pope John Paul II a target?

What is news? Who gets to define that term?

These are questions that I ask students when I teach journalism during their freshman year in college.

It sounds like a simple question — but increasingly an important one as we examine trends in recent religion coverage in the news media.

The bottom line: There is a trend where many religion stories — especially those regarding Catholicism — receive zero coverage whatsoever in the secular mainstream press. However, stories about evangelicals, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodoxy and other faiths have also vanished or never appeared in the first place.

When some issues do get coverage, it’s often because it has more to do with politics than debates about doctrine, theology or faith. Why?

That’s the key question.

It takes us back to the original question: What is news?

This trend includes Catholic stories that I have written about here — vandalism of churches/pro-life centers and the FBI spying on parishioners — and others that I have not regarding other faith traditions such as the split in the Anglican Communion.

All of these stories are news — “big” news, even. However, they clash with what left-leaning readers of major legacy news organizations want to see and hear in the publications that they support with their online clicks and subscription payments. That appears to affect a majority of elite editors and reporters (click here for tmatt’s Religion & Liberty manifesto on that topic).

Coverage of these stories either never happened or just vanished, like the manifesto of the Nashville school shooter. Regarding Catholic storylines, a recent First Things essay — written by a prominent American bishop — that all but accused a cardinal of heresy never drew any mainstream media ink.

Neither have the statements of a progressive cardinal who now heads the pro-life Vatican office who says he has no issue with euthanasia.


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Thinking about Bari Weiss, Twitter, evangelicals and New York Times op-ed doctrines

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Thinking about Bari Weiss, Twitter, evangelicals and New York Times op-ed doctrines

Here’s a question for you: When it comes to defining the doctrines of blue-zip-America, which is more important — the news pages of The New York Times or the newspaper of record’s op-ed pages?

In the old days, I would have said the op-ed pages.

But that was back when most of the Times news desks were, to one degree or another, still part of (to one degree or another) the American Model of the Press (background in this .pdf file). That was certainly the case in the era of the late, great A.M. Rosenthal.

At this moment in time, there are signs of actual diversity — even tension — in the op-ed pages and maybe, just maybe, signs of a few glowing embers of editorial independence in the news papers.

But let’s still assume — as I argued in my Religion & Liberty essay, “The Evolving Religion of Journalism” — that the Times news operation is still operating as a niche-news, advocacy journalism publication anxious to please the new liberal, maybe illiberal, readers who pay cash for its content.

Let’s assume that the July, 2020, resignation letter posted by Bari “The Free Press” Weiss remains a must-read “think piece” for all news consumers. For those who need a refresh, as part of this “think piece” doubleheader, here are two key passages from that shot over the bow of the Gray Lady’s principalities and powers:

… [A] new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

Here is another essential passage from this “read it all” classic. This comes after Weiss — a gay, Jewish, old-school First Amendment liberal — describes the in-house digital bullying that made her hit the exit door:


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Podcast: What role did God-talk play in Tucker Carlson's fall at Fox News? Good question

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Podcast: What role did God-talk play in Tucker Carlson's fall at Fox News? Good question

Rod “Live Not By Lies” Dreher has shared the following anecdote many times, but it’s especially interesting that he used it, once again, in this Substack post: “Tucker Fired Because Of Religion.”

I am using it to open this podcast post because this week’s “Crossroads” discussion (CLICK HERE to tune that in) isn’t really about Tucker Carlson’s forced exit from Fox News — it’s about whether Carlson was a very good fit with the Fox News political and cultural worldview in the first place.

My theory is that Carlson is a conservative populist — as opposed to being a D.C. Beltway Republican — and that his religious beliefs (especially after he stopped drinking) are part of that mix. This created tension with the dominant Fox News management culture, which is rooted in the Page 3 Libertarian Republican beliefs of titan Rupert Murdoch and the network’s original mastermind, the now disgraced Roger Ailes.

This brings me back to Dreher’s anecdote:

I have long wondered why Fox News doesn’t have much religious reporting, or cover things including a religious angle, even though many of their loyal viewers are religious. Now I know. And you should know too. You might recall my telling the story about how the freelancers Fox hired to cover the 2002 Catholic bishops’ meeting in Dallas, the first one after the scandal broke, asked me to brief them on who the players were, and what the issues were. They took copious notes, but when I told them about the homosexual clerical networks, and their roles in the scandal, they told me to stop. “Orders from the top of the network: stay away from that stuff,” I was told. I told them that you couldn’t understand the scandal without that factor. Maybe so, they said, but we are ordered not to touch it.

Thus, Dreher argues that Carlson’s forced exit should open the eyes of Fox News-hooked religious and cultural conservatives.

