GetReligion
Friday, April 04, 2025

Mollie Hemingway

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Oh no, look what Trump's done: He's appointed someone to Cabinet who ONCE PRAYED

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Hey Washington Post, I have a question.

Please forgive me if I come across the wrong way. However, here's what I want to know: Are you serious!?

Yes, I understand it's impossible to fit all the important context and details in a 140-character-or-less tweet.

But really, this was the best you could do?:

Trump picks former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue, who once led a prayer for rain, for agriculture secretary

Am I reading that right? Is the newspaper that exposed Watergate really suggesting that the most important detail about a Cabinet appointee is that he "once led a prayer?"

Stop the presses!

I mean, is the political staff of the Post really so out of touch that they think somebody praying is first-sentence material for a breaking news alert?

ccording to the Pew Research Center, 55 percent of Americans say they pray every day. I'm assuming that during a drought, a few of them might pray for rain. No word on the percentage of reporters and editors in the Post newsroom who believe in prayer.


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#WarOnChristmas: RNS, other media jump on (nonexistent) controversy over Starbucks cups

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Yes, Virginia, Religion News Service wrote a snarky "news" item quoting three anonymous Twitter users.

The subject of the report: The alleged controversy over holiday cups at Starbucks.

The wire service's lede:

(RNS) Yes, Virginia, there are people brandishing pitchforks because the new Starbucks cup is green and doesn’t have a snowflake.
On Tuesday (Nov. 1), the much-loved and much-derided coffee chain rolled out a cup with a white circle on a green background covered with an army of little cartoon faces drawn with a single line by artist Shogo Ota.
For some customers, this was the first salvo in what they see as the company’s annual “War on Christmas.”
“Starbucks is trying to take Jesus out of Christmas with the new cup,” someone named Jazmine H wrote on Twitter.

Wowza! If Jazmine H is upset, this must be a legitimate national news story!

And there are even reports that Starbucks has unveiled new Satanic holiday cups.

Oh, wait. That report is from the Babylon Bee, the fake religion news website. My bad.

Back to the Starbucks cup brouhaha: As the late, great Yogi Berra said, "It's deja vu all over again!"


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Guilty until proven innocent: Whole Foods denies selling anti-gay cake, makes headlines anyway

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This is national news?

Yes, apparently it is.

Whole Foods denies that its flagship Austin, Texas, store sold a cake with an anti-gay slur on it. Nonetheless, "America's Healthiest Grocery Store" chain finds itself the focus of a slew of negative headlines.

Fifty-plus stories show up on Google News related to this, including links to BuzzFeed News, the New York Daily News, CBS News, Fox News and the Daily Mail (guess that would make this international news).

GetReligionista emeritus Mollie Hemingway rightly asks:

since roughly 100% of these things turn out to be fake, shouldn't media do due diligence BEFORE spreading tale?

This is the lede from the Austin American-Statesman:

Whole Foods is being sued by an Austin pastor who claims the grocery store gave him a cake with a slur against gays.
In a video posted on YouTube, pastor Jordan Brown says he ordered a cake from the Whole Foods flagship store on Lamar Boulevard with the personalized message, “Love Wins.” When he picked up the cake on April 14, he said the cake he picked up had the message “Love Wins Fag.”
Brown, who is openly gay, said he reported the incident to a Whole Foods employee but was told the store did nothing wrong and no action would be taken.

In the fourth paragraph, the American-Statesman gets around to Whole Foods' denial of the allegation:


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Down in Georgia, here's what the news media's love of 'religious liberty' scare quotes tells you

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When my Twitter feed blew up Monday, I knew something big had happened down in Georgia.

The concerns expressed by high-profile voices on the right bordered on apocalyptic — not in a biblical sense but in an imminent disaster kind of way.

As you might expect, Gov. Nathan Deal's decision to veto a religious freedom bill touted by supporters of traditional marriage made national headlines.

My main takeaway from those headlines: Scare quotes here! Scare quotes there! Scare quotes everywhere!

Dictionary.com defines scare quotes this way:

A pair of quotation marks used around a term or phrase to indicate that the writer does not think it is being used appropriately or that the writer is using it in a specialized sense.

In the case of the Georgia bill, most major media insisted on scare quotes around "religious liberty" or "religious freedom":


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Congrats, media! Most Americans clueless about Planned Parenthood 'baby parts' videos

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If you read GetReligion — and obviously you do if you're seeing this — you know pro-life advocates accused the media of dragging their feet on the Planned Parenthood "baby parts" videos.

GetReligionista emeritus Mollie Hemingway was among the loudest voices making that claim.

Of course, the videos made front-page news month last month when anti-abortion forces were indicted in Houston.

Again, some saw a double standard.

So why do I bring up the "baby parts" videos now?

Because of a new national survey by LifeWay Research, the prominent evangelical research firm.

Bottom line: Most Americans are clueless about the videos.

Here's the top of Godbeat veteran Bob Smietana's survey report for LifeWay:


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Aborted baby parts for sale: Did journalists drag their feet on Planned Parenthood story?

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By now, you've seen THE VIDEO.

It's been the talk of social media, particularly among pro-life advocates, for a full day now.

Given the subject matter, it's no surprise that GetReligionista emeritus Mollie Hemingway — now a senior editor with The Federalist — has been all over the issue.

Six hours after the video began making waves, Mollie wrote at The Federalist:

This is a story that requires thoughtful and substantive coverage. That the media are beginning by ignoring it is not a good sign that they have learned a single lesson from crapping the bed with their coverage of the monstrous abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell.

But can "thoughtful and substantive coverage" be produced immediately? While understanding Mollie's frustration, I sympathize, too, with the perspective of another former GetReligionista: Washington Post religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

On Twitter, Sarah made the case that, hey, real reporting takes a little time:


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Surprise! Two major newspaper stories that seek to understand the religious freedom side in Indiana, Arkansas

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"Is media biased against Christianity?"

In a weekend appearance on CNN's "Reliable Sources," GetReligionista emeritus Mollie Hemingway discussed media coverage of the religious freedom laws in Indiana and Arkansas and addressed that question.

Hemingway complained of "witch-hunts going on and almost like a complete adoption of the framing used by the most strident opponents of religious freedom legislation." She also cited "hysteria based on ignorance" and said the media didn't take time to understand or explain how such legislation works to protect religious freedom.

Here at GetReligion, we've seen and critiqued plenty of recent slanted coverage on this subject: examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

But for something completely different, how's this? Both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times produced weekend stories that delved into the actual concerns and motivations of religious freedom proponents.

Let's start with the Post.

Yes, the Post story quotes gay rights advocates. But unlike so many news reports, it doesn't stop there:

Proponents of the religious-freedom measures do not deny that protecting business owners was one of their primary motivations. But they draw a distinction between turning away individual customers because they are gay and refusing to participate in a gay wedding — particularly for vendors whose services involve a level of creativity.
“Cooking a rack of lamb and putting it on a table in front of somebody is not endorsing anything that you may find in violation of your beliefs” and therefore not something that ought to be protected behavior, said Greg Scott, a spokesman for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal nonprofit group that advised Indiana lawmakers.
“But if you’re a wedding singer and somebody says, ‘I want you to lead all the ceremonies for my wedding,’ that’s really a different story, because you are expressing yourself in support and coerced into the celebration of something you don’t believe in.”


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That Indiana 'religious freedom' bill just got even more controversial, and don't forget the scare quotes

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CNN did not get the memo.

I voiced concerns Wednesday about the prevalence of the term "controversial" in news coverage of that Indiana religious freedom bill passed this week.

Specifically, I questioned whether that overused modifier — which the Associated Press Stylebook says to avoid — favors the opposition in a debate pitting religious freedom vs. gay rights.

But Wednesday night, a GetReligion reader alerted me that CNN had ignored my advice.

"Note the tweet and lede of this story," the reader said. "Incredible."

The tweet.

The lede:

Washington (CNN) Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is set to sign into law a measure that allows businesses to turn away gay and lesbian customers in the name of "religious freedom."
The move comes as Pence considers a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination — and just a year after Pence and socially conservative lawmakers lost their first policy battle against gay Hoosiers. In 2014 they had sought to amend Indiana's constitution to ban same-sex marriages — but were beaten back by a highly-organized coalition of Democrats, traditionally right-leaning business organizations and fiscally focused supporters of Pence's predecessor, former GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels.
This year, though, the Republican-dominated state House and Senate both approved the "religious freedom" bill, and Pence plans to sign it into law in a private ceremony Thursday, his spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday afternoon.
If Pence decides to mount a dark horse presidential bid – which looks increasingly unlikely as candidates like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker court the same supporters he would need – the "religious freedom" bill could give him a boost among GOP primary voters, especially in socially conservative states like Iowa.

Did you count the number of times the CNN political reporter used scare quotes on "religious freedom" in those first four paragraphs? (Three times, in case you didn't.)

Of course, the journalistic problem with the lede is the blatant editorialization favoring one side.


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The ongoing spectacle of New York Times contempt for religion

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Yes, this was a piece of commentary. In other words, it was not a news story that automatically fell into GetReligion territory. Yes, this mini-essay was about a new reality-television show way off in the outer reaches of cable land.

But, well, it was also a piece that was published with a staff byline in the pages of The New York Times under one of those double-decker headlines that simply demands attention, right this very moment:

In ‘It Takes a Church,’ the Congregation Helps Pick Your Date


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