What we have embedded here is one of the worst pieces of journalism I’ve ever seen. I probably shouldn’t announce this, lest tmatt tell me to pack my bags, but I rarely if ever watch broadcast or cable news. I read my news online. The last time I watched ABC News was probably in the 1980s. But I was notified that the ABC piece was bad and so I searched it out. I almost wish I hadn’t. The performance of the mainstream media over this Komen funding issue has not reflected well on journalism in general.

Let’s set the current scene on coverage of abortion and related issues. You’ll recall that just last week we looked at how some mainstream media outlets handled their reports on the annual March for Life. Though the crowd was large (some estimates were in the hundreds of thousands), the local CBS affiliate published a slide show that featured not a single picture of a pro-lifer. Instead, they photographed and rephotographed the same small handful (maybe as many as a dozen) supporters of legalized abortion. Only after mass outrage (and three days) did they find and include any other pictures. The Washington Post ombudsman chastised his paper’s coverage and the photo editor dismissed “this crowd” as impossible to satisfy.

We recently learned of the significant ruling from the Obama administration that Catholic charities (including educational institutions and hospitals that serve the most needy) would be forced under threat of massive fines to offer health insurance benefits that deeply violate church teachings, including contraception, sterilization and abortifacients. The news was covered, a bit. But none of the networks covered the news when it broke, and, according to one media watchdog, still haven’t! In general, the coverage has been surprisingly restrained, even though 142 bishops (some 80% of dioceses) have vociferously condemned this action.

OK, let’s look at what happened when Susan G. Komen decided to stop giving the country’s largest provider of abortions, the $1 billion Planned Parenthood, less than $700,000 in grants. You can watch, for instance, this “interview” of the Komen founder Amb. Nancy Brinker by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell where Andrea Mitchell just monologues about how devastated she is by the decision and barely lets the woman speak. (It’s embedded below, too) Every time Brinker tries to speak, she is interrupted by Mitchell. She tries to explain that the Planned Parenthood grants weren’t meeting criteria for effectiveness but Mitchell interrupts her. She explains that Planned Parenthood only offers pass-throughs — sending women to other places that can test them — and that they’d prefer to fund groups that directly provide services. She gets interrupted by a deeply hurt and personally offended Mitchell. At one point, Mitchell asks how, if the group is supposed to be bi-partisan, could they hire a pro-life individual who doesn’t love Planned Parenthood. (I’m not joking. Apparently bi-partisan means Democrats and Republicans who love Planned Parenthood.) If you doubt me about how biased this piece is, you can see how the blog Jezebel cheers Mitchell on as “completely schooling Brinker on where she and her foundation went wrong. Boom.”

Now the Mitchell piece is really bad journalism — it’s not journalism at all, actually — but it’s MSNBC and I’m not sure how much people expect from that outlet. Which is why this “reported” piece (and yes, I’m using the term loosely) from ABC World News with Diane Sawyer is so shocking. Actually, these are the only two broadcast pieces I’ve seen so maybe they’re all this bad? Perhaps you shouldn’t tell me if they are. I don’t think I could bear it. I literally screamed at the top of my lungs when I watched this. Twice. Outside of sports, I don’t yell at my television.

Remember how much the networks covered the Obama administration’s regulation requiring Catholic organizations (and others) to do things they can’t do in good conscience? Not at all, that is? Well:

@RickKlein:
Backlash at Susan G. Komen over Planned Parenthood move leads @ABCWorldNews & NBC; CBS starts with Afghanistan war

Two things. While Komen reports that their fundraising is “up 100%” since the news (I’m a new donor to them, for instance) and in the interview mentioned above Brinker mentions that the response she’s received has been quite favorable, that’s not the framing for these stories. Instead, the “backlash” is. But what is even more interesting is that this biased framing literally leads the nightly news! Leads it! So again, it’s not that the media are uninterested in covering abortion or related issues. They just prefer some stories over others. Rather dramatically so.

Diane Sawyer begins her ABC report by alluding to people taking one side. Then begins a relentless repetition of Planned Parenthood’s talking point that Komen is putting politics ahead of women’s health.

The first error is that Diane Sawyer exaggerates what Planned Parenthood does with regard to cancer treatment. As Brinker noted in the interview mentioned above, Planned Parenthood offers no direct services for cancer treatment and Komen would like to allocate its scarce resources to group that actually deal with cancer treatment. Sawyer describes Planned Parenthood as the place where “so many women get free tests for cancer treatment.” What tests? Certainly not mammograms, which are not offered by Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood acts as a pass-through agency, a place where women can be given prescriptions for tests. But “free tests for cancer treatment” sounds so much better than “place that doesn’t even offer mammograms,” I guess.

