GetReligion
Wednesday, April 02, 2025

The New York Post

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Prayers for the soul of Brian Sicknick: Did anyone ask officers faith questions after Capitol riot?

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Prayers for the soul of Brian Sicknick: Did anyone ask officers faith questions after Capitol riot?

When you live somewhere, you develop friendships and contacts that survive — especially in the age of email and social media.

I lived and worked in Baltimore and Washington, D.C, for a decade-plus and my commute took me to Union Station and then past the U.S. Capitol. Many of my students had press passes on the Hill and that landmark was simply part of work-day life.

Right after the rioting last week, I received an email through church contacts requesting prayers for the “repose of the soul of a friend and U.S. Capitol Police officer, Brian,” as well as prayers for other police who were injured. Christians in the USCP and linked to it were spreading this request.

It’s impossible to read all of the coverage of the January 6th riots. But if you dig into the coverage at all, you are sure to hit detailed coverage of the “Fight for Trump” rioters who carried Christian symbols and banners inside the U.S. Capitol security zone, even while surrounded by others chanting, “Hang Mike Pence” and slogans that can’t be printed here.

Let me stress, once again, that this coverage was and is valid. The impact of QAnon in corners of white evangelicalism cannot be denied and many of other conspiracy theory believers “speak evangelical” even if they’re not churchgoers.

The note from friends in Beltway land led me to look for signs of religion-news coverage on the other side of that battle line between police and the rioters. I know the U.S. Capitol community well enough to know that there are all kinds of prayer groups and Bible studies there, on both sides of the aisle and crossing them. Do similar groups exist in the USCP? Did anyone ask if Brian Sicknick was part of such a support network?

It’s clear that Sicknick was an unusual and even inspiring man, an officer appreciated by Democrats and Republicans. We know something about his politics, naturally. He was an Air National Guard veteran who, in some ways, backed Donald Trump. Sicknick was also a critic of many mainstream Republicans.

A Washington Post story quoted Chief Master Sgt. Lance C. Endee — Sicknick’s squad leader in the guard — as saying: “I think Brian had a bigger impact on people than he would have ever realized.” That same story included this:

In a statement, Sicknick’s family said “many details regarding Wednesday’s events and the direct causes of Brian’s injuries remain unknown and our family asks the public and the press to respect our wishes in not making Brian’s passing a political issue.”


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Religion is the hidden theme in this coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine controversy

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A group of doctors in white coats was the big news last week and for those of you living under a rock, I am referring to some press conferences in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. They featured a racially mixed group of about 10 people dressed in white lab coats.

All of them — who were doctors of one sort or another — gave their names and that of their workplaces, making it easy for anyone to check them out. Their plaint? The anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is a proven tool in treatment of COVID-19 and there’s something rotten in Denmark when you can’t even post a video on social media about it.

But did you see much reporting examining their arguments?

No, you heard about “demon sperm” and “alien DNA.”

It didn’t take long before Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were treating the event as akin to anti-vaxxer screed. Censors at all three platforms were working overtime to get this presser erased. Certain media managed to get a look-see at these medics, and what did they concentrate on in their reports?

Their religious views, of course.

Especially the religion of the one black woman in the crowd. We’ll get back to that shortly. First, some background from the New York Times, which was in quite a swivet about the whole thing.

In a video posted Monday online, a group of people calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors” and wearing white medical coats spoke against the backdrop of the Supreme Court in Washington, sharing misleading claims about the virus, including that hydroxychloroquine was an effective coronavirus treatment and that masks did not slow the spread of the virus.

The video did not appear to be anything special. But within six hours, President Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. had tweeted versions of it, and the right-wing news site Breitbart had shared it. It went viral, shared largely through Facebook groups dedicated to anti-vaccination movements and conspiracy theories such as QAnon, racking up tens of millions of views. Multiple versions of the video were uploaded to YouTube, and links were shared through Twitter.

Well, surely the public can’t be allowed to see that, right?


