Long before Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire on Fort Hood, killing at least 13, there was a well-established formula for covering this story.

Start with shock and awe. Then, as information starts to get out, report that the suspected shooter has an Arabic name. Confirm that he was, in fact, a Muslim. Once that has settled in, add to the story about motive the possibility of jihad and the references to 9/11. Finally, within short order, fill out the picture with a story about American Muslims condemning the alleged act of their misguided brother.

Ms. MZ and tmatt were all over the coverage of the Fort Hood massacre last night and this morning. Now here are my thoughts on the Muslim reactions to Hasan’s alleged actions.

Let’s look specifically at coverage from The New York Times: “Muslims at Fort Voice Outrage and Ask Questions.” (The Los Angeles Times also delivered a pretty straightforward story mixing man-on-the-street with advocacy leaders and The Washington Post offered this six-paragraph roll-call of the organizations speaking out.)

In the NYT story, we’ve got great quotes and a narrow window into Muslim life on and around the largest Army base in the country. Oddly, it’s not clear whether the lead quote is from a Muslim or just a friend of Hasan. Often, that wouldn’t matter. But here, on the face of the story, it does. Particularly when you read the remark:

“When a white guy shoots up a post office, they call that going postal,” said Victor Benjamin II, 30, a former member of the Army. “But when a Muslim does it, they call it jihad.

“Ultimately it was Brother Nidal’s doing, but the command should be held accountable,” Mr. Benjamin said. “G.I.’s are like any equipment in the Army. When it breaks, those who were in charge of keeping it fit should be held responsible for it.”

This story from reporter Michael Moss is fairly short, which almost always serves as a valid defense for not offering more religious depth. But the problem here is more fundamental. This is a classic example of a story about religion that is complete void of any religion.

We get a glimpse of the people at Friday prayers, but learn nothing of the religion that American Muslims are seeking to distinguish from Hasan’s alleged actions:

Among those attending Friday prayers at the Killeen mosque was Sgt. Fahad Kamal, 26, an Army medic who wore his Airborne uniform, and later he said he was angered on several levels. “I want to believe it was the individual, and not the religion, that made him do what he did,” said Sergeant Kamal, who returned to the United States last year after a 15-month tour in Afghanistan. “It’s an awful thing. I feel let down. We’re better than this.”

It was Major Hasan, though, who increasingly felt let down by the military, and deeply conflicted by his religion, said those who knew him through the mosque. Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old substitute teacher whose parents worked at Fort Hood, said Major Hassan was told he would be sent to Afghanistan on Nov. 28, and he did not like it.

“He said he should quit the Army,” Mr. Reasoner said. “In the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.”

That’s really the only religious reference in the story. More importantly, I’d like to know where in the Koran that verse is. The latter might be true — I don’t read Arabic — but I’m pretty sure the former isn’t. Ever heard of the Spanish Golden Age?

I could be wrong here. But it would be nice if the reporter would show me how.

I am always amazed (and I must confess, intimidated) by the quality of journalistic work that true professionals are able to do on deadline.

Of course, the Washington Post had a totally unfair advantage on other national-market newspapers when the story broke at Ford Hood. While Sunbelt newspapers were closer to the action on the ground (and some did not use that location to much advantage), the Post was able to turn its attention to the people who had the best first-hand information on the background of the alleged gunman.

Why? That’s the lede of the stunning early profile that the Post team turned out and had online last night — repeat, last night — while many other news outlets were struggling to make any attempt to cover the painful roles that religion and prejudice appear to have played in this tragedy. Here is how Mary Pat Flaherty, William Wan and Christian Davenport opened the piece:

He prayed every day at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, a devout Muslim who, despite asking to be discharged from the U.S. Army, according to his aunt, was on the eve of his first deployment to war. Yesterday, authorities said Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, a 39-year-old Arlington-born psychiatrist, shot and killed at least 12 people at Fort Hood, Tex.

In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and had sought for several years to be discharged from the military.

“I know what that is like; I have experienced it myself while working as a bank executive,” she said. “Some people can take it, and some cannot. He had listened to all of that, and he wanted out of the military and they would not let him leave even after he offered to repay” for his medical training.

An Army spokesman, George Wright, said he could not confirm the report of any request to be discharged.

As authorities scrambled to figure out what happened at Fort Hood, a hazy and contradictory picture emerged of a man who received all of his medical training from the military and spent all of his career in the Army, yet turned so violently against his own. Hasan spent much of his professional career at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District caring for the victims of trauma, yet he spoke openly of his deep opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He steered clear of female colleagues and, despite devout religious practices, listed himself in Army records as having no religious preference, co-workers said.

There are many, many unanswered questions and paradoxes — of course. The Post explored as many as possible on deadline.

The goal was to seek a balance between two sets of facts that had to be kept in tension, namely the allegations of bias against Hasan (can anyone doubt that this was a reality) and the evidence that many of his problems in the military were rooted in his convictions that it was wrong for the American military to be engaged in wars against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, beliefs that led to conflicts in the ranks of soldiers around him.

Earlier today, the Associated Press moved an update with a vivid image that may or may not link the faith element to the heart of the story:

Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar!” — an Arabic phrase for “God is great!” — before opening fire, the base commander said Friday.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said officials had not yet confirmed that the suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, made the comment before the rampage Thursday.

Quite frankly, I have been teaching all morning and have not caught up with the flood of coverage in the past few hours. However, I do have many questions, primarily based on the excellent Post mini-profile and other major reports at dawn.

* Is it true that Hasan had taken special classes to fine-tune his skills with small arms? How does that mesh with his statements to his family about his reluctance, as a psychiatrist, to have any connection with combat or fighting?

* Has anyone seen a description of how Hasan was dressed at the time of the attack? Authorities will pursue any links between the alleged gunman and his victims or words that he spoke to them as the attack began. Was this totally random?

* Of course, investigators will pursue any potential ties between Hasan and terrorists groups. A key question: Had he in fact sought a discharge? Why would someone whose long-range goal was terrorism (the allegations lurking behind those small-arms classes) make strong efforts (described by family members) to leave the military?

* We are going to end up with a timeline of people testifying to two realities that must be kept in balance. One reality is the claims that Army personnel were biased against Hasan because of his Islamic faith. At the same time, we will need to know when he began expressing his controversial beliefs about the U.S. military role in the Middle East.

How much of the conflict around Hasan was based on prejudice and how much was rooted in arguments about how his beliefs were affecting his role in the military? For example, there are clashing reports about negative critiques of his work. What about those emails that he allegedly sent praising suicide bombers? There are many questions to be answered here.

Once again, the Post showed its readers that religious questions would continue to rise to the top of the list. There are paradoxes stacked atop other paradoxes:

Hasan attended the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring and was “very devout,” according to Faizul Khan, a former imam at the center. Khan said Hasan attended prayers at least once a day, seven days a week, often in his Army fatigues.