Claire Shipman reports with lots of war language about firestorms erupting and the like. She says:

That ubiquitous pink ribbon for decades uniting women in the greater good is sporting a black eye today. Thousands of women saying they will no longer support the Komen foundation or buy pink. Women like Monique Benoit who benefited from a Komen Planned Parenthood mammogram.

See that? Women such as myself who couldn’t in good conscience support Komen while it funneled money to Planned Parenthood are completely invisible to the mainstream media. We don’t exist. We don’t matter. We are never mentioned in this report. We are never pictured in this report. We are invisible to ABC News and others. That pink ribbon “united women” so long as it was associated with an organization that terminates 330,000 pregnancies a year. But now that it’s not, it’s not uniting women? In what world does that make sense?

And about this Komen Planned Parenthood mammogram … how is that possible when Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer mammograms? Great reporting, ABC! Of course, you’ll note that the woman who received this mammogram is stationed in front of Planned Parenthood signage offering the exact same talking point as everyone else who launched this public relations campaign against Komen. That line, again, is that a decision to cease funding the country’s largest abortion provider is “becoming” political. Funding that abortion provider? Just ask Andrea Mitchell, it’s as apolitical as the day is long! Can’t we all be bipartisan Planned Parenthood fans and champions?

The piece quotes Komen CEO Nancy Brinker who “spent the day in combat-style crisis management” (thanks to the mainstream media having the exact same line of attack as their Planned Parenthood cobelligerents). She denies it was political pressure and speaks against “scurrilous” allegations. What are those? Who knows? But ABC sums it up:

Brinker says there are simply better and more streamlined mammogram providers.

For instance, mammogram providers! MAMMOGRAM PROVIDERS WOULD BE BETTER AND MORE STREAMLINED MAMMOGRAM PROVIDERS THAN ORGANIZATIONS THAT PROVIDE NO MAMMOGRAMS! (And now you get a feel for my screaming at my computer screen when I first watched this.) Then we learn how great this has been for Planned Parenthood’s fundraising. Perhaps a journalist might look into, I don’t know, whether that was the plan all along for how Planned Parenthood leaked this news and took the ABC-approved spin that Komen’s decision was a disappointing politicization.

There’s a brief mention of conservative support. Very brief. Then Mitchell remembers an email she read earlier today where a woman said she couldn’t support Komen anymore. Why? Well because they’ve “politicized women’s health”! The PR team that developed that slogan and got the MSM to lede the evening news with it is worth every penny you paid them, Planned Parenthood. You usually can’t get this many repeat mentions in a 3-minute story without some heavy wrangling. ABC speaks to no one who supports the decision, no one who is pro-life.

Anyway, Shipman can’t explain Komen’s confusing decision. She says that when Komen was funneling money to Planned Parenthood, it “always prided itself on being apolitical.”

It’s like Planned Parenthood is a church and most of the media are communicant members ready to defend its teachings and faith at all costs. Check out how the one pro-lifer who Komen hired last year is given the scarlet letter in this caption “Anti-Abortion Stalwart.” Heretic! This ABC News headline gives two options for what’s going on with Komen’s decision to give money for breast cancer research and treatment to groups that do breast cancer research and treatment: “Witch Hunt or Policy Shift?” The story continues the backlash theme, completely oblivious to that portion of the country that doesn’t love Planned Parenthood. I’m not even going to watch the CBS report at this point but it’s headline? “Backlash grows over Susan G. Komen-Planned Parenthood flap”

Force Catholics to choose whether to violate their consciences or stop serving the poor? Ho hum! Who cares? Let’s put “religious liberty” in scare quotes and move on already, ok? Focus funding on groups that actually provide breast cancer treatment and resources instead of the Most Holy Planned Parenthood? We will lead the nightly news and if we have to misrepresent what’s going on, we’ll do that.

Earlier this week, I noted the surprisingly restrained coverage of the Obama Administration’s mandate that religious institutions provide health insurance that includes subsidized contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, even if that coverage would violate their religious beliefs and consciences. Even when Catholic bishops came out en masse against the Health and Human Service’s regulation, the coverage was pretty subdued, if it was even found.

