GetReligion
Thursday, April 03, 2025

Death Penalty

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News story or editorial? Slanted Associated Press report on death penalty stacked with opponents

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Apparently, most people in Arkansas support capital punishment.

Amazingly, The Associated Press couldn't find — or didn't want to find — any of them to quote.

AP's own news values and principles maintain that the global news agency abhors "inaccuracies, carelessness, bias or distortions." Yet — based on a story on the wire today — it's impossible not to question whether bias exists in the coverage of the death penalty in the Natural State.

Here's the top of the AP story:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — While outrage on social media is growing over Arkansas' unprecedented plan to put seven inmates to death before the end of the month, the protests have been more muted within the conservative Southern state where capital punishment is still favored by a strong majority of residents.
A few dozen people regularly have kept vigil outside Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson's mansion for weeks, holding signs that say "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "End the Death Penalty." And the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty hopes to draw hundreds of participants to a Good Friday rally at the state Capitol to protest the executions that start Monday — three nights of double executions, followed by a single one. A judge last week halted a planned eighth execution.
"Arkansas is known across the world for the Little Rock Nine and all of that atrocity," said the coalition's execution director, Furonda Brasfield, referring to the 1957 desegregation battle in Little Rock involving nine black students. "And now it's the Little Rock eight in 10, and it paints our state in such a horrible light."
The group is using the hashtag #8in10 to highlight the executions, although one man has received a stay and the seven lethal injections are scheduled to take place over 11 days, the first on April 17 and the last on April 27. Hutchinson set the unprecedented schedule because a key lethal injection drug expires April 30.

I'm certainly familiar with the historical significance of the Little Rock Nine. In 1997, while reporting on desegregation battlegrounds for The Oklahoman, I wrote a front-page Sunday feature on Little Rock Central High School.

But after 60 years, are the Little Rock Nine really what Arkansas is still known for? Might a different source — perhaps one of the "strong majority of residents" who favor the death penalty — offer a different perspective on the state and whether the executions will paint it in a horrible light? The wire service doesn't bother to ask.

In fact, AP quotes six people by name in this report — five of them death penalty opponents.


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'Down-ballot issues': Religion News Service offers a look, but not balance

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A quick quiz: How many horses does it take to make a race?

"That's easy," you say; "at least two."

That's right. So you'd want to know about them both.

So it is with the Religion News Service' guide to ballot issues that religious people are watching for the upcoming ballot.

"The nation’s attention may be on the presidential election, but there are a number of down-ballot issues of interest to religious and nonreligious voters," RNS says, and they're right. Their list – marijuana, gun control, minimum wage, the death penalty, assisted suicide, "public money for religious purposes" – suggests the range of religious thought in the public sphere.

But in some of the issues, one side seems to enjoy favored status. In some, only one side gets to talk. And in some, only one side is even acknowledged.

Take the death penalty, which is up for review in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma. RNS grants that there are two sides: "In California, almost 30 different religious groups support a death penalty repeal, while in Nebraska, celebrity Christian author Shane Claiborne has spoken in support of retaining a repeal of the death penalty at anti-death penalty events."

But who gets the direct quote?


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Washington Post offers one-sided (positive) look at conservatives who oppose death penalty

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As a life-long opponent of the death penalty, I have attended my share of prayer gatherings and rallies on this issue and other issues linked to it. That final clause – "and other issues linked to it" – is crucial.

What I have learned is that, in contemporary American life, there are basically two groups of people who are opposed to the death penalty.

The first group is made up of political progressives who oppose the death penalty and that's that. The second group (which would include me) consists of pro-life religious believers – left and right – who oppose the death penalty as well as legalized abortion, euthanasia and other life issues. The goal in this camp is to consistently apply a standard that all life is sacred, from conception to natural death.

In my experience, it's relatively rare to see mainstream press coverage of this second group, especially coverage that discusses the role that faith and doctrine plays in this stance. So I did a double-take the other day when I saw that Washington Post headline that proclaimed, "Meet the red-state conservatives fighting to abolish the death penalty."

Yes, this piece by New York magazine writer Marin Cogan is labeled "opinion." However, it's about as newsy as 80 percent of what runs as hard news in major newspapers today.

Let me confess that this is, in effect, a "Kellerism" piece that just happens to support a cause that floats my own boat. If you are looking for fair, accurate arguments in favor of the death penalty then this is not the piece for you. However, I wanted GetReligion readers to know about it because it does a pretty good job of handling faith-based material, while dealing with a group of believers that rarely gets much news coverage. So why an "opinion" piece?

Here is the overture:


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All Catholics oppose death penalty and all Baptists favor it?

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In the wake of the nation’s first executions since Oklahoma’s botched lethal injection, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an interesting story on a young Republican concerned about the death penalty: Late Tuesday, as the clock approached midnight, Marcus Wellons rode to oblivion on a state-inserted needle, his punishment for the rape and murder of a young Cobb County neighbor 24 years ago.

That same day, Marc Hyden, a 30-year-old confirmed conservative Republican from Marietta, hopped a plane for Washington D.C. Today, he will open a booth at the fifth annual gathering of Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition.

Hyden is a national coordinator for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, a two-year-old, GOP-based group that carries tea party suspicion of government into a new but highly logical arena:


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Little argument, and little religion, after botched execution

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This is the headline on a Washington Post follow-up on the recent big story in my home state: In Okla., little argument over the final outcome for inmate who died after botched execution

Little argument and little religion, based on this rather shallow Post story.

At GetReligion, we often refer to “holy ghosts.” In fact, as our editor tmatt explained at the very beginning (well, not that beginning), that’s why we’re here:


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Journalism, religion and a botched execution in Oklahoma

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Years ago, when I covered the state prison system for The Oklahoman and began serving as an official media witness for executions, those were the kinds of questions friends asked. I mean, I knew I had watched someone die. But I did so in a controlled, sanitized environment. A needle was inserted into a convicted killer’s arm — like someone receiving anesthesia for surgery — and the person lost consciousness. Within a few minutes, a time of death was declared.

The process was so routine, in most cases, that I wrote a behind-the-scenes account in 2000 of a “typical” execution day in Oklahoma:

McALESTER — At 6 a.m., before the sun has time to scale the towering white walls of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Roger James Berget opens his eyes.


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People were massacred in North Korea for WHAT?!?

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Contrary to popular belief, the mainstream press really isn’t very effective when it comes to telling individual citizens what to think.


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Death penalty in Cleveland horrors? Wait, who died?

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Once again, let’s turn to the dictionary and that tricky word “fetus,” which has through the decades been at the heart of so many bitter newsroom arguments about abortion, morality, religion, science and law.


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