Khan also said Hasan applied to an annual matrimonial seminar that matches Muslims looking for spouses. “I don’t think he ever had a match, because he had too many conditions,” Khan said. “We never got into details of worldly affairs or politics,” the former imam said of his conversations with Hasan. “Mostly religious questions. But there was nothing extremist in his questions. He never showed any frustration. … He never showed any … wish for vengeance on anybody.”

It is going to take a long time to assemble a final timeline for the events that led up to the massacre at Fort Hood, if, in fact, it is possible to accomplish that task. However, the team at the Post did an amazing job of starting that journey — on deadline.

Yesterday a U.S. Army major opened fire on a military processing center at Fort Hood in Texas, killing 12 people and wounding 30, according to various media reports. Whenever major news breaks, information flies around fast and much of it turns out to be inaccurate.

This case was no different.

Early reports indicated that there were three shooters. Then there were reports that one of the shooters had been killed. Then there were reports that the main suspect — Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — was the shooter who had been killed. Another report said a police officer had been killed. As I write this, the latest news is that there was only one shooter and he’s not dead but, rather, in stable condition after being shot. And the police officer who shot Hasan is injured but recovering from her injuries.

It is so difficult to get accurate information at times like this. When the media reported each of the things above, they were sourcing the claims to officials who spoke on the record. I believe the same official who reported that the suspect had been killed was the one who later said he was alive. So these reporters and editors weren’t exactly running wild with questionable information. They did their best even if it turned out that a lot of information was incorrect.

Nevertheless, let’s look at some of the other issues in how this news was handled, early on.

I’m actually glad that there wasn’t any immediate speculation (that I saw or read, at least) as to whether the act of terror was done by Muslims. Media outlets were extremely careful to not even bring up the issue of the U.S. military’s current battles in Iraq and Afghanistan. I only wish they wouldn’t speculate at all — the discussion I listened to (I forget which cable outlet) about whether the shooters (yes, plural) were suffering from post traumatic stress disorder was embarrassing and a waste of everybody’s time. I don’t mind a discussion of various possible motivations or a look at military terrorism in the past — which would bring up everything from the Weather Underground to disgruntled soldiers to Muslim attacks — but those discussions need to be careful and balanced.

Moving on, one NBC report I read said that the suspect had an “Arabic-sounding name.” I’m not quite sure what that even means. The line was later removed and then modified. Once the name was released, more details began to trickle out. ABC News’ Brian Ross described the suspect as a “recent convert to Islam.” Turns out he is Muslim but is not a recent convert, having been raised in Islam.

Soon there were other bits and fragments that indicated more of a religious angle. There were reports from a retired colonel who worked with Hasan. He said that Hasan had said Muslims should stand up and and “fight against the aggressor.” He also reported that Hasan was almost happy about the recent deathly shooting by a Muslim at a Little Rock military recruitment center.

Later in the day, this web posting allegedly made by Hasan came to light. In it, he defends the morality of suicide bombing. Here’s how the Associated Press quoted it:

“To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause,” said the Internet posting. “Scholars have paralled (sic) this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers.”

One web site that did a good job of posting information and sourcing it well was The Lede Blog at the New York Times. You can start at the bottom and scroll up to get an idea of how details about the shooting and the shooter emerged. It runs from 4:07 PM when the first post was published and updates continue every few minutes throughout. There isn’t much discussion of religion, though. But an actual Times article about the suspect discusses his religion and how it relates to the shooting quite well.

There are, in fact, many good stories out there right now that neither over- nor under-play Hasan’s religion and the role it may have played in the shooting. But for an example of a major paper that didn’t handle it well, check out the lead story from the Los Angeles Times.

Now, I first came across this story shortly after it was published last night. I monitored it for several hours assuming it would be updated. It had not been updated by the time I had to give up and call it a night (or early morning).

The three reporters and additional contributor who penned the 18-paragraph story didn’t think that it’s relevant that Hasan had praised Muslim suicide bombers or that former colleagues report that he was pleased with Muslim shootings against military institutions or that Hasan’s family says he was distressed by news he faced deployment to the Middle East. None of these things, apparently, are newsworthy to the Times, at least not in comparison with similar reports elsewhere.

The words “Muslim” and “Islam” don’t appear in the early story. Instead we get this:

Base personnel have accounted for more suicides than any other Army post since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, with 75 tallied through July of this year. Nine of those suicides occurred in 2009, counting two in overseas war zones.

Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army’s deputy chief of staff, has been leading an effort to reduce the number of Army suicides, which has climbed sharply this year, possibly as a result from long and repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

That is all very interesting but I am not sure what it has to do with the tragic loss of life Ft. Hood experienced yesterday.

The suspect was never deployed — much less in a long or repeated fashion — to Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere else. And precisely no one committed suicide yesterday. This story isn’t long — maybe 40 sentences in all. To waste valuable space on something that doesn’t really relate to the incident at hand — particularly while working way too hard to avoid the big elephant in the room — just shows bad news sense.

There’s being cautious and then there’s just being uninformative.

An update now: The latest Los Angeles Times update on this story does include a wide range of information. It’s possible that it was hard — especially in an era of shrinking newsrooms — for a major West Coast newspaper to gather its limited East Coast and Texas resources quickly. Still, other news organizations got the job done.

We’ll be looking at some other coverage of this tragic story as the day continues. Please let us know if you’ve seen particularly good or bad coverage. And, obviously, this is the place to discuss the media coverage — not to vent about the military policies linked to this tragedy or to make hateful, simplistic statements about Islam.

Mark Barna has his hands full covering religion at the Colorado Springs Gazette. This morning’s two news stories on evangelical leaders varied from solid to so-so.

Appearing top right on A1 is an update on Ted Haggard, the once high-flying leader of the National Association of Evangelicals who was laid low by a squalid gay sex and drugs scandal. This morning’s story says: “Haggard starting new church at his Springs home”:

Ted Haggard, who started New Life Church in his Colorado Springs basement and built it into a megachurch with thousands of worshippers, said Wednesday that he is starting a church at his home.

“We wanted to do something in our house to connect with friends,” said Haggard, whose ties to New Life ended in scandal three years ago with the revelation that he’d been involved with a male prostitute in Denver.

Barna dukes it out with Haggard’s obfuscatory lingo (Haggard concedes that his “prayer meeting” actually qualifies as the start of a new church) and quotes two former ministry associates who express concern about Haggard’s return to church leadership so soon after his fall:

Several people who have worked with Haggard said it’s premature for him to be leading a church. C. Peter Wagner, who co-founded New Life’s World Prayer Center with Haggard, said the former pastor should first seek approval from the overseers before leading people in prayer and worship. Haggard quit the five-year restoration program in February 2008.

“My reservation is that he has not followed through completely on apostolic protocol,” Wagner said Wednesday.

Barna’s religion blog, “The Pulpit,” also features a comment from Mike Jones, the male prostitute who brought Haggard’s sin to light (Jones is not impressed).

But Barna’s A3 story on Dobson was less solid, beginning with a screwy headline: “Dobson’s Power Apparent: Maine’s rejection of same-sex marriage shows his influence.” Thankfully, the headline was changed for the online version.

