During the days since The Washington Post published religion-beat pro Sarah Pulliam Bailey's much discussed essay, "Evangelicals, your attacks on ‘the media’ are getting dangerous," several readers have sent us links to published responses online.
I have declined to post several of them because I don't want to point readers toward often nasty, straw-men attacks on (a) the skills, and even the Christian faith, of a highly talented and respected former colleague and (b) my own profession as a mainstream-media journalist.
Obviously, GetReligion is known for taking shots at organizations in the mainstream media that, as we say, "just don't get religion" (Hello Dean Baquet). There is a difference, however, between attacking, and documenting, case-studies of media abuse and simply saying (to wax theological for a moment) that an entire profession/vocation is Satanic, somehow, and certainly not part of God's good creation.
One of my few criticisms of Sarah's essay here at GetReligion was that I thought it was a bit soft on the fact that many religious believers, not just evangelical Protestants, have been prejudiced against journalism for a long, long time (not just during the Donald Trump melodrama) and that includes academic elites who simply think journalism is a shoddy, shallow line of work. Truth be told, religious readers in lots of academic and denominational buildings need to realize that they are part of the problem, when it comes to a lack of intellectual and cultural diversity in American newsrooms.
But this brings me to an essay responding to Sarah that is worth serious thought, offered by the Rev. Al Mohler, a podcasting commentary star who is also president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Actually, this is an edited transcript of the Dec. 9 episode of his "The Briefing" podcast, which ran with this title: "The Real Consequences of Fake News: Why Evangelicals Should Be Concerned With The Truth."
Mohler opens with some comments on the Bailey text. Let's listen in to that process, with Sarah's quotes in italics: