GetReligion
Thursday, April 03, 2025

M.Z. Hemingway

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Visit from classic MZ: Concerning 2017's sort-of news about anti-Starbucks evangelicals

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It's that time of year, again. I know that I keep saying that, but there's no way around it.

It's time for the annual alleged cursing of the Starbucks Holiday cup design.

Once again, several major branches of elite media – including the all-important New York Times – are dancing with delight to know that some knuckle-dragging evangelicals are upset with some element of this iconic symbol in the lives of urban consumers of over-priced coffee.

This year, we are talking about a culture wars topic, as well as a new round in the Christmas Wars. Now, in the following Times passage, pay close attention to the sourcing on information about this alleged evangelical cyber-lynch mob. I will then turn things over to M.Z. "GetReligionista Emerita" Hemingway for her Federalist critique of this mess.

The latest controversy has focused ... on a pair of gender-neutral hands holding each other on the side of the cup itself.

Those linked hands came to wider public attention after BuzzFeed published an article about them on Wednesday. It suggested the cup was “totally gay.”
“While people who follow both Starbucks holiday cup news and L.G.B.T. issues celebrated the video, the ordinary Starbucks customer probably didn’t realize the cup might have a gay agenda,” BuzzFeed said.

Thus saith BuzzFeed. Then:

After that, it was off to the races.
Fox News picked up the story of what it called the “androgynous” cartoon hands, referring to Bible-quoting critics of Starbucks and criticizing BuzzFeed, which it said had “asserted the hypothesis is fact.”

Thus saith Fox News, one of our culture's most popular arenas for all things Christmas Wars.


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Classic MZ: How many stupid believers must government heroes save off houses in Houston?

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Let's face it. It takes a certain degree of courage for a journalist to mock the people living along the Texas Gulf Coast – the sprawling multicultural city of Houston in particular – at this moment in time.

We are, in this case, talking about an editorial cartoonist – Matt Wuerker of The Politico – as opposed to an actual reporter or columnist.

As you can see in the screen shoot at the top of this post, the point of the cartoon appears to be that the people of Houston, and the thousands of volunteers from Louisiana, upstate Texas and all over the place, are giving too much praise to God for their deliverance and not enough thanks to agents of government.

I grew up in Port Arthur, most of which was under water in the most recent images I saw, and my late parents spent most of their adult lives in the Houston area and the Gulf Coast. That doesn't make me an expert on Hurricane Harvey. It does help me understand how Texans think and act under these circumstances. The bottom line: It's a complex region, with just as many progressives as libertarian, fundamentalist, anti-government Yahoos (or whoever that guy is in the Confederate flag shirt).

So I'll just state the question this way: If you have been watching media reports about the first responders – government or volunteer – and the people they have been rescuing, does the contents of this cartoon ring true to you? Is this how the people of Houston are acting?

I don't think so. And ditto for M.Z. "GetReligionista emerita" Hemingway, who lit into Wuerker in a piece at The Federalist. Consider this another installment of our ongoing series that could be called "Classic MZ." From a GetReligion point of view, this is the slam-dunk section of her essay.


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Flying Spaghetti Monster flock gets a fair shake in new Deutsche Welle report

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Does a reporter have to be a believer to cover religion?

A simple question, but a vexing one, as there are two currents of thought at work in Western culture today.

The classical view, characterized as the Anglo-American school of journalism, would say no. For journalists working from this perspective, the highest virtue is critical disinterest. The reporter’s personal views play no part in the story. He or she writes from a distance, laying out the facts, providing context and history, with the goal of enabling the reader to make up their own mind.

There are limits. One may assume Hitler and the Nazis were evil. But few questions are as straightforward as that. For example, how do you report on religions on the margins? Do you have to believe in the religion you are covering? What if you are assigned a story on Pastafarians?

The European school of journalism sees reporting primarily as a species of ideological activism. The message the story teaches – not the content of the story – is where value lies. The issue for a devotee of advocacy journalism is not whether a story is worth reporting, but what cause will this serve if it is reported?

The precise components of that activism will vary depending on the nature of the politics involved. Radical feminists have their issues and controversies, which tend to differ from issues and controversies that preoccupy devotees of racial, cultural, political, sexual and the other tribal commitments of the postmodern West.

The end product of this school of advocacy journalism differs according to the political aims of the author. But all work from the premise cited by Joseph Stalin in 1932:


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MZ for the win: Before taking shots at the Bible, journalists need to do their homework

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Every newspaper that I worked for had several shelves of reference books or an entire library of them, often backed with other pre-Internet reference materials.

In each case, there was large and somewhat intimidating Bible, often placed near a library-sized edition of a Merriam-Webster Dictionary. The whole idea (especially in a city like Charlotte, N.C.) was that journalists needed to be able to look up "Bible stuff" when religious people dared to mention religion in public.

