What kind of year has it been for news?
Consider this: At the start of 2020, Australian wildfires raged, President Donald Trump was acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial, former basketball star Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others were killed in a helicopter crash and disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape.
None of these would likely make it into a top three list of the most-important news stories of the year.
Then came March 11. It was the night Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus, forcing the NBA to suspend games. It was the same night we learned actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson had tested positive as well. It was the day our reality was changed and the United States had officially entered the COVID-19 era, a pandemic that has altered the lives of millions and millions of Americans. It continues to do so for the foreseeable future.
The decision to report on the aforementioned stories involved something journalists employ while reporting and delivering information — news judgement. That’s the fuel — motivation if you will — that keeps journalism moving. Without deciphering what is news and what isn’t, it’s impossible for editors and reporters to package what’s happening around the world to readers.
One important trait of news judgement is the word “new.” After all, if it’s not new to those who consume it, then it really isn’t news. That isn’t all. The decisions that newsroom managers, beat writers and journalists in general — no matter the size of the publication — make each day can be very difficult, involving matters that include importance, audience interest, taste and ethics.
What does this have to do with the defacing and destruction of so many religious statues — predominantly Catholic ones — around the country and the world these days?
As Americans go from the racial reckoning that has engulfed America for the past two months to the start of the general election season, vandalism involving the burning of a church or the decapitation of a Jesus statue can become highly symbolic and significant.
That was the case last year when France — a nation seemingly proud to have moved on from its Christian past into secularism — saw widespread church fires and other acts of vandalism. It was a wonderful piece of journalism by Real Clear Investigations that delved into this frightening trend. The feature by Richard Bernstein, a former foreign correspondent at The New York Times, even called these acts “Christianophobia,” a term U.S. news outlets never use.
While 2020 is shaping up to be quite a annus horribilis — primarily because of the pandemic — it must be said that the surge in vandalism against Catholic churches in the United States and Canada is worrying. It also remains an extremely underreported news story in the national press, both print and digital.
Also, it should be noted that the defacing of churches across France hasn’t ceased as we get past the halfway point of 2020. The arson that recently ripped through the 15th century cathedral in Nantes proved the trend isn’t over, although news accounts failed to frame it that way.
The bottom line: If 2019 was highlighted by a dizzying increase in incident regarding Christian sites throughout Europe, this trend seems to now have crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
Legacy news outlets (such as The New York Times and ABC News) as well as newer journalism models (like Buzzfeed and Vox) haven’t reported on this trend, even though local newspapers and TV stations have in terms of individual incidents affecting their coverage zones.
This has resulted in disjointed coverage — leaving it up to Catholic media to employ news judgement and produce trend pieces in the aftermath of the protests and riots that followed the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers. What followed a few weeks back were attacks on Confederate statues, followed by vandalism to ones of America’s founders like Thomas Jefferson. Caught in all this was desecration in California of statues honoring Saint Junipero Serra for his alleged mistreatment of Native Americans. The debate over statues has now spilled over to Catholic sacred art, a trend that may be linked to some activists calling for statues of “white Jesus” be torn down.
The most-detailed timeline of this string of desecration wasn’t produced by The New York Times or Washington Post — but rather Aleteia, a Catholic news site.
The timeline begins with the July 10 vandalism of a statue of Mary that has stood in front of Queens, New York high school for the past 100 years. As of the Aleteia timeline, which includes seven alleged crimes spanning between July 10-16. The most egregious taking place on July 11 in Florida.
In Ocala, Florida, Saturday morning, July 11, parishioners were gathered for morning Mass when a minivan crashed into the front of Queen of Peace church. A 23-year-old man allegedly got out of the car and spread gasoline around the lobby, then lit it on fire. No one was hurt, but the fire did extensive damage. Police later caught the suspect, who was charged with attempted second-degree murder and arson. According to local media, the suspect told investigators that he was recently diagnosed with a mental illness but was not taking his prescribed medication. He also reportedly told them he had problems with the Catholic Church.
Again, the best the Times could do was run an Associated Press story once the suspect was charged in the arson, but could not be bothered to do a trend piece as these incidents starting piling up. During the same span as the attacks, the Times ran two pieces on predatory priests.
The attacks on churches didn’t end there, continuing this past weekend. Catholic News Agency summed up the past month this way:
Recent weeks have seen acts of vandalism and destruction at Catholic churches across the United States, including arsons, decapitations, and graffiti. In addition to the most recent attacks, in the last two weeks statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary have been attacked in Florida, Tennessee, New York, and Colorado.
Other Catholic religious statues in California, Missouri, and other places have been toppled or vandalized by protestors, including several of St. Junipero Serra.
While some attacks on statues, most notably in California, have been committed in public by large groups with clear political affiliations, the perpetrators of other acts, including those against the images of the Virgin Mary and Christ, have not been identified.
Statue-toppling, meanwhile, has been a topic covered by the mainstream secular press. President Trump’s speech at Mount Rushmore on July 3 was widely covered — albeit inaccurately by major newsrooms — so why so little to non-existent coverage on the attacks on Catholic churches and statues?
This is where the incidents in France of the last few years and the new ones in this country have another thing in common.
As secular media becomes more and more entrenched in reiterating narratives and packaging stories their readers will like and agree with politically, newspapers are increasingly no longer interested in performing the function of reporting the news.
While The New York Times and Washington Post have garnered legions of new subscribers with anti-Trump coverage over the past four years, almost anything that deviates from that — and challenges readers — would be seen as a poor business decision. Therefore, you get coverage that stresses peaceful protests even as fires rage in some American cities — but nothing when a church is set on fire. This double-standard doesn’t seem to bother journalists who are struggling to make a living during a bad economy.
News judgement makes it clear that a series of churches being set on fire and statues defaced isn’t just a series of local stories. This could be a national story. What if the story ends up contradicting the new orthodoxy of these subscribers? What it market research shows them that their readers aren’t religious?
That leaves “conservative” and “religious” media to fill the void, another place where credibility is often an issue. On the church vandalism story, Fox News Channel, Brietbart and CBN decided to cover it — again, look at their viewers — and you start to realize that news judgement isn’t the stuff I learned in college or in the newsroom. Here’s how Fox News covered the initial weekend of vandalism:
A slew of Catholic churches from Florida to California were burned and vandalized over the weekend as police continue to investigate whether or not they are connected to protests targeting symbols and statues.
Following George Floyd's police-related death in May, Black Lives Matter leaders and protesters called for the toppling of statues, from Confederate symbols to former U.S. presidents and abolitionists. Activist Shaun King called for all images depicting Jesus as a "White European" and his mother to be torn down because they're forms of "White supremacy" and "racist propaganda."
The Fox coverage then quickly turned to the lack of mainstream news coverage on the issue:
"Churches are being burned to the ground. What?," Mike Cernovich, a controversial right-leaning author, said in a video on Twitter. "Why is this not the biggest story of the day."
Sean Feucht, a California worship leader and pastor, commenting on the incidents asked, "Where's the outrage?”
Another detailed timeline was put together via IrishCentral.com, a website that reports on the Irish community across North America.
Why? Because the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the same group that organizes New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade each March 17, put out a statement decrying the lack of national media coverage on these incidents. In return, the national media ignored the statement and continued to not report on the trend.
Catholic News Agency did. This is how their July 16 story opens:
National news media cannot ignore intolerance against Catholics, the Ancient Order of Hibernians has said, citing recent attacks on Catholic churches and vandalism of statues of saints.
The group cited an incident at Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Ocala, Florida, where a man crashed a minivan into the church and then lit it on fire with gasoline early on Saturday, July 11 while people were inside preparing for morning Mass.
“The Hibernians are appalled at the conspicuous lack of national news coverage, particularly among the national broadcast networks, surrounding this blatant attack. The absence of national reporting concerning such an egregious attack against a Catholic church is at stark variance with past coverage of similar despicable attacks against other faiths,” the group said July 13.
“This absence of coverage is particularly glaring given that this attack is only the latest in a wave of wanton destruction targeting Catholics including the vandalism of a Catholic church in Boston, a Catholic school in New York and the ongoing investigation of a fire that destroyed the historic 249-year-old San Gabriel Mission and over the same weekend.” …
The Hibernians' statement cited the ancient legal principle “silence implies consent,” criticizing the national media for showing “silence on the rising tide of anti-Catholic violence.”
Who’s responsible for this anti-Catholic violence? Is it Muslim terrorists? Neo-Nazis? Left-wing radicals? Are these isolated incidents or part of a coordinated attack?
We don’t know because the elite newsrooms with the talent and resources to handle this kind of investigation are missing in action, in this case. So much for news judgement if the aggrieved side of a hate crime (in this case Catholics) isn’t worth your trouble or interest.
One has to wonder how these incidents would have been covered had they been mosques? What about public schools? Or say Planned Parenthood facilities?
Readers don’t need to understand news judgement to know the answer to those questions.