Whatever Rupert Murdoch’s internal motivations, the fact is — well, to be precise, what I confidently believe to be the truth — that Tucker Carlson gave an extraordinary speech about the theological aspect of the cultural crisis we are enduring. He talked bluntly, to an audience at Washington’s leading conservative think tank, about the fundamentally spiritual nature of the fights we’re in. And he encouraged his audience to pray for our country.

Several days later, he was fired.

As you would expect, this brings us to the much-discussed Vanity Fair feature that ran with a headline proclaiming, “Tucker Carlson’s Prayer Talk May Have Led to Fox News Ouster: “That Stuff Freaks Rupert Out.”


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Catholicism's internal cracks go public with Cardinal Robert McElroy ban on EWTN

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Catholicism's internal cracks go public with Cardinal Robert McElroy ban on EWTN

It should come as no surprise to anyone that politicians don’t much like the press. This isn’t a shocking statement to anyone old enough to remember President Richard Nixon and Watergate.

Nixon, of course, wasn’t alone. A watchdog press has ran afoul of many presidents, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. This last one most of all.

In Catholicism, popes have also been media targets. Popes, compared to presidents, have been more gracious when speaking of the press. That even goes for the hyper-aggressive Italian media and their daily Vatican coverage.

As the left-right political divide widens, while many journalists working for mainstream publications abandon objectivity, so have the Catholic left-right doctrinal feuds. Francis’ papacy, in fact, has been plagued by it. Mainstream news coverage, for those who read this space, know that readers are increasingly fed narratives over reality.

The Catholic press operates differently. Those on the left wish to reform the church. Those on the right want to uphold and preserve centuries-old doctrines. Catholic media, depending where the publication or TV station falls on the doctrinal spectrum, isn’t governed by objectivity but by church teachings. This is where the conflict arises and when culture war battles within the church — and society at large — can manifest themselves.

This is an internecine battle among members of the Catholic hierarchy. In the crosshairs is EWTN. The media empire, founded by Mother Angelica in 1980, is a news organization that does all of its reporting through the lens of traditional Catholic teaching. It’s the 1992 Catholic Catechism network.

That frequently comes into direct conflict with the words and actions of Pope Francis’ strongest supporters, when dealing with ministry to LGBTQ Catholics, for example, and other culture-war issues.

Just as Obama went after Fox News and Trump against most everyone (even Fox News following the 2020 presidential election), we now have Catholic cardinals openly criticizing Catholic media. The recent case involving San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy is an example of Catholicism’s internal divisions playing out in Catholic media.

McElroy’s target is EWTN, one of the largest Catholic news organization in the world.


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Yes, this is personal: Concerning the New York Times report on The King's College crisis

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Yes, this is personal: Concerning the New York Times report on The King's College crisis

I have been on the road for about 12 days now, visiting family in Kansas after speaking at a journalism conference in Washington, D.C. During that time, I have received quite a few emails asking me to comment on the New York Times story about the crisis at The King’s College in lower Manhattan.

As longtime GetReligion readers know, I taught seminars at The King’s College for five years after the semester-length Washington Journalism Center program moved there in 2014. I have friends and former colleagues at TKC and, thus, writing about this topic is quite personal.

Thus, let me stress that the following is a GetReligion commentary about the Times report — which is an important story and, frankly, quite good. It’s crucial — here’s that GetReligion theme, again — that it was assigned to a religion-desk reporter. However, the story, in my opinion, does have an important “ghost” in it, one that could be spotted by anyone who has dug into the details of recent academic and financial trends in Christian higher education.

Hold that thought. First, here is the double-decker headline on this news feature:

The Second Life of a Christian College in Manhattan Nears Its End

The King’s College, which draws students from around the country to Manhattan, has not been able to recover from enrollment and financial losses.

As is the case with MANY private colleges, before and after the coronavirus pandemic, this small college has fundraising issues, enrollment issues and then budget issues that are directly linked to enrollment issues.

To be blunt, many excellent private educational institutions are overly dependent on tuition dollars and lack the endowment funds to survive severe drops in recruiting numbers. For two decades Christian college leaders have known that they would face severe challenges after the passing of a giant wave of students from the giant Millennial generation.

Thus, Christian college administrations have been asking hard questions about recruiting and fundraising. Here is one way to look at it: The concerns of donors, church leaders and parents are not (#DUH) always the concerns of potential students. However, a Christian college cannot survive without loyal donors, church leaders and parents willing to send their children — the ultimate investment — to a specific college.

The raises a painful question: Should small Christian private schools case a “wide net,” seeking as many students as possible (period), or focus on “mission fit,” seeking students from homes and pews that strongly support a school’s core values and programs?


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