Turns out that the media restraint wasn’t due to lack of interest in abortion or related issues (you probably already knew that). See, on Tuesday, Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced a new policy about which groups it would fund. The prominent breast cancer charity is one of the best funded and most popular charities out there and it has raised and distributed nearly $2 billion in funds for breast cancer research, education, advocacy and health services.

The new policy, which implements more stringent performance criteria, means that Planned Parenthood is not currently eligible to receive funding from the group. Now, Planned Parenthood is, of course, the country’s largest abortion provider, a $1 billion operation that ends about 330,000 pregnancies each year. This makes them unbelievably controversial. That Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer mammogram services (unless you count referring women to go get mammograms at places that do offer them) made the relationship with Susan G. Komen quite troubling to many people. All of this, however, was apparently completely unknown to the mainstream media.

Allow me to share a brief story. The woman I called my grandma (out of great affection rather than actual familial ties), died of breast cancer in 2004. Her awesome son made a goal of walking in all 14 3-day Susan G. Komen walks in 2011 (a goal that was almost derailed when Grandpa H. died on the eve of one walk in mid-November). He succeeded in that goal and you can read about it here or watch him talk about it here. When he started his fundraising, I offered some ideas and put a note about the goal on Facebook with a link to his donation site. Instantly, I was bombarded with alarmed notes from friends and family. Did I know, they asked, about Komen’s grants to Planned Parenthood? They gave me links and documentation and I shared them with my friend. He felt that the money offered to Planned Parenthood would not go to support abortions and therefore was not a dealbreaker. I could not in good conscience support a group that supported Planned Parenthood, even though I really wanted to support him in honoring his mother. Now, I can (and already have and will continue to do so). See, Planned Parenthood is an extremely controversial organization that inspires strong feelings from those who support it and those who don’t. If you were familiar with Susan G. Komen for the Cure but weren’t familiar with the fact that this funding arrangement was extremely controversial, something is off. If you are currently uncertain about the polarizing or political nature of Planned Parenthood, you might check out the video below, put out by a Planned Parenthood affiliate a few years ago.

And yet the mainstream media apparently only realized that Planned Parenthood was a lightning rod after Komen made changes to their funding policy. I’m not exaggerating. Take this amazing Politico story by Kate Nocera headlined:

Did Susan G. Komen turn itself into a lightning rod?

Turn itself into? Turn itself into? Help me out here. Funding a group that terminates 330,000 pregnancies a year is not controversial but deciding not to fund that same group is? In what world? It’s important to note that Planned Parenthood doesn’t just do abortions. But many of the other things they do — teaching kids about sex through a text-chat program, receiving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, spending high sums on fundraising and public policy to fight political opponents, selling or otherwise distributing contraception and abortifacients — are also controversial. Giving a woman a slip of paper to get a mammogram somewhere else is not controversial, unless by the standard that it’s not sufficient work for scarce breast cancer dollars, but you have to put the controversy in context.

Kate Nocera knows none of this controversy about Planned Parenthood, apparently. Here’s the top of her report:

Susan G. Komen for the Cure says there wasn’t anything political about its decision to stop giving grants to Planned Parenthood.

But in Washington, every decision is political — and now the cancer-fighting organization may have turned itself from a “safe” charity into just another political lightning rod.

It may have ruined its fundraising, too, as its Facebook page filled up with messages from Planned Parenthood supporters promising they’ll never give a dime to the charity again.

There’s a word for so many unsubstantiated uses of the word “may” in the first three sentences of a report and that word is not journalism. It’s unfiltered advocacy. Clueless and unfiltered advocacy. Now, perhaps people who prioritize funding Planned Parenthood over funding Komen’s breast cancer work will lower their funding. People such as myself are only now eligible to fund Komen in light of this week’s reform. Will it all balance out? Will it cause problems? Who knows? But using, of all things, Facebook rants to predict funding streams is not reporting.

Further, only seeing (and deriding) “political pressure” when viewing the issue from one side has colored not just this report but many others. You can probably pick any story at random to see that.

Take this New York Times report that begins:

Pink ribbons have for decades been a symbol of resolve and compassion in the face of the deadly disease of breast cancer. Now, that nearly ubiquitous icon has many women seeing red.