That was how it was supposed to work. In reality, people used to swing by my desk and ask about "Bible stuff" and other religious questions. This was, at The Rocky Mountain News, the reason that people gave me a nickname that stuck – "Monsignor Mattingly."

I would say that nine time out of 10, my newsroom colleagues found out that the Bible didn't actually say what people thought it said, or just as common, what newsroom people thought that it said. I also had to tell them that it was rarely enough to quote one Bible verse, often out of context, and then call it a day. I used to say over and over: The Bible is an adult book and it needs to be treated that way.

This brings me to another example of M.Z. "GetReligionista emerita" Hemingway of The Federalist having a bit of a GetReligion flashback when confronted with one or more examples of mainstream journalists tripping over a fact or two when covering a religious issue. It really sets her off when people mess up when talking about the Bible or Christian doctrines that have been around for 2,000 years or so.

Thus, here is a piece of "Classic MZ," offered as this weekend's think piece. The lesson this time around is a familiar one: If journalists are going to take shots at the Bible, or promote the work of people doing so, it really helps to do some homework (or call up scholars who can provide another point of view on the issue being discussed).

Take it away, Mollie. The headline: "Media Falsely Claim DNA Evidence Refutes Scripture." We pick things up a few lines into the piece:


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Your weekend think piece: Is it really time to say 'Goodbye Nonpartisan Journalism'?

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There is no question in my mind about which "think piece" to share with GetReligion readers this weekend.

For more than a decade now, I have used "A History of News" by Mitchell Stephens as the source for some of the key lectures in my "Journalism Foundations" seminar at both the Washington Journalism Center and now the New York Journalism Semester at The King's College. I have also appreciated the input that this historian had in the solid, facts-based history corners of The Newseum in Washington, D.C., which my students visited through the years.

So my eyebrows went way up when I saw Stephen's byline atop that Politico piece with this headline: "Goodbye Nonpartisan Journalism. And Good Riddance. Disinterested reporting is overrated."

On one level, this piece is simply (a) part of the news media's anger and grief reacting to life with Donald Trump and (b) a historian noting – accurately – that American newspapers used to be fiercely partisan in the days before faster printing presses and the rise of the American model of the press (with its professional standards striving for accuracy, fairness and balance).

Let's dive straight into this, with a massive chunk of his thinking near the top of the essay. Note that Stephens is completely focused, in this essay, on national politics. What does this have to do with the religion beat? Wait for it.

The big news in American journalism today has been that reporters, editors and producers at legacy journalism organizations have become so eager to dispute the more questionable pronouncements and proposals of the Trump administration. Increasingly, they are prepared to label the president’s wilder statements and tweets “falsehoods” or even “lies.” The big news is that many of our best journalists seem, in news coverage, not just opinion pieces, to be moving away from balance and nonpartisanship.
Is this the end of all that is good and decent in American journalism? Nah. I say good for them. An abandonment of the pretense to “objectivity” – in many ways a return to American journalism’s roots – is long overdue.


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Today in Kellerism: New York Times reporters offer contraceptive mandate apologetics (updated)

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The Little Sisters of the Poor is an order of Roman Catholic nuns who take care of elderly people, many (if not most) of whom are indigent or nearly so.

As a non-profit, the Little Sisters provide health insurance for their employees, under a so-called "church plan," a special type of insurance for, well, religious organizations. The Christian Brothers, another Roman Catholic order, administers the insurance for the Little Sisters.

Years of back-and-forth charges and counter-charges over a 2011 rule promulgated by the Obama administration Department of Health and Human Services have just about come to an end. The current administration, following the promise made by President Donald J. Trump, is planning to roll back the contraceptive mandate's application to religious groups – both religious groups (and their branch organizations) and other doctrinally defined schools and non-profit ministries, such as the Little Sisters.

Cue up a dose of Kellerism, the journalistic belief that certain issues have already been decided by American elites and do not need "balanced" coverage. Unsurprisingly, The New York Times, whose onetime editor Bill Keller provided the name for this GetReligion term, is at the head of the class on this story, headlining its piece, "White House Acts to Roll Back Birth-Control Mandate for Religious Employers."

Let's dive in:

WASHINGTON -- Federal officials, following through on a pledge by President Trump, have drafted a rule to roll back a federal requirement that many religious employers provide birth control coverage in health insurance plans.
The mandate for free contraceptive coverage was one of the most hotly contested Obama administration policies adopted under the Affordable Care Act, and it generated scores of lawsuits by employers that had religious objections to it.


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Tale of two Foxes: What kind, or kinds, of conservative values drive Fox News?

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The question came up again last week, at the same point in my "Journalism Foundations" syllabus where it always does every semester – during my lecture on Stephen Colbert and the role of humor and entertainment in today's news marketplace.