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Podcast: Jump in GetReligion WABAC machine and explore roots of @NYTimes revolt

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When I was a kid in the 1960s — soon after the cooling of the Earth’s crust — I was a big fan of the The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. My favorite feature was the show within the show entitled “Peabody's Improbable History," in which the WABAC machine transported the brilliant Mr. Peabody (a dog, actually) and his boy Sherman (an actual boy) into the past to have wonderful adventures.

At two points in my life I have been a fan of the BBC Doctor Who series — especially Tom Baker as Doctor No. 4 and Peter Capaldi as No. 12.

So this time travel thing is a useful concept, methinks, even when dealing with trends in postmodern journalism. You’ll see that (or hear it) during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). In this particular post we will be making four stops, although we could make a dozen.

Turn on the WABAC machine and tell me — as a reflection on the latest editorial explosion in the New York Times newsroom — who said or wrote the following (don’t click the link yet) after debates about fair and accurate coverage of what event?

As we reflect on the momentous result, and the months of reporting and polling that preceded it, we aim to rededicate ourselves to the fundamental mission of Times journalism. That is to report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor, striving always to understand and reflect all political perspectives and life experiences in the stories that we bring to you. It is also to hold power to account, impartially and unflinchingly. You can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team.

That, of course, was part of a letter from New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and executive editor Dean Baquet — responding to complaints that their newspaper had botched coverage of the 2016 White House race and the rise of Donald Trump.

How do those words hold up right now?

The key issue, according to Times public editor Liz Spayd, was whether America’s most influential newsroom was interested in doing accurate, informed, fair-minded coverage of roughly half of the American population. See this column, in particular: “Want to Know What America’s Thinking? Try Asking.” Here is a key chunk of that:


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2020 White House race: U.S. bishops don't want to make news, but it'll be hard avoid it

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You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

It’s like being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Religion-beat pros will understand if cliches such as these are being muttered by members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops these days. Why? As Americans prepare to decide who will be their next president this November, members of the Catholic hierarchy are finding themselves in a no-win situation.

Do they speak favorably of President Donald Trump, helping him potentially to win re-election, or do they lend a hand to Democratic challenger Joe Biden helping the former vice president become just the second Catholic to ever serve as a U.S. president? Catholic leaders — be it the pope, cardinals, bishops or your local parish priest — don’t openly endorse candidates for political office.

There is a reason for that. The main reason is that it fosters division among a very large spectrum of people who are all part of the same denomination. IRS rules also forbid nonprofit institutions like churches from engaging in partisan politics — something some pastors avoid by saying they are speaking on behalf of themselves, not the church they represent.

While a few members of other Christian bodies choose to openly back a candidate (for example, some evangelicals and Trump; African-American church leaders and Biden), Catholic prelates see an endorsement as something that could weaken the church’s own authority and belief system.

In other words, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t if you’re a Catholic leader. Still, this election will raise all kinds of unavoidable moral and religious questions for Trump and Biden.

Which brings us to Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York City. He was the target of outrage on the part of left-leaning Catholics for the way he spoke favorably of Trump following a phone call the president had with several U.S. bishops. Dolan, it should be noted, has also received abuse from the church’s right-wing cheering section for the way he’s handled the issue of gay priests.

Trump, on a call with bishops, called himself the best president in “the history of the Catholic Church.”


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New podcast: Franklin Graham comes to Central Park, earning solid quotes in Gray Lady

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It’s easy to argue about Franklin Graham.

For starters, he is the heir of much of the ministry of the Rev. Billy Graham, and it’s hard to name a figure in mainstream Christianity who was more beloved than Billy Graham.

At the same time, Franklin Graham has openly aligned himself with Donald Trump, turning away from even the modest criticisms he offered during the primary season before the 2016 shocker. His theological critique of all of this has been blunt, to say the least.

That’s his style, and people love to argue about that. As I said in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), Franklin Graham has rarely used a flyswatter when a baseball bat will do.