See, there’s this whole chunk of America who have been seeing red about the Planned Parenthood funding Komen for years. Did reporters cover that? I figure they must have, somehow, somewhere, but I don’t recall seeing it. I read a lot about it in the pro-life press. There were the LiveAction stings such as the one embedded above, for instance, although those were in response to Planned Parenthood claims about federal funding. Here’s a USA Today piece on that angle from last year, for instance. Anyway, at the very end of this article, after some dramatic language about betrayal and counter-betrayal do we learn:

Foes of abortion and Web sites critical of it have criticized the Komen foundation’s financing of Planned Parenthood for years. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis and several bishops in Ohio issued statements last year raising concerns about donating to the Komen foundation. In December, LifeWay Christian Resources, which is owned by the Southern Baptist Convention, said it was recalling a pink Bible it was selling because a dollar per copy was going to the Komen foundation.

“We are very grateful Susan G. Komen for the Cure will no longer fund Planned Parenthood affiliates,” said Thom S. Rainer, president of LifeWay.

You don’t say.

It’s just so interesting to me that when millions of Catholics were read letters from their bishops about the HHS mandate targeting Catholic groups, it took days for a few stories to trickle out. When Susan G. Komen announces that roughly $700,000 in grants will be targeted to groups other than Planned Parenthood next year, it couldn’t be bigger news. There are thousands of stories already written. It says something about what the media prioritizes as well as what it considers sacred. There’s an almost religious fervor at play here. Looking at which stories capture that frenzy and fervor are interesting, no?

Earlier this week, we looked at a rather confused article about one man’s quest to get his baptism annulled. Well, the New York Daily News decided to do a baptism article that is even more confused:

JERUSALEM — Archbishop Dolan followed in the footsteps of John the Baptist Sunday and was rebaptized in the River Jordan during the lastest stop on his Holy Land pilgrimage.

In a word: No. I don’t know Dolan, and I know nothing about his trip to Israel, and yet I know this is horribly incorrect. How the New York Daily News could not know that “rebaptism” is not something that any orthodox Catholic would believe, teach or practice, is just beyond me.

Christians believe in, as Ephesians 4 says, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” The Nicene Creed, the most widely used statement of faith throughout Christendom, includes this last part: “I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”

Even if you only know the name of Aretha Franklin’s gospel album, you should know that this is a pretty basic teaching of Christianity.

The story gives a nice overview of Dolan’s trip to Israel with 50 American priests, where he got to see some of the sites I was able to see during my trip there last year — Masada, the Mount of Beatitudes, etc.

We learn more details about the visit to the Jordan:

But the stop in the Jordan Rift Valley proved among the most powerful.

“We renewed our baptismal vows at the River Jordan,” Dolan said.

John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the same river in the New Testament.

Oh! So he renewed his baptismal vows! The thing that many Catholics do each year around the Easter vigil? Is that what we’re talking about? That’s not rebaptism, Daily News.

This weekend, Catholics all over the country heard from their bishops. Why? Well, it hasn’t been major news in the secular media (although it certainly has been news), but the bishops of the Catholic Church told congregants that the church’s teachings and practice are under serious threat from the Obama Administration’s Health and Human Services Department. At Masses throughout the country, bishops’ words were read to congregants warning them about the threat. The American Papist has been keeping track of which bishops have spoken out and which have had their statements read at Masses. The list keeps growing but as I write this, it’s at 93 of 195 dioceses.

What I find most interesting about this is how little I heard about this from reporters on Sunday and Monday itself. Sure, we did hear from GetReligion readers and I had Catholic contacts from throughout the country emailing me to tell me about these vociferous letters that were read to the gathered.

But I only actually read one story about the matter on Sunday. That came from Michael Brendan Dougherty at Business Insider, headlined “Here Is The Anti-Obama Administration Letter That Was Read To Almost Every Catholic Sitting In Church On Sunday.”

On NPR’s Morning Edition on Monday, Cokie Roberts dropped what sounded like some personal knowledge about the bishops’ campaign into a piece about national politics:

But also the administration is creating problems of their own. The health care law is, as you know, already unpopular in the polls, and the administration has issued regulations that now - that say that Catholic or religious institutions that hire and serve people outside of their own religion have to cover contraceptive services and sterilizations in the health care bill.

It’s got the Catholic bishops furious. There was a letter in church yesterday, calling this an attack on religious liberty, and that’s a problem for the president’s allies - the social justice Catholics - and it could be a problem with Catholic voters. And that becomes a huge issue if the president really starts to lose Catholic voters, because he can’t win without them.

