If you search for the word “posterized” in up-to-date online dictionaries, this is what you find: “A slang term depicting a play in basketball. In said play, a player dunks the ball over top or in front of another player, making a play so picturesque that it may appear on a poster, hence the term, posterized.”

Clearly, this is linked to another term frequently used in the nasty verbal wars that are common on social-media sites, with Twitter — dominated by liberal and conservative voices in elite zip codes — being the best example.

That term is “dunking.”

“Dunking” is relevant to the main topic discussed in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) about media coverage of the death of religious broadcaster Marcus Lamb, who died of COVID-19 after using his Daystar Television Network to criticize vaccine mandates and other anti-pandemic rules and guidelines, while advocating alternative treatments.

“Dunking” is defined, sort of, in this Slate article: “ ‘Dunking’ Is Delicious Sport — But it might be making Twitter even more terrible.” Here is a relevant passage:

Since Twitter rolled out the feature a couple of years ago, the quote-tweet has evolved into something like a pair of magic high-tops dispensed to every user on the service: Anyone can botch a tweet, and anyone can leap over him or her to score a couple of points—or a couple thousand likes and retweets.

The basketball term is apt: In a Twitter dunking, someone has made his point or said her piece, and instead of responding to it with a direct reply, perhaps in the spirit of equal-footed debate, the dunker seizes it like an alley-oop on his or her way to the basket. Maybe another player gets the unwitting assist, but the point is yours to be liked and retweeted not just as a reply but as a worthier tweet in its own right.

What does this look like in practice? Consider this example from the blitz of tweets about Lamb’s death. This dunk comes from the creator of the “America’s Best Christian” brand:

Clearly, that is generic, mean-spirited satire, the kind of commentary that would be made by legions of mainstream comics or, on the other side of America’s cultural minefields, by former President Donald Trump and some of his online disciples.

Funny about that.

Here is another example of a blue-checkmark “dunk” on Lamb and his family. All of this has raised a question: Is this sort of nastiness appropriate after a person — whether he or she is a public figure, or not — has died?

Frankly, I have not seen “dunking” in the mainstream coverage that I have read about Lamb’s death.

At the same time — as host Todd Wilken noted — I also couldn’t find strong quotes from Lamb saying some of the things that press coverage assumed that he said about vaccines.

Consider this passage from the Washington Post story on this topic (“Marcus Lamb, head of Daystar, a large Christian network that discouraged vaccines, dies after getting covid-19”):

During the pandemic, Lamb and his network went in big with anti-vaccine conspiracy claims, hosting daily interviews with skeptics who talked about alleged dangerous, hidden forces pushing vaccines and stealing Christians’ freedoms. One section of a Daystar webpage titled “Vaccines: The Unauthorized Truth” begins: “What if the most dangerous thing your child could face in life is the very thing you’re told by your doctor is safe?”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that this is a spiritual attack from the enemy,” Lamb’s son, Jonathan, said on the network earlier this month about his father’s covid-19 bout, Relevant magazine reported Tuesday. Talking about the alternative, unfounded treatments his parents promoted, Jonathan Lamb said: “There’s no doubt that the enemy is not happy about that. And he’s doing everything he can to take down my Dad.”

Daystar spokesman Arnold Torres declined to comment Tuesday on Lamb’s career or his views of his illness before he died, or whether he was vaccinated.

Sadly, this is yet another example of what happens when the leaders of Christian ministries — right or left, in my experience — refuse to respond to press questions about their work.

The bottom line: Many religious leaders seem to think that, by not granting interviews, they can make un-welcomed news stories disappear.

What happens, of course, is that reporters — lacking on-the-record quotes in response to valid questions — will proceed to write their stories, seeking quotable materials, as seen in this case, from online sources, broadcasts and niche-news sources.

It’s safe to say that Lamb and his family saw the coronavirus as a Satanic attack on life in general and that this was true, to be specific, in the broadcaster being stricken by the virus. It’s clear that they opposed vaccine mandates and that they urged the use of alternative treatments to the disease. What this story, and others, urgently needs is a strong quote from Lamb in which he specifically attacks the use of any COVID-19 vaccine.

