The start of 2023 has brought with it renewed discussion about the role of journalism in society and, more importantly, how it should be practiced and for whom.

At the same time, more Catholic churches and crisis-pregnancy centers have been the target of vandalism.

You may not have noticed this trend — because it is receiving little elite-news coverage.

I can’t help but think these two things are linked. Here’s how.  

Journalists and news organizations are increasingly abandoning old-school objectivity — think basic standards of accuracy, balance, fairness, etc. — in favor of an ever-changing worldview linked to whatever is fashionable politically or culturally, especially stances that are popular with paying customers. These news organizations are increasingly focused on how to influence the now and future rather than report on basic facts surrounding events.

Journalism, however, is not solely about predicting the future — see, for example, the heavy coverage towards polls trying to predict the outcome of elections — but observing the present and the on-the-record facts that surround us at the moment on a particular topic or issue.  

This growing activism among journalists has led reporters to lose most of their curiosity, a crucial element in news coverage.

Instead of asking questions, many already think they have the answers on an array of issues. In the process, this sense of activism among this new journalist class (and their Gen X editors who suddenly think that journalists have been doing things all wrong for decades) has led it to loss its curiosity. Debates? Who needs debates? Tropes based in secular society’s current values, for example, automatically trump thousands of years worth of Judeo-Christian tradition.

This brings us to the continuing trend that has seen many churches vandalized over the past few years. It’s a story that has received very little news coverage in the national press. Why? Hold that thought.

I have examined the possible reasons many times in the past at GetReligion, but the release of a new report — under the title “Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today’s Newsrooms” — has shed some light on trends linked to “objectivity” in journalism.

Here is a key section about the report in a Washington Post column by Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor at that newspaper and a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University (click here for a GetReligion podcast that discusses this column).

Downie co-authored the report and explained what they were doing in this excerpt:  

To better understand the changes happening now, I and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward, a colleague at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, investigated the values and practices in mainstream newsrooms today, with a grant from the Stanton Foundation. What we found has convinced us that truth-seeking news media must move beyond whatever “objectivity” once meant to produce more trustworthy news. We interviewed more than 75 news leaders, journalists and other experts in mainstream print, broadcast and digital news media, many of whom also advocate such a change. This appears to be the beginning of another generational shift in American journalism.

Among the news leaders who told Heyward and me that they had rejected objectivity as a coverage standard was Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor of the Associated Press. “It’s objective by whose standard?” she asked. “That standard seems to be White, educated, fairly wealthy. … And when people don’t feel like they find themselves in news coverage, it’s because they don’t fit that definition.”

More and more journalists of color and younger White reporters, including LGBTQ+ people, in increasingly diverse newsrooms believe that the concept of objectivity has prevented truly accurate reporting informed by their own backgrounds, experiences and points of view.

How does that affect news coverage? Bias isn’t only in stories and how they are reported on, but in the ones news organizations don’t cover. It’s an editorial choice to report on a story. Not doing so is as well.

“There is some confusion about the value of good reporting versus point of view,” said current Post executive editor Sally Buzbee, who noted that many journalists want to make a difference on such issues as climate change, immigration and education. “We stress the value of reporting,” she said, “what you are able to dig up — so you (the reader) can make up your own mind.”

“The consensus among younger journalists is that we got it all wrong,” Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor in chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, told us. “Objectivity has got to go.”

If this is the typical newsroom mindset, has today’s journalism become detached from reality? If it presupposes narratives and ideas that push ideas that are in vogue, that’s not a good thing. What to create anger and divisions in a culture? This is how journalists can do it.

In addition to journalists abandoning objectivity in favor of an ever-changing worldview that resembles what’s fashionable politically or culturally, news organizations are increasingly focused on the now and the future. Period.

This long-winded preamble takes us to the church vandalism story, one that has included mostly Catholic houses of worship and crisis-pregnancy centers.

Why aren’t newsrooms investigating this trend of the past few years, while seeking information from activists on both sides of this issue?

The aforementioned report on this topic sheds light on it all. Also, click here for a new tmatt Religion & Liberty essay on issues related to this sad situation.

If mainstream news coverage of religion has become increasingly hostile to the beliefs of many Americans, it is because those beliefs are not respected by those doing the journalism. Without basic standards for doing journalism, ignoring the church vandalism trend — like many in the mainstream press have for a few years, despite a sharp increase in cases — has become business as usual.

It should be noted that places such as Catholic News Agency have done a very good job covering these incidents, as has the website of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Catholic Bishops. But national news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post and the three major networks (CBS, ABC and NBC) have ignored it.

You see, the Catholic church and centuries of its teachings are part of the “problem.” If they — and their buildings — become a target, then so be it. Newsrooms aren’t interested in shattering narratives they already believe. A story on church desecrations may reveal the people and motivations behind it, and that could make some beliefs look very bad (and upset many faithful readers).

Thus, a Google News search of “Catholic Church vandalism” yields many stories from local TV and print outlets about individual crimes. Julia Duin, a GetReligion contributor who also writes for Newsweek, has covered this trend as far back as 2021. Her piece from this past Dec. 30 details how these attacks have shaken churches and pregnancy centers.

These types of stories, however, are rarely seen in the national press as past of a trend — despite documents and data collected by the USCCB and conservative groups such as CatholicVote and the Family Research Council.

A news story published by the Catholic news site Aleteia reported the following in December:

A new report from the Family Research Council (FRC) has documented some 420 instances of attacks on churches in the United States between 2018 and 2022. While the crisis of violence against both Catholic and Christian churches is disheartening, so too is a new report from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which recently found that only 37% of Americans have heard about the crisis at all.

The FRC has been tracking attacks on churches within the US since January 2018 and their records continue until September 2022. In that time-frame, the organization has noted an overwhelming amount of attacks on churches, in the form of vandalism, arson, bomb threats, and more. It should be noted that the 420 recorded attacks were only on churches, but the figure rises to nearly 500 when taking pro-life pregnancy centers into consideration.

The report stated that “Americans seem increasingly comfortable lashing out at church buildings,” and suggests that Christians’ pro-life beliefs are being marginalized. Furthermore, they consider the abundance of attacks to be a symptom of “a collapse in societal reverence.”

As a result, the vandalism endured by Catholic churches across the country on a regular basis — the latest taking place a few weeks ago at several houses of worship in New Jersey — becomes a story only covered by the right-wing news ecosystem, alone.

But legacy media companies, at this point in time, continue to have more credibility and influence in our society compared to conservative ones. When the FBI recently offered a $25,000 reward for information related to a string of attacks on crisis-pregnancy centers, it was Fox News and National Review who wrote about it.

Old-school objectivity in journalism appears to be dead. My proof for that statement is that the ongoing vandalism of churches is a major story, but one that elite newsroom professionals have decided is a right-wing political talking point.

If this isn’t a flaw in the current way journalists do things, then expect for more readers to look elsewhere for information.

FIRST IMAGE: Statue of Jesus vandalized inside a Catholic church in 2020. Photo provided by the USCCB.