But considering that so many Catholics who went to Mass last weekend got an extremely rare earful from their bishops, the news was surprisingly undercovered on Sunday and Monday. These new rules could not have been more discussed on Catholic and conservative and religious liberty outlets or in opinion pieces at mainstream sites. And it’s not just pro-lifers or politically conservative Catholics. It’s possible that the politically liberal Catholics and secularists feel even more betrayed by this action from the Obama administration. Here’s E.J. Dionne, Michael Sean Winters, Jonathan Chait, etc. It is huge news in many places except for the news pages, basically. The mainstream media has been very reserved in its coverage ever since earlier this month when some religious people were given one year to figure out how they’d violate their consciences.

Pope Benedict XVI has weighed in. And not in vague ways that require some spelunking to dramatize what he’s said. He’s called these regulations and other threats to religious liberty a “grave threat.” Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has called the regulations “literally unconscionable.” (Full text here.) And it’s not just the Dolan-types. Here’s Los Angeles Archbishop Emeritus Roger Mahony, “the most prominent carrier of the social justice tradition of Cardinal Bernardin” telling Catholics to practice civil disobedience in response. Another wrote “The callous disregard for long held personal and ecclesial beliefs augurs a chilling moment for believing and practicing Catholics in these United States.” One bishop directed that the Prayer to St. Michael be read at services within his diocese:

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle;
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray:
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen

One blogger notes the significance of this prayer. It was last included in regular services between 1930 and 1965 for the benefit of believers trapped behind the Iron Curtain. “This isn’t just opposition; this is a declaration of war.”

Are you getting a sense of how big a deal this is?

But the American media are mostly writing it up as a sort of horse race thing, covering what politicians have to say about the matter. Here’s Newt Gingrich, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Yawn. Here’s ABC News downplaying what’s going on:

The Catholic Church had lobbied against the new requirement, which will go into effect January 2013.

The wording in the letters, penned by individual clergy, varied widely but the theme was distinctly anti-Washington.

Don’t mind me. I’m just banging my head against the desk right now.

It’s OK to cover this story from a political or legal angle, as the Los Angeles Times did in their piece on the HHS directive. The substance of the piece was about legal challenges to HHS but even they noted how “fiercely” Catholics reacted to the rules.

And to end on a higher note, there are exceptions the dismal coverage of this weekend’s events in the Catholic Church. CNN’s Eric Marrapodi had a great piece rounding up some of the commentary from bishops and other Catholic leaders and his piece accurately conveyed the seriousness with which they spoke. Headline, “Catholic Clergy Come Out Swinging Against HHS Regulation.” There’s also the video embedded above of a local CNN affiliate that hits the issue from a local news angle. And here’s an Atlanta broadcast outlet that also accurately characterized church outrage at the mandate this morning. Sample quote:

“The Church is going to fight this regulation with all the available resources we have,” he said. “We have to.”

Obviously there are people in the Obama administration and elsewhere who believe in birth control, sterilization and abortifacient insurance coverage mandates and, further, that religious exemptions to these mandates are wrong. That’s an important part of the story and one that has been fairy well covered. But underplaying how seriously the Catholic Church, its leaders and other religious groups are taking this is a disservice to readers of all persuasions.

UPDATE: There are many things I miss when I try to take a quick survey on any topic, and this is not exception. At least one area I missed was how USA Today covered the situation between HHS and the bishops. The editorial pages ran an op-ed by cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, New York City archbishop and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, headlined “HHS contraception mandate ‘un-American’.” The paper also ran a reported piece on the letters read in parishes, which began:

NEW ORLEANS – From Maine to Phoenix to southern Louisiana, Catholic churches across the USA this weekend echoed with scorn for a new federal rule requiring faith-based employers to include birth control and other reproductive services in their health care coverage.

Dozens of priests took the rare step of reading letters from the pulpit urging parishioners to reach out to Washington and oppose the rule, enacted this month.

Of course, I think it’s the fact that the services being mandated are in opposition to reproduction that’s the problem in the eyes of the Catholic Church. And I’m not sure “dozens” is the best word choice to accurately convey the widespread effort to combat these rules. But the very fact of this story is important and that it ran is important to note.

NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday had a story about a 71-year-old atheist’s rather curious legal battle against the Catholic Church in France. Rene LeBouvier has taken the church to court over its refusal to let him “nullify” his baptism:

LeBouvier grew up in that world and says his mother once hoped he’d become a priest. But his views began to change in the 1970s, when he was introduced to free thinkers. As he didn’t believe in God anymore, he thought it would be more honest to leave the church. So he wrote to his diocese and asked to be un-baptized.