James Dobson might be leaving Focus on the Family, but executives with the Colorado Springs-based evangelical organization say Tuesday’s vote in Maine on same-sex marriages proves his influence and message remain relevant.

Maine voters split 53 percent to 47 percent to repeal a law, passed by their legislators and signed by their governor, that would have allowed same-sex marriages. Focus donated $115, 266 to a coalition supporting repeal, Maine records show. The defeat means gay marriage has lost in all 31 states where the public has voted on it.

Jenny Tyree, Focus’ marriage analyst, said Dobson’s decades-long work to uphold traditional marriage continues to resonate with Americans.

Unfortunately, the story does not tell us:

(1) If Dobson did anything else to persuade Maine voters;

(2) How big (or small) Focus’s donation was as a percentage of the total repeal war chest;

(3) Whether Focus participated in the pro-repeal organization, National Organization for Marriage, which was investigated by Maine’s Commission on Governmental Ethics and Elections Practices;

(4) What role the Maine Family Policy Council (one of Focus on the Family Action’s affiliated state groups) played in the vote.

Dobson has been one of the most influential evangelicals of the past four decades. But was the Maine vote a demonstration of his power? Perhaps another article will answer that question.

TMatt has been looking at some of the larger issues of framing in coverage of Maine’s vote to overturn a law legalizing same-sex marriage. But I’m also curious about some of the nitty gritty. I’ve been meaning to look at some of the coverage for days so let’s begin with this pre-election story by the Washington Post’s Karl Vick. The story explains the situation — the legislature passed and the governor signed a bill to permit same-sex couples to marry and gets his perspective that the “libertarian” Maine will note vote to overturn that law. The campaign against same-sex marriage, we learn, is drawing heavily on its communications strategy from their successful fight over the same issue in California last year. And then this:

Proponents of same-sex marriage are also playing on Mainers’ wariness of outsiders, calling attention to the California consultants and the volume of the “Yes-on-1” campaign from out of state.

Questions about the largest contributor have sparked an investigation by the state ethics commission and a court battle. The National Organization for Marriage, or NOM, has contributed $1.6 million to Stand for Marriage Maine but has declined to reveal its own contributors, despite a federal district court decision last week that it must do so under Maine law.

Okay, while the figure for the National Organization for Marriage is incorrect (they actually say they contributed $1.8 million to the Yes on One campaign), perhaps the true amount wasn’t available at press time. But what I do find absolutely fascinating about this is that we don’t learn anything about this campaign contribution in context of the battle itself. For instance, how much money did the “No” campaign raise? And how big was the entire Yes on One effort to overturn the state law permitting same-sex marriage? And how much money for both groups came from “outsiders”? I mean, I have several neighbors in DC who worked for months on this, some driving up to Maine to work on the effort and others just working on raising money from here. They were pro-same-sex marriage folks, but nowhere do we learn that outsiders were working to keep the law, much less how much of the work to keep the law came from outsiders.

It turns out that the National Organization for Marriage contributed most of the Yes on One campaign’s resources. But more newsworthy, perhaps, is that the “No” campaign seems to have out-raised its opponents by 50 percent or so. See this more even-handed report from the Associated Press:

Both sides in Maine drew volunteers and contributions from out of state, but the money edge went to the campaign in defense of gay marriage, Protect Maine Equality. It raised $4 million, compared with $2.5 million for Stand for Marriage Maine.

See, that’s helpful information. The Boston Globe, meanwhile, says both groups claim to have raised $4 million (although that’s not true). While the Washington Post story does quote someone saying that same-sex marriage defenders had out-raised opponents two to one, no facts are included to substantiate the statement. Which brings me to another point. Check out this paragraph in the Post story about the National Organization for Marriage:

Some groups for gays say the organization is a stalking horse for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons, which dominated fundraising in the California campaign. Many of the actors in a nationally televised ad produced by NOM, called “Gathering Storm,” turned out to be Mormon activists.

Wow. Okay, so the allegation at play here is that the Mormons are deceiving everyone by operating this group without being up front about it. That is a very serious charge. Nowhere is it substantiated. I mean, I know that the National Organization for Marriage has at least one Mormon board member — Orson Scott Card. But he’s hiding in plain sight. I found out that information by surfing the NOM website myself. And what does it mean that “many” of the actors in a television ad “turned out to be” Mormon activists? I don’t even know what that means, although it does sound scary. What, exactly, is a “Mormon activist”?

But if you have people making this claim, go ahead and name them and be specific about the charges of deception and, you know, maybe get a response from the church. While Vick did try (on a weekend, before an election) to reach the National Organization for Marriage to discuss the allegation, the church should also have been contacted. The allegation is denied by someone involved in the Maine political battle, for what it’s worth. Perhaps with so little to substantiate the charge and apparently no time to contact the targets of the charge, it should have been dropped from the story altogether. It tarnishes both sides when allegations such as that aren’t given a chance to be fully reported.

Anyway, the Washington Post pushes the claim that the National Organization for Marriage is a stalking horse for the Mormon Church. Which is quite different than what the New York Times says about it. I noticed it last week in Abby Goodnough’s preview of the Maine fight. And here it is again in her “news analysis” TMatt mentioned earlier:

“It interrupts the story line that is being manufactured that suggests the culture has shifted on gay marriage and the fight is over,” said Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, the conservative Christian group that is leading the charge against same-sex marriage around the country. “Maine is one of the most secular states in the nation. It’s socially liberal. They had a three-year head start to build their organization, and they outspent us two to one. If they can’t win there, it really does tell you the majority of Americans are not on board with this gay marriage thing.”

Okay, did you catch how Goodnough describes the group? That’s right, it’s a “conservative Christian group.” I have been following the coverage of same-sex marriage battles for a good year and a half now and it occurred to me that I had never once seen the National Organization for Marriage use religiously-based arguments in their campaign material. I know that Gallagher is married to a Hindu and I think she’s Christian. I know, from the Washington Post profile of executive director Brian Brown that he’s Catholic. But having Christians on staff doesn’t necessarily make your organization a “conservative Christian group” or that means that my local grocery store is Christian. There has to be a reason for describing a group this way. And I’m not sure I see that reason. Go ahead and take a look around the group’s website, review its public communications. Maybe it is a conservative Christian group — I just see no evidence of that. I even looked over their IRS forms for evidence to support the claim, but the only mention of religion in any of their documents is their mission to protect all faith communities that sustain marriage. Indeed, religious liberty is a big part of their mission but that doesn’t make the group itself religious anymore than it makes the ACLU religious.

But either way, I think the media need to get on the same page here. If the National Organization for Marriage is not what it claims to be (a nonprofit organization with a mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it) is it a “stalking horse” for the Mormon church or is it a “conservative Christian group”?

It’s so interesting to me that so many of these stories about the Yes on 1 victory in Maine portray it as a loss for gay activists. But that similar focus isn’t brought to bear on the scrutiny of the groups that are involved in the effort to legalize same-sex marriage. I mean, I’m on a bunch of denominational news list-servs and there were plenty of religious groups fighting this ballot initiative and working to keep same-sex marriage legal in Maine. Why don’t they get the same scrutiny as the Mormons, who actually may have had no discernible role in the Maine campaign? It’s just odd.