But the fact that so many people ARGUE about Franklin Graham implies that there are good things to say about him (from multiple points of view) as well as bad things to say (from multiple points of view). It should be easy to write provocative, balanced news stories about him because there are so many people, with so many different perspectives, who have strong opinions about him.

However, mainstream press coverage of Franklin Graham tends to portray him as — let me state this mildly — the tacky son of a great man who is now one of the bigoted evangelical vandals who want to sack the American Rome (that would be New York City).

This brings me to an interesting, and in many ways admirable, New York Time story that ran the other day with this sprawling two-deck headline:

Franklin Graham Is Taking Down His N.Y. Hospital, but Not Going Quietly

His critics accuse him of discriminating against L.G.B.T. people. “Just because I don’t agree doesn’t mean I’m against them,” he said.

This lengthy story contains quite a bit of material in which Graham defends his organization and his own beliefs. It helps that he came to New York City — there is a lesson here for other religious leaders, especially evangelicals — and was willing to stand in front of microphones and answer questions.

The story, however, doesn’t include much in the way of information about what Samaritan’s Purse does and how long Graham and his team has been doing what they do.

Does that matter?


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Here we go again: Protestant pastor locked out of his church when he arrived for 'mass'

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This is one of those questions readers keep asking in the Internet age: Is an error an error, even if newspaper editors correct it without admitting that they made an error?

What if it’s one of those tiny errors that only matter to strange religious believers who care about picky little words that have to do with their most cherished beliefs? You know, like the fact that Protestants are not Catholics and they use different words to describe what goes on in their sanctuaries?

What we have here is a mistake that happens all the time, especially when religion is in the news and, for logical reasons (think holiday breaks or the current COVID-19 crisis), newsroom managers are short on well-rested personnel.

Nevertheless, a mistake is a mistake and journalists need to pay attention to this kind of thing. In this case we are dealing with yet another story about a preacher who wants to carry on with business as usual, no matter what. The New York Post headline says: “Landlord changes church locks to stop pastor from defying coronavirus lockdown.”

Now, this is a piece of click-bait aggregation, which means that it’s even more likely that an intern or someone low on the journalism food chain cranked it out. Here’s the crucial information:

Pastor Jon Duncan had vowed to continue preaching at Cross Culture Christian Center in Lodi, telling Fox 40 the services were “protected by the First Amendment and should be considered essential.” But he was met by several police officers when he arrived on Palm Sunday — and was unable to enter the completely shuttered church, the Los Angeles Times said.

The building’s owner, the nearby Bethel Open Bible Church, had “changed the locks on the doors in response” to his threats to defy coronavirus restrictions, Lodi police Lt. Michael Manetti told the paper. …

Duncan had no idea that the locks had been changed when he arrived for mass, his attorney, Dean Broyles, told the L.A. Times.

Now, that’s what the story said when a GetReligion reader read it, did a face-palm move and sent me copy from the original story.


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On M.Z. Hemingway, The New Yorker and the return of the vast Opus Dei conspiracy

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Since I am not living in Washington, D.C., during this current acid-bath of an era (thank you, Jesus), I no longer get to hang out every now and then with former GetReligionista Mollie Hemingway. I wish I could, though. She’s a witty riot of a conversationalist and it doesn’t matter if she’s surrounded by packs of liberals or conservatives (or both).

We probably wouldn’t talk about politics, since I’m still enforcing my policy that Donald Trump’s face is not allowed to appear on the television in my sports-and-movie cave. (I’m bracing myself for Hillary Clinton’s comeback, when I can renew her ban.) We could talk about journalism, of course, since we both enjoy the work of reporters who quote lots of on-the-record sources (as in the “Justice on Trial” book that MZ wrote with Carrie Severino).

I am sure that we would discuss mainstream media coverage of religion news, since that’s a topic she frequently raises in her work with Howard Kurtz on the MediaBuzz show. (Why does that have to air on Sunday mornings?)