“They sent me a copy of my records, and in the margins next to my name, they wrote that I had chosen to leave the church,” he says.

That was in the year 2000. A decade later, LeBouvier wanted to go further. In between were the pedophile scandals and the pope preaching against condoms in AIDS-racked Africa, a position that LeBouvier calls “criminal.” Again, he asked the church to strike him from baptismal records. When the priest told him it wasn’t possible, he took the church to court.

Apparently a judge in Normandy ruled in his favor and the dioceses appealed. The case is pending.

OK, the story just utterly confuses me. LeBouvier has already left the church. And he doesn’t deny he was baptized. Is he asking the court to force the church to rewrite history? Again, he was baptized into the Christian faith. He has since renounced the faith. The church records both that he was baptized into the faith and that he chose to leave the church.

I’m not sure if the article simply needs to explain the oddities of French law more or if the story just fell down on the explanation of how Christian sacraments work.

The article apparently equates asking the church to strike the name from baptismal records with something called “de-baptism,” without quite explaining why it’s called that. The article quotes the dean of the School of Canon Law at Catholic University of America, Rev. Robert Kaslyn, as saying that Catholic teaching doesn’t provide for de-baptism. Certainly this is not a Christian teaching. The article doesn’t exactly dig down on why Christianity has no provision for de-baptism, although the dean explains a bit of Catholic teaching on baptism’s permanent mark on the baptized:

“One could refuse the grace offered by God, the grace offered by the sacrament, refuse to participate,” he says, “but we would believe the individual has still been marked for God through the sacrament, and that individual at any point could return to the church.”

French law states that citizens have the right to leave organizations if they wish. Loup Desmond, who has followed the case for the French Catholic newspaper La Croix, says he thinks it could set a legal precedent and open the way for more demands for de-baptism.

“If the justice confirms that the name Rene LeBouvier has to disappear from the books, if it is confirmed, it can be a kind of jurisprudence in France,” he says.

Again, I need more explanation about why this article equates leaving an organization with something we’re calling de-baptism, particularly since this case already includes the individual renouncing his membership. I’m sure it makes sense in the mind of the reporter or the litigant, but somehow something is getting lost in translation here.

Are we talking about forcing the Catholic Church to knowingly state something they know not to be true? To rewrite history? To create a new sacrament of de-baptism? To declare a particular sacrament of baptism invalid in the eyes of the church? If it is the last case, on what grounds is the atheist arguing the sacrament was invalid in the eyes of the church? If he were petitioning for an annulment of marriage, that would be what he’d be arguing, right? That the sacramental marriage was somehow invalid in the eyes of church? Is that what he’s arguing here? If that’s the sort of annulment he seeks, the argument for that annulment is missing.

Now, it’s certainly true that churches are occasionally legally forced to do something that violates their conscience and teachings. Obviously we have a major instance of this even in the United States with the recent news that the Obama administration is giving religious institutions one year before they’ll be forced to comply with provisions in the new health care laws that profoundly violate their teachings. But what’s most interesting to me is not that sometimes a judicial or executive branch will try to force a church to violate its teachings but, rather, how the church responds. This article completely failed to discuss what the Catholic Church would do if France forced it institute a new rite/rewrite history/declare a sacrament invalid this would do. How would the church respond? Isn’t that what’s most interesting? Why no mention of the theological implications at hand? My own church body’s American history began in response to a German attempt to force us to violate our doctrine. It’s certainly interesting when governments attempt to tell religious institutions how to practice their religion, but even more so how they respond to such demands.

I also wish we could have gotten a better explanation of why annulment is the preferred legal avenue being pursued by this atheist. It was certainly given to readers and listeners why he loathes his former church but not why he seeks annulment. Perhaps a bit more explanation of whether the baptism records have sway outside of the church would have helped.

On Thursday, we looked at the rather shocking slideshow at the Washington CBS affiliate. It was headlined:

Activists Hold Annual March For Life On Roe v. Wade Anniversary

But it somehow hadn’t shown a single picture of an activist at the March for Life! Instead, it showed multiple pictures of the same handful of pro-choice protesters who protested the massive March for Life.

First, we have an update. Around 7 p.m. on Thursday, three days after the March for Life, the folks at CBS found some pictures of pro-lifers to include, rather after the fact. So now about half of the slides are of the hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers who descended on the mall and about half are of the roughly dozen or so pro-choicers who protested that same march. And for this, which is still a ridiculous use of a slideshow, we are thankful for