And now for something entirely different …

Jack Teitel has attracted a lot of media attention since the Sabbath. An American Jew who made aliyah in 2000, Teitel was arrested by Israeli police and charged with several acts of terror, including the murder of two Palestinians in 1997, the bombing of a leftist Israeli professor’s house and the Purim bombing of a teenage boy. Police said Teitel also took credit for killing two gay Jews in Tel Aviv in August — though he hadn’t actually been involved.

It sounds like no one told Teitel the Gush Emunim Underground was shut down a long time ago — in fact, before he would have become bar mitzvah, if he did.

But this post is neither about Teitel nor the past and present of Jewish terror organizations. (Every religious group has its extremists.) It’s about an off-hand reference from the The New York Times to the religious beliefs of one of the people Teitel allegedly targeted:

The Israeli boy who was badly injured a year and a half ago, Ami Ortiz, is still recovering from wounds caused by an explosive placed in a gift basket traditionally given out on the Jewish holiday of Purim. His mother, Leah Ortiz, also American and living in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, said in a statement that her “blood ran cold” when she heard about the arrest, especially the knowledge that the suspect lived only minutes away.

“We are horrified by the fact that there are elements of Israeli society, Jews who feel justified in taking the lives of other Jews because of their beliefs,” she added.

The Ortizes are part of a small and mistrusted community of messianic Jews in Israel, who consider themselves Jewish but believe in Jesus.

Mr. Teitel’s neighbors said they were amazed and found it hard to believe …

That’s it. Granted, this is a fairly short story, and it’s totally accurate to say that messianics are “a small and mistrusted community” in Israel. But should readers have to infer from that clause — “who consider themselves Jewish but believe in Jesus” — that Ami Ortiz was targeted for his beliefs? And if reporters don’t yet know why Teitel allegedly gave the gift bomb, can we at least learn a little more about messianic intergration into Israeli society?

In fact, the community there has only been around for about two-thirds of the life of the modern Jewish state, and has been growing in recent years. You may recall that last year a group of religious Zionist rabbis called for a boycott of the national Bible Quiz when a messianic made it into the quartet of finalists. Or, on a related note, that shortly after Orthodox Jews torched a pile of Bibles left behind by missionaries to a predominantly religious Israeli town. And long before that was the Christmas Eve 2005 incident.

Even in the United States, messianic Jews are treated as an oddity. Clearly there is something more there. David Klinghoffer, after publishing “Why the Jews Rejected Jesus,” discussed it in this 2005 op-ed for The Forward:

Certainly it is understandable that some Jews feel as they do about these Jewish Christians. For many, there is something stomach-churning about a Jew who embraces a faith with a centuries-long record of treating his own ancestors in cruel and humiliating ways.

And yet what is understandable, just like what is necessary, also isn’t necessarily fair. After all, we live in America with her unique philosemitic Evangelical Christian tradition. To imagine American Christianity, of which messianic Judaism forms a part, as if it were indistinguishable from medieval European Christianity is historically inaccurate.

No, I’m not trying to be judgmental about anyone’s beliefs. There is value, however, in shining light on an area — of interest to believers in Judaism as to believers in Jesus — that has been wrapped in murkiness and unreason. Let there be light.

As a Christian named Greenberg, I’ve never understood the messianic Jewish pull. Culturally, I connect with Jews, but theologically I don’t — and there is the split. Unfortunately, the NYT’s limited reference to the Ortizes’ beliefs do nothing to help us understand more.

Instead, I recommend this 2007 article, also from The Forward, about messianism finding fertile ground in the Bible Belt.

Second verse, same as the first.

As I continue to read the New York Times coverage of the Maine vote, my mind drifted back to these lines from Daniel Okrent, the newspaper’s former ombudsman, in his infamous 2004 column entitled “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” News junkies will recall that his lede said bluntly, “Of course it is.”

But on the subject of news “templates” or “maps,” here is a thought for the second day of coverage, drawn from Okrent’s survey of his newspaper’s coverage in a host of sections:

… (For) now my concern is the flammable stuff that ignites the right. These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper with your eyes closed.

But if you’re examining the paper’s coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn’t wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you’re traveling in a strange and forbidding world.

And then on the specific issue of the day:

… (It’s) one thing to make the paper’s pages a congenial home for editorial polemicists, conceptual artists, the fashion-forward or other like-minded souls (European papers, aligned with specific political parties, have been doing it for centuries), and quite another to tell only the side of the story your co-religionists wish to hear. I don’t think it’s intentional when The Times does this. But negligence doesn’t have to be intentional.

The gay marriage issue provides a perfect example. Set aside the editorial page, the columnists or the lengthy article in the magazine … that compared the lawyers who won the Massachusetts same-sex marriage lawsuit to Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King. That’s all fine, especially for those of us who believe that homosexual couples should have precisely the same civil rights as heterosexuals.

But for those who also believe the news pages cannot retain their credibility unless all aspects of an issue are subject to robust examination, it’s disappointing to see The Times present the social and cultural aspects of same-sex marriage in a tone that approaches cheerleading.

The Gray Lady is also capable of coaching, as well as cheerleading.

This brings us to a post-election A1 piece that caught my eye. Just to be right up front about this, please note that (a) I know that this is an analysis piece and that (b) I believe that the piece is a valid part of the Times coverage. With those points in mind, check out the piece that ran under the headline, “Gay Rights Rebuke May Change Approach.” Here’s the top of the story:

They had far more money and volunteers, and geography was on their side, given that New England has been more accepting of same-sex marriage than any other region of the country. Yet gay rights supporters suffered a crushing loss when voters decided to repeal Maine’s new law allowing gay men and lesbians to wed, setting back a movement that had made remarkable progress nationally this year.

Maine, with its libertarian leanings, had seemed to offer an excellent chance of reversing the national trend of voters rejecting marriage equality at the ballot box. Instead, it became the 31st state to block same-sex marriage through a public referendum. …

State legislatures had been viewed as new allies in the fight for same-sex marriage after lawmakers in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire approved such bills this year. But now, with Maine voters dealing a rebuke to their Legislature, it is far from clear whether elected
officials — including the president — will risk political capital on gay rights. Tuesday’s defeat is also likely to further splinter a movement that has been debating the best tactics for success.

Thus, the purpose of this analysis piece is to allow debate on which tactics would work best for the gay-rights cause, given the fact that voters seem determined to deliver the movement defeats at the ballot box.

By the way, one or two opponents of gay-marriage are quoted, primarily to offer commentary on the tactics of the left.

Like I said, it’s a valid analysis piece. It’s rather like a talking-points memo for the gay-rights cause, but that is part of this national news story right now.

Here’s my question: Can anyone imagine this analysis piece being half of a package — targeting a wider, national audience on this issue — that includes a similar analysis, one that is the same length and is reported with the same care, only focusing on the debate inside the other camp on what to do next?