That brings me to that very MZ blast the other day about that piece in The New Yorker that ran with this headline: “William Barr, Trump’s Sword and Shield.” This feature by David Rohde — with a big dose of paranoia about conservative Catholics — served as a reminder that there are dangerous religious believers in the world other than white evangelicals.

Here’s MZ:

… (In) the second paragraph, Rohde writes about a speech Barr recently gave at the University of Notre Dame. Barr asserted that declining religious influence in American life has left the country more vulnerable to government dependency. He also noted that some of the left’s secularists are not particularly tolerant.

For Rohde, the speech was “a catalogue of grievances accumulated since the Reagan era, when Barr first enlisted in the culture wars. It included a series of contentious claims. He argued, for example, that the Founders of the United States saw religion as essential to democracy. ‘In the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people — a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order,’ he said.”


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Greek Orthodox leader arrested: Reporters who follow the money will hear all kinds of questions

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This is the kind of New York Times headline that tends to inspire emails that show up in my computer inbox: “Ex-Director of Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Charged.”

In this case, we are dealing with an Associated Press report that has run all over the place — covering the latest installment in a long-simmering scandal that has created a major embarrassment for Eastern Orthodox Christians here in North America.

On one level, this is a Greek Orthodox story. However, I think that reporters need to understand that many Orthodox believers — in America and around the world — are intensely interested in what happens in this case.

Why is that? You see this scandal is linked to a highly symbolic 9/11 memorial project at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. Check out the images and emotional language used in the video at the top of this post, back when work finally started moving on the long-delayed project to rebuild St. Nicholas Orthodox Church.

Let’s start with the top of the AP report:

NEW YORK — The former head administrator of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America was arrested Monday on charges he embezzled over half a million dollars from the organization even as the church ran out of money trying to build a shrine to replace a church crushed in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Jerry Dimitriou, 55, of Greenlawn, New York, was freed on $150,000 bail after he was charged with two counts of wire fraud, accused of pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally while serving as the administrator from 2000 until late 2017.

Dimitriou oversaw construction of a new church and Sept. 11 shrine at the World Trade Center until the project ran out of money in 2017. The St. Nicholas National Shrine, designed by renowned architect Santiago Calatrava and estimated to cost $50 million, was supposed to replace a tiny church that was crushed by the trade center’s south tower.

That $50 million price tag?

If you dig around you will find all kinds of other numbers for that, starting at $80 million and heading way, way higher. The funds for the project came from donors all over the place, with gifts both large and small.

So what went wrong? Here is some language in the new AP story. Read carefully:


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Nothing scarier than the press ignoring Catholicism in all of those Halloween features

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It’s Halloween season. You may have noticed that by walking on the streets near your home and encountering those all-too-familiar garish orange-and-black decorations. Then again, maybe you have visited stores with shelves packed with bags and bags of candy and scary kids’ costumes.

This is also a time when some Catholic churches advertise Halloween get-togethers or parties for children and their families. That’s a reminder that Halloween and religion aren’t such strange bedfellows.

It’s also the time when newspapers and websites start rolling out those often predictable Halloween stories. The reason for this is two-fold.

First, journalists need to find a “news hook” when doing a story. As part of the five Ws — who, what, when, where and why — the reason for doing the story is often answered in the why. Timeliness is a major reason for why a story is being done at this moment in time. It’s the reason why this very piece you are reading is being posted at this moment in time.

Second, the internet has impacted news coverage in all the ways some of you already know. One big way has been in the use of “keywords” and “algorithms.” All news organizations with a website rely on these two for clicks (readers, that is) and the little money from advertising that they can reap from those page views. Halloween is one of the most-searched words during October. It’s a word that trends on Twitter. Therefore, content is created for this very purpose.

That sets up my point: Halloween stories are popping up this month because or both timeliness and SEO (Search Engine Optimization, the function that helps you find stories when you use a search engine). It’s this process by which keywords appear in headlines that readers can access them on Google News.

It’s the content in these Halloween stories, however, that often lacks a religion angle.


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