First there is this question: In his original show on Comedy Central, who was Colbert satirizing while playing a blow-hard conservative pundit with the power ties, dark suits and the "I calls 'em like I sees 'em" no-spin attitude? Whose style and worldview was he turning inside-out?

It usually takes a few seconds, but then someone – usually a student who was raised in a Fox News home – will say, "Bill O'Reilly."

That leads to the next question: What is the name of the cultural and political philosophy that drives the editorial policies of O'Reilly and many, but not all, of the giants associated with the world of Rupert Murdoch?

Students always start off by saying, "conservative." Then I say: That's too vague. There are many kinds of conservatism in American politics. What kind of conservative is O'Reilly?

Students usually add something like "right-wing," "ultra" or "fanatic." Eventually, someone will say "libertarian." A student or two may have paid attention to the show and know that this means that O'Reilly leans left, or remains silent, on moral issues, but is hard right on matters of economics and everything else. His worldview is defined by radical individualism.

We then talk about other kinds of conservatism and, in particular, the fact that Fox News – which has a massive following among all kinds of conservatives – offers little or no news and commentary on religious events and trends. There are some moral and cultural conservatives in the operation, but they were not the dominant voices in the Roger Ailes era.

As you may have guessed, this leads us to the massive New York Times story that exploded into social media the other day, the one with this dramatic double-decker headline:

Bill O’Reilly Thrives at Fox News, Even as Harassment Settlements Add Up
About $13 million has been paid out over the years to address complaints from women about Mr. O’Reilly’s behavior. He denies the claims have merit.

It's logical to ask: What does religion have to do with this story?

I would answer by saying, "I don't know."

However, my observation is that the Times team stacks up all kinds of facts – many, but not all, with on-the-record sources – that certainly seem to show that O'Reilly acts like he is a moral free agent when it comes to his attitudes toward women, sex and power.


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Here we go again: Will someone please explain Christianity to the Associated Press?

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Maybe it's time to cue the theme from "Jaws" at copy desks in major newsrooms.

We are halfway through the season of Lent, and you know what that means. Once again, we are approaching the most important days on the Christian calendar, as in Holy Week and Easter. Editors should note that Easter in the West (Gregorian calendar) and Pascha in the churches of the East (the older Julian calendar) are on the same date this year.

This time of year is dangerous for editors because the odds rise that they will need to handle news stories that are supposed to contain accurate references to church history and basic Christian beliefs. This has, in the past, been a challenge in some newsroom, even at the most elite levels of the news food chain. Take, for example, the New York Times and its ongoing struggle with the details of the Resurrection.

This brings us to an Associated Press news feature about the efforts to restore the main shrine in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. See if you can spot the problem here:

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The tomb of Jesus has been resurrected to its former glory.
Just in time for Easter, a Greek restoration team has completed a historic renovation of the Edicule, the shrine that tradition says houses the cave where Jesus was buried and rose to heaven.
Gone is the unsightly iron cage built around the shrine by British authorities in 1947 to shore up the walls. Gone is the black soot on the shrine's stone façade from decades of pilgrims lighting candles. And gone are fears about the stability of the old shrine, which hadn't been restored in more than 200 years.

Did you see the problem?


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Poignant think piece: Demographics are destiny in many dying Jewish communities

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One of the things I am working on, at the moment, is a memo for seminar on religion reporting that is tentatively slated for this coming summer in Prague. The name of the memo, which will become one of the lectures that week, is this: "The Seven Deadly Sins of the Religion Beat."

After consulting with some former GetReligionistas, I have a list of about 11 deadly sins – so there is some editing and condensing ahead.

Nevertheless, I know that one of the deadly sins that is sure to make the cut will center on an idea from M.Z. "GetReligionista emerita" Hemingway. She suggested: "Ignorance of religious landscape outside of big cities."

Dead on. There is a tendency for reporters at big news organizations to assume that all big religion stories and trends emerge in big places, in big flocks, with big buildings (that photograph well) and that are led by big people (who function as semi-political leaders or celebrities). If you know anything about the history of religion, you know that this is often not how things work.

I think, in particular, that journalists often struggle to find ways to convince editors that it is important to notice when institutions decline, as well as when they grow. Here at GetReligion, I have said, over and over, that the decline of America's liberal Protestant establishment is probably the most under-covered story of the past 50 years. Without the demographic collapse of the oldline churches, you would not have had a giant hole in the public square for the Religious Right to (in part) fill.

I thought about all of this when reading the top of a poignant think piece that ran this week at The Forward, with this headline: "These Are America’s Most Endangered Jewish Communities." Heads up, journalists: There are all kinds of stories in this piece to localize.

The bottom line is the bottom line: There is no painless way to cut a shrinking pie and, at some point, the pie may vanish altogether.


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