Can you imagine an A1 Times piece that offers a similar set of talking points for those who favor a traditional definition of marriage, perhaps a report that focuses on the ongoing divide on the cultural right between those who favor laws promoting civil, secular same-sex unions and those who oppose any concessions on this issue at all?

That’s a valid story, too. Ask the Rev. Rick Warren.

Here’s one more thought, since I am a pro-newspaper kind of guy. In these troubled times for the Times, would it make both journalistic sense to print this two-sided package, as well as economic sense in light of the newspaper’s goals of maintaining or even growing its base as a national news product?

Just asking. Why not cover material that would address issues both sides? Might this balanced approach even make activists on both sides a bit uncomfortable?

Just a reminder: Do not debate the issues behind the Maine vote. The goal is to discuss the Times and the journalistic product if offered to its readers, following the vote.

Elections are like Super Bowls for political journalists. It’s usually the big game that everybody has been waiting for, and although last night was quiet compared to last year, many outlets focused on the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia.

I sympathize with reporters trying to meet deadlines, but the Associated Press probably prepared an election story ahead of time, right? For some reason, though, its story on governor-elect Bob McDonnell turned into more of a Wikipedia article than a compelling angle. The headline suggests that a story on McDonnell’s faith will follow: “Bob McDonnell: Catholic family formed life views.”

However, it doesn’t contain any quotes from him, his family, his friends, pundits, or anyone that suggests that his faith impacts his current policies. It’s like the reporter tried process of elimination for why McDonnell could be conservative: well it can’t be because he’s from Washington, maybe it could be because he’s Republican, but it must be his faith!

McDonnell may very well attribute his policies to his faith, but the story seems to lack the proof. The New York Times report suggested that during the election McDonnell steered away from socially conservative issues, emphasizing job creation, the economy and transportation.

Mr. McDonnell was careful to keep his distance from the farther right end of his party. When the conservative activist Ralph Reed sponsored robocalls to voters featuring former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska asking them to vote their values, Mr. McDonnell’s campaign declined to answer questions about the calls and emphasized that the campaign had not asked Ms. Palin to make them.

The AP deserves credit for highlighting the fact that McDonnell became the second Catholic governor of Virginia; Gov. Tim Kaine was the first. The Washington Post’s article, though, doesn’t even mention McDonnell’s Catholicism. It simply says he is “known for a social conservatism deeply informed by his religious faith.” Religious faith? Why not make it more specific?

The AP begin with this lead: “The new Republican governor-elect of Virginia brings to the office firmly conservative views that took root in the suburban, middle-class Irish Catholic home of his youth.” But it hardly contains anything about McDonnell’s Catholic family, only saying that he “was one of five children of a stay-at-home mom and a father he still describes as ‘a tough, Boston Irish-Catholic Air Force officer who wasn’t afraid to use the belt.’ ” That’s it?

It also tells us that he went to a Catholic high school, then attended Notre Dame University (last time I checked, it was the University of Notre Dame), married a Washington Redskins cheerleader (who mothers his five children), and became an Army officer.

The Times, the Post and the AP all tell us, once again, about his 20-year-old thesis that he wrote while attending what is now Regent University where he described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family. Did anyone ever think to ask why McDonnell, as a Catholic, went to Regent in the first place? Although the school accepts students from various traditions, Regent theology professor Amos Yong said last year that the school’s desire is to “posture itself as a broadly evangelical institution.”

McDonnell’s going to be around for a while, giving local Virginia papers a chance to pick up where these national outlets left off.

Here’s the thought for the day, as you ponder the headlines out of Maine. This famous quote is taken from “The Press and Foreign Policy” by Bernard C. Cohen:

” … (The) press is significantly more than a purveyor of information and opinion. It may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think ABOUT. And it follows from this that the world looks different to different people, depending not only on their personal interests, but also on the map that is drawn for them by the writers, editors, and publishers of the papers they read.”

I thought of this quotation while reading some of the early coverage of the not-so-stunning vote in Maine, which became the 31st state to reject same-sex marriage at the ballot box. Of course, it was also a stunning outcome because of Maine’s reputation for independent, enlightened, not-so-religious thinking as a state in true-blue New England. That second sentence, of course, reflects most of the mainstream news coverage leading up to the vote.

This leads us to the top of an early New York Times report (and you can expect in-depth sequels):

In a stinging setback for the national gay-rights movement, Maine voters narrowly decided to repeal the state’s new law allowing same-sex marriage.

With 87 percent of precincts reporting early Wednesday morning, 53 percent of voters had approved the repeal, ending an expensive and emotional fight that was closely watched around the country as a referendum on the national gay-marriage movement. Polls had suggested a much closer race. …

The Maine vote was particularly discouraging for gay-rights groups because it took place in New England, the region that has been the most open to same-sex marriage, and because opponents of the repeal had far outspent backers.

In other words, this was a lose for gay-rights activists, not a victory for groups that wanted to repeal the law. That’s what journalists call a news “template.” It’s what Cohen called a “map.”

This is also the principle that dominated the late David Shaw’s justifiably famous series in the Los Angeles Times about mainstream media coverage of abortion. He found, time and time again, that journalists tended to frame stories in a way that presumed the rightness of the pro-abortion-rights cause.

You see, reporters and editors often forget that they have a choice to frame coverage in a way that favors one side or the other. But we also have another choice, which is to do the hard work to find ways to frame a story in a way that balances the two interests — creating a debate, instead of electing to favor one side or the other.

In this Maine vote, the implication is that (a) the result was a shock because newspapers thought the vote would go the other way and/or (b) the result was a shock because the wrong side won. Or is the story that it was a shock (c) because voters keep voting for the status quo on marriage?

Before you click “comment,” please wait to hear my point. I think that this is a case where the Times basically got the story right, but buried a different lede that was also justified. Would it have been “conservative” to have led with the fact that this was the 31st ballot win in a row for those who oppose gay marriage, and then allow the leaders on the cultural left to respond that they will not back down, but carry the issue back to voters again and again until they find a way to win?

In other words, is it possible to write this story in a way that says — right up front — that someone won and someone else lost, instead of strictly framing it in terms of the loss for the gay-rights side? Yes, the loss is major news. But was it news that someone won?

And what about the story that most Americans will be reading online this morning, which would be the basic Associated Press report?

This story led with the loss for the gay-rights side, but quickly attempted to offer perspectives from both the winners and the losers. Here is what that looked like in practice:

PORTLAND, Maine — Maine voters repealed a state law Tuesday that would have allowed same-sex couples to wed, dealing the gay rights movement a heartbreaking defeat in New England, the corner of the country most supportive of gay marriage.

Gay marriage has now lost in every single state — 31 in all — in which it has been put to a popular vote. Gay-rights activists had hoped to buck that trend in Maine — known for its moderate, independent-minded electorate — and mounted an energetic, well-financed campaign. With 87 percent of the precincts reporting, gay-marriage foes had 53 percent of the votes.

“The institution of marriage has been preserved in Maine and across the nation,” declared Frank Schubert, chief organizer for the winning side.

Gay-marriage supporters held out hope that the tide would shift before conceding defeat at 2:40 a.m. in a statement that insisted they weren’t going away.

“We’re in this for the long haul. For next week, and next month, and next year — until all Maine families are treated equally. Because in the end, this has always been about love and family and that will always be something worth fighting for,” said Jesse Connolly, manager of the pro-gay marriage campaign.

Please help your GetReligionistas watch the coverage today. I would be especially interested if anyone in the mainstream actually framed the story as a win for the cultural right, which would be flipping the template issue the other way. I don’t expect to see that and, besides, it would be the same principle in action — only with a conservative bias.

What I’m looking for is newsrooms that opened with a lede that tried to do justice to the feelings and beliefs of the left and the right, the losers and the winners. In other words, a strictly journalistic approach.

Even though I’m not a big fan of either the New York Yankees or the Philadelphia Phillies, I’ve watched and enjoyed this year’s World Series. I didn’t expect there to be much of a religion angle in the coverage of either team, but really enjoyed Andy Martino’s profile of Phillie pitcher Brad Lidge (who, it must be said, didn’t have a great Game 4 the other night) in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Here’s the compelling beginning:

Brad Lidge was searching. He thought he was supposed to be a baseball player, but it seemed like all he did was have surgery. Stranded in Kissimmee, Fla., relegated to rehabilitation, Lidge needed more.

Drafted by the Houston Astros in 1998 after his junior year of college at Notre Dame, Lidge left school before graduating to start his minor-league career. But it hardly began before various ailments stalled it. While recovering from injuries to his pitching arm, Lidge followed his curiosity. The young pitcher dived into the Bible and science and history texts, searching for meaning in his problems.

The conclusions Lidge reached during those summers have provided essential comfort ever since. Lidge and the Phillies begin the World Series tonight, but during the long regular season and a bewildering slump, he retained perspective. Through careful reading, thinking, and studying - Lidge is pursuing a degree in religious archaeology, with plans to eventually work in that field - he continues to cultivate a personalized Christianity. That process began in earnest in Kissimmee.

“I didn’t know if I was meant to pitch,” Lidge, 32, said on a recent morning, sitting in the stands of an empty Citizens Bank Park. “Whether it was then, or this year, or the rough year in 2006 I had in Houston, I always felt there was a higher purpose to life than just being a baseball player. And sometimes, even when things aren’t going very well, it just means that when they finally go right, you’ll be able to serve as a better example, as a baseball player and person.”

Now, it turns out that Lidge’s religious views don’t fit in nice boxes. Rather than try to shoehorn him into any box, the reporter simply lets Lidge explain it himself. So Lidge says faith didn’t come to him in a single moment but that his beliefs took shape gradually. He was raised Catholic; studied philosophy, history and theology at Notre Dame; and says he’d define himself now as non-denominational with a theological lean toward Catholicism. But he attends the Protestant chapel services offered by the Phillies and says his primary spiritual goal is to develop a personal connection to divinity.

What I found refreshing about this profile was how the reporter even let him discuss what, exactly, his beefs with Catholicism are. For one thing, he thinks the wealth amassed at the Vatican is obscene and should be sold to help the poor. There’s also this:

Secure in his opinions but reluctant to criticize others for theirs, Lidge approaches these subjects diplomatically.

“This might be a touchy issue,” he continued, before pausing. “I’m trying to think of that best word; some of the ritualistic things that are involved, some of the questions on the pope’s infallibility and when that started … I have a lot of respect for Catholicism, but sometimes the hierarchy can get in the way of the relationship between yourself and God and Jesus.”

Now, of course it would be nice for the reporter to explore some of these things a bit more, to probe or otherwise get a slightly better handle on his views. But personal religious views — particularly when they are purposefully independent — can be a very delicate subject and I think letting the subject of the interview speak freely pays off.

So there’s a lot more in the interview. We learn what Lidge thinks about pitting faith and reason against each other, whether peripheral issues to Christianity get overblown and how his “liberal” Christianity is right for him but may not be for others.

Normally you might wonder why, exactly, you’re learning this much about one relief pitcher’s particular religious views, but the reporter justifies it in two ways. First off, he brings the discussion back around to how Lidge’s faith has sustained him while suffering a league-leading total of 11 blown saves this season:

“There were times this year when I was absolutely flabbergasted that the results weren’t coming around,” he said.

Still, he revisited Scripture roughly three times each week, attended Sunday services and Wednesday Bible study with his teammates - and worked hard in pursuit of an online degree.

And, as that last line indicates, the religious angle to this story makes sense because Lidge is studying artifacts of the late Roman Empire, or the period when Christianity spread throughout Europe. He began his undergraduate studies at Regis University because he had so much wasted downtime on the road and he wanted to work toward a career post-baseball. This is how religion should be incorporated into stories. It should be reported on because it’s there and so much a part of the lives of the people we cover.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

USA Today put the following headline on Associated Press religion reporter Eric Gorski’s story about James Dobson stepping down from Focus on the Family’s main radio broadcast:

Evangelist Dobson parts ways with radio show, Focus on the Family

I know that the words sound similar, but the word USA Today is looking for is “evangelical.” Let’s all watch to see how long it takes to correct this one.

Evangelical is hard enough to define as it is, but it’s different than “evangelist,” which Random House defines as:

e-van-ge-list
Show Spelled Pronunciation [i-van-juh-list]
-noun
1. a Protestant minister or layperson who serves as an itinerant or special preacher, esp. a revivalist.
2. a preacher of the gospel.
3. (initial capital letter) any of the writers (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) of the four Gospels.
4. (in the primitive church) a person who first brought the gospel to a city or region.
5. (initial capital letter) Mormon Church. a patriarch.
6. a person marked by evangelical enthusiasm for or support of any cause.

This is also an excellent reminder that headlines are typically not written by the reporter of the story and sometimes they’re not even in a position to correct the headline if necessary. Gorski is very precise with his word choice and would not make a mistake like this.

Anyway, since the media tend to mess this one up with alarming frequency, Dobson is still, at press time, a psychologist and not an ordained minister or itinerant preacher. GetReligion has been calling attention to this error for a long, long time. We are not alone, either.

Come on, people. Get with the program.

Noor Faleh Almaleki has died in Phoenix. Thus, we have another development in the case of her father, 48-year-old Faleh Hassan Almaleki, who fled the United States after it is alleged that he hit the 20-year-old Noor and the mother of her boyfriend with his car.

The details of this tragic story are quite common by now, everywhere except on CNN. As I said at the beginning, something is going on with the coverage of this story in some newsrooms. People are struggling to report information that is out in the open and on the record.

Here is a chunk of the basic Associated Press report, as used by the New York Times:

Noor Faleh Almaleki, 20, underwent spinal surgery and had been in a hospital since Oct. 20, when police say her father ran down her and her boyfriend’s mother with his Jeep as the women were walking across a parking lot in the west Phoenix suburb of Peoria. The other woman, Amal Khalaf, is expected to survive.