Trust me, I know that — on deadline — it isn’t possible to zip through hundreds of hours of streamed material on this kind of alternative network. It’s also possible that Lamb’s family took these kinds of materials offline.

Readers are left with a gaping hole in the materials that they need in news stories, if the goal is to understand Lamb’s death.

Why not make a public statement and take questions, while recording both the questions and the answers of a spokesperson, such as Jonathan Lamb? That would be painful, but it would be wise and better than the alternative — as in news reports with major holes in them.

Meanwhile, the Post did manage to weave in this variation on one of the most popular media themes of the past five years or so:

White evangelical Christians resist coronavirus vaccines at higher rates than other religious groups in the United States, a phenomenon experts say is bound up in politics, skepticism about government and the consumption of alternative media and unfounded conspiracy claims about vaccine dangers.

Once again (#SIGH), let me urge readers to check out this GetReligion post: “Thinking about white evangelicals, COVID-19 vaccines and VERY popular headlines.”

Also, please see the remarks by political scientist Ryan Burge, and others, during the recent forum at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi. The topic was the role that religion did or didn’t play in America’s vaccine wars.

The bottom line: It’s clear that evangelicals were bitterly divided over how to respond to the COVID-19 crisis — divisions that are evidence they were not united in opposition to vaccines or other methods of fighting the virus.

For example, older evangelicals appear to have been just as likely to be vaccinated as other older Americans. Younger evangelicals were less likely, but so were younger “nones” or members of the “nothing in particular” flock. Urban Americans were more likely to be vaccinated that rural Americans, which complicated many religious stereotypes. The same is true of divides based on education, income and race.

But who can resist another opportunity to “dunk” on evangelicals?

However, readers can turn to a long and nuanced report from Religion News Service, written by veteran religion-beat scribe Bob Smietana. The headline: “Marcus Lamb, anti-COVID vaccine Christian broadcaster, dies at 64.”

Once again, there are passages that would have been strengthened by direct responses from Daystar leaders. It is impossible to quote from interviews that newsmakers refuse to give.

Let me end with this: Here is a long passage from the RNS report that, in my opinion, added quite a bit of depth to these discussions:

 Sam Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, said that he had recently visited the Daystar studios to see Lamb, who was a longtime friend. He said that the Daystar network had a diverse audience and that Lamb had been outspoken about the need to address racism in the church and in society. Rodriguez pointed to a program broadcasted on Daystar and hosted by Bishop Kenneth Ulmer, a Black megachurch pastor in Los Angeles, in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

Marcus and Joni Lamb, said Rodriguez, were committed to addressing racism.

“They were very committed to racial unity and reconciliation,” Rodriguez said. “They are very committed to defeating the giants of bigotry and segregation.”

Lamb posted a photo of Floyd, accompanied by the words “I can’t breathe,” on his Facebook page in the summer of 2020.

“Joni and I remain committed to standing against the evil sin of racism,” he wrote on the post. “The murder of George Floyd and the pain that followed have been heart breaking and I know it also breaks the heart of God.”

Rodriguez said that he never had a conversation about COVID with Marcus Lamb and said that in their interactions, he never heard Lamb criticize vaccines. Rodriguez hopes his friend will be remembered for his legacy of ministry, not that one issue. And he expressed grief over the loss of his friend — and the loss of so many others to COVID-19.

Was this discussion of race needed, in the context of a story focusing on Lamb’s death? I believe that it was important, in part because it hints at the bonds that exist between Blacks, Latinos and White Christian leaders in the world of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (as opposed to “evangelicalism,” per se).

Yes, I would also note that many church leaders in the world of Pentecostal Christianity have struggled with divisions in their own ranks about how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and, now, the vaccines. This is especially true in ministries and congregations that are totally independent, as in free from ties to larger denominations.

This is a very complex topic. Period. Many journalists need to wrestle with that complexity, not ignore it.

Enjoy the podcast and, please, pass it along to others.

FIRST IMAGE: Illustration used with a Techpoint.Africa feature on Twitter fights.