Faleh Hassan Almaleki, 48, fled after the attack but was arrested Thursday when he arrived at Atlanta’s airport, where he was sent from the United Kingdom after authorities denied him entrance. … At a court hearing over the weekend in Phoenix, county prosecutor Stephanie Low told a judge that Almaleki admitted to committing the crime.

“By his own admission, this was an intentional act and the reason was that his daughter had brought shame on him and his family,” Low said. “This was an attempt at an honor killing.”

Family members had told police that Almaleki attacked his daughter because he believed she had become too Westernized and was not living according to his traditional Iraqi values.

Journalists are still struggling to decide how to work their way around the fact that “his traditional Iraqi values” is code language for his approach to Islam, which means journalists are struggling to know how to handle the divisions inside Islam — even here in America — on whether or not it is appropriate to kill a female who brings disgrace on her family. In this case, as noted in other stories, Noor had refused to be part of a marriage arranged by her parents. Over in London, the Times claimed that the marriage had taken place, but that Noor fled to live with her boyfriend’s family in Arizona.

Clearly there is some uncertainty here about some of these events. However, certain facts are clear — especially when you contrast the AP report (and early reports at ABCNews.com) — with the CNN stories that have been scrubbed clean of messy details linked to controversies about Islam and “honor killings” in some Islamic cultures. Again, please note the word “some.”

In the comments pages, this lack of factual information has been blamed on the hard economic times in the news business. It’s hard to report the facts when there are few reporters on deck to do the work. That’s true.

But in this case, editors at CNN have clearly made a decision to leave out facts that are already on the record, as well as highly relevant statements made on the record by authorities investigating the case. This is truly strange.

At this point, this is what we have from CNN. Here’s the key material:

Peoria police said Faleh Hassan Almaleki believed his daughter had become “too Westernized” and had abandoned “traditional” Iraqi values. Peoria police spokesman Mike Tellef told CNN the family moved to the Phoenix area in the mid-1990s, and Almaleki was unhappy with his daughter’s style of dress and her resistance to his rules. …

A friend of the daughter, Amal Edan Khalaf, 43, also suffered serious injuries in the attack, police said. Almaleki faces a separate aggravated assault charge in connection with her injuries.

Once again, is Amal Edan Khalaf merely “a friend”? Why avoid the subject of the arranged marriage, a key element in many of these tragedies? Why avoid the official claims that the father stated that this was an attempted “honor killing,” an attempt that has now turned out to have been successful?

I am sure that, on one level, it is accurate to say that the father “was unhappy with his daughter’s style of dress and her resistance to his rules.” But are we actually talking about “his rules,” or are we talking about the rules and traditions established with the Muslim community that he knows, the community that has shaped him?

Why edit the story in this fashion?

Mao had his little red book. Meanwhile, the influential Swiss psychiatrist and thinker Carl Jung had is own big red book. The only problem was that nobody outside a small circle of descendants and initiates had been able to see the century-old book since Jung’s death in 1961. Until now. (Amazon is taking orders for the just-published $195 book for $114.07.)

In her New York Times Magazine piece, “The Holy Grail of the Unconscious,” Sara Corbett tells an 8,000-word-plus story about the book, its origins, its decades in hiding and its eventual publication. Along the way, provides more thrills and explores more mysteries than many readers will find a carton of Dan Brown novels. Corbett also shows how the red book (also known as “Liber Novus,” Latin for “New Book”) links Jung’s “science” and his “spirituality.”

Whether or not he would have wanted it this way, Jung—who regarded himself as a scientist—is today remembered more as a countercultural icon, a proponent of spirituality outside religion and the ultimate champion of dreamers and seekers everywhere, which has earned him both posthumous respect and posthumous ridicule. Jung’s ideas laid the foundation for the widely used Myers-Briggs personality test and influenced the creation of Alcoholics Anonymous. His central tenets—the existence of a collective unconscious and the power of archetypes—have seeped into the larger domain of New Age thinking while remaining more at the fringes of mainstream psychology.

The article also illuminates the conflicts between Jung’s devoted followers, some of whom revere him as a near-deity, and his cautious family members, who had prohibited publication of the book out of concerns it might cast a negative light on its author.

Corbett got some great quotes from Stephen Martin, one of the two Jungian scholars who edited the red book for publication. Martin is only partly jesting when he refers to one of the late psychiatrist’s handkerchiefs as “the holy hankie, the sacred nasal shroud of C. G. Jung.” In addition to honoring this sacred relic, Martin praises Jung as a prophet and seer:

“This guy, he was a bodhisattva,” Martin said to me that day. “This is the greatest psychic explorer of the 20th century, and this book tells the story of his inner life.” He added, “It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.”

The Red Book book began with Jung’s own blue period.

…in 1913, Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.”

… He found himself in a liminal place, as full of creative abundance as it was of potential ruin, believing it to be the same borderlands traveled by both lunatics and great artists.

Jung recorded it all. First taking notes in a series of small, black journals, he then expounded upon and analyzed his fantasies, writing in a regal, prophetic tone in the big red-leather book. The book detailed an unabashedly psychedelic voyage through his own mind, a vaguely Homeric progression of encounters with strange people taking place in a curious, shifting dreamscape. Writing in German, he filled 205 oversize pages with elaborate calligraphy and with richly hued, staggeringly detailed paintings.

The strangeness of the book can seen in a gallery of images that accompanied Corbett’s article.

I hadn’t meant to spend as much time reading this article as I eventually did, but Corbett overpowered me, drawing me into Jung’s psyche and the circle of his devotees.

Although it wasn’t covered by a wide variety of media outlets, this local TV news story (embedded here) sure made a splash yesterday. It’s about how the director of the (Texas A&M-area) Bryan Planned Parenthood resigned her post last month after watching an abortion being performed on an ultrasound.

Reporter Ashlea Sigman of KBTX broke the story, near as I can tell, and I want to commend the station for that since so often stories like this end up running only in the religious or pro-life press. But watch the story, or read it here, and tell me if you don’t have a ton of questions.

The story explains that Abby Johnson worked at the center for the last eight years, was its director for two years and turned in her resignation October 6. She says that she was also troubled by pressure to increase her clinic’s focus on abortion rather than pregnancy prevention. She said that while there was much more money to be made in abortions, the business model troubled her. Religion is in play and the reporter includes that angle:

Johnson said she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions, something the Episcopalian church goer recently became convicted about.

“I feel so pure in heart (since leaving). I don’t have this guilt, I don’t have this burden on me anymore that’s how I know this conversion was a spiritual conversion.”

Johnson now supports the Coalition For Life, the pro-life group with a building down the street from Planned Parenthood. Coalition volunteers can regularly be seen praying on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood. Johnson has been meeting with the coalition’s executive director, Shawn Carney, and has prayed with volunteers outside Planned Parenthood.

The story concludes by mentioning that Planned Parenthood successfully got temporary restraining orders issued against both Johnson and the Coalition for Life.

Many readers submitted this story and asked tons of questions.

Why, exactly, did she resign? Why did Planned Parenthood seek a restraining order? What does Planned Parenthood not want her to disclose? How did Johnson get involved with the Coalition for Life? What role did being Episcopal play in her conversion? Why is an ultrasound of an abortion mentioned in the headline but then not mentioned again? Was the conversion solely about the abortion issue or was it a larger religious conversion? Why did it take a month for this story to break? How is Planned Parenthood funded? Is it a non-profit or private business? Does it receive federal funds? What does Planned Parenthood have to say in response to the allegations? What do we know about Planned Parenthood’s business model?

This story is just begging for more information. I actually thought FoxNews.com did a good job of writing it up. It has better details and actually gets valuable information from Planned Parenthood. Here’s how it begins:

Abby Johnson, 29, used to escort women from their cars to the clinic in the eight years she volunteered and worked for Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas. But she says she knew it was time to leave after she watched a fetus “crumple” as it was vacuumed out of a patient’s uterus in September.

“When I was working at Planned Parenthood I was extremely pro-choice,” Johnson told FoxNews.com. But after seeing the internal workings of the procedure for the first time on an ultrasound monitor, “I would say there was a definite conversion in my heart … a spiritual conversion.”

The story explains that abortions cost patients between $500 and $700 and that the clinic retained an average of $350, netting around $10,000 each month. While Planned Parenthood doesn’t directly respond to Johnson’s allegations, a spokesman says that 90 percent of the company’s services are preventive in nature. The reporter also asked Johnson for any proof of her allegations about the Planned Parenthood business model and she says all of the pressure to increase abortions came in meetings with a regional manager. The story also mentions that it’s unclear why Planned Parenthood sought a restraining order and notes that Johnson says she did not intend to release any sensitive information about former patients. So it fills in some of the blanks.

On the other hand, the story has precisely no mention of the religious angles that were present in the local broadcast piece.

Now, I’m glad that we have at least a couple of instances of mainstream media covering this story. But this is a big story and even with the major problems the media tend to have covering abortion and the battle over abortion rights, they need to cover this one well.

First, the basic story should be told. But this is also a great hook to discuss whether technological advances are behind the trend of more Americans identifying as “pro-life” than “pro-choice.” Reporters could also look at how Planned Parenthood’s business runs, how religious views shape our vocations in life, what it’s like to change sides in the abortion debate and how successful pro-life groups are in opposing abortion clinics. Let us know if you see particularly good or bad coverage or if you have ideas for further exploration.

The ultrasound image is of my youngest at 8-10 weeks.

Well, The New York Times may get Judaism, it might not get Hinduism, but does it get Catholicism? Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has decided to use recent articles from the Gray Lady to show how Americans — especially journalists in his zip code — are anti-Catholic. Needless to say, this was an op-ed article that Fox News was happy to publish, while the Times declined to do so.

As Gary Stern notes, Dolan is precise in his critique, offering specific examples of his frustrations, which is more helpful to reporters than criticizing the mass media as a whole.

Dolan first looks at an Oct. 14 story in the Times about 40 cases of child sexual abuse that took place in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community during the last year. He argues that the reporter did not dig for more details the same way reporters have pursued with the Catholic abuse cases.

Yet the Times did not demand what it has called for incessantly when addressing the same kind of abuse by a tiny minority of priests: release of names of abusers, rollback of statute of limitations, external investigations, release of all records, and total transparency. Instead, an attorney is quoted urging law enforcement officials to recognize “religious sensitivities,” and no criticism was offered of the DA’s office for allowing Orthodox rabbis to settle these cases “internally.” Given the Catholic Church’s own recent horrible experience, I am hardly in any position to criticize our Orthodox Jewish neighbors, and have no wish to do so … but I can criticize this kind of “selective outrage.”

Needless to say, it’s probably pretty motivating for reporters to pursue the Catholic church angle when entire dioceses are filing for bankruptcy. Regardless, Dolan makes a good point: Reporters should use the same vigor to pursue the names of abusers and call for transparency when reporting this kind of abuse case.

Dolan’s second point examines Laurie Goodstein’s Oct. 16 front page, above-the-fold story on a Franciscan priest who fathered a child.

… one still has to wonder why a quarter-century old story of a sin by a priest is now suddenly more pressing and newsworthy than the war in Afghanistan, health care, and starvation-genocide in Sudan. No other cleric from religions other than Catholic ever seems to merit such attention.

You could probably use this argument with just about any story the Times puts on its front page, since the stories with the most global impact don’t necessarily make it above the fold. Dolan’s argument that a cleric from another religion probably wouldn’t merit such attention is probably true, considering Catholics make up about 24 percent of the country (versus, say, 1.7 percent who are Jewish). Protestantism often seems too fragmented for individual Protestants to become interested in a pastor’s scandal if it doesn’t involve their own church.

Third, the Times reported that the Vatican is welcoming Anglicans to join the Catholic Church (an article that tmatt mostly praised). Dolan picks apart the lead, where Laurie Goodstein begins: “In an extraordinary bid to lure traditionalist Anglicans en masse. …”

Unfair, though, was the article’s observation that the Holy See lured and bid for the Anglicans. … for [The Times], this was another case of the conniving Vatican luring and bidding unsuspecting, good people, greedily capitalizing on the current internal tensions in Anglicanism.

Choosing the word “lure” seems fairly accurate to me, since it’s not every day that Pope Benedict XVI paves the way for another tradition to join the Catholic Church, right? Then again, some Anglicans had been seeking his help for more than a decade.

Finally, Dolan says a piece by Maureen Dowd would not have passed muster with the editors if it had criticized an Islamic, Jewish or African-American religious issue.

True enough, the matter that triggered her spasm — the current visitation of women religious by Vatican representatives — is well-worth discussing, and hardly exempt from legitimate questioning. But her prejudice, while maybe appropriate for the Know-Nothing newspaper of the 1850’s, the Menace, has no place in a major publication today.

Perhaps that’s some food for thought for the op-ed department to consider, but we’ll stick to the news for now.

The Times has covered Dolan several times in the last several months since he was named to as archbishop of New York in April (he gets his own topic page).

Dolan doesn’t appear to be critical of all media, however. Just last week, Dolan told the National Catholic Register that the media in New York have been “exceptionally attentive” since his installation. “They have been interested in what I have to say, they have joined in the chorus of welcome, and I can’t keep up with the requests for interviews and articles and appearances,” the archbishop told the reporter. So far, Dolan’s critiques appear to be focused mostly on the Times.

The story began on Dolan’s new blog, so I find it fairly ironic that on the same day he posted his critique, the Times offered a pretty positive piece about the blog titled “Archbishop Dolan Is Blogging. Keep the Comments Clean.” (Is it really still a big deal that people start blogs? the Times seems to think so — if it’s the Archbishop of New York.)

Newspapers shouldn’t try to fill a positive story quota, but surely there are more compelling stories of the Catholic Church doing good (and interesting) deeds than the archbishop’s new blog.

First photo courtesy of University of Notre Dame Press. Second photo courtesy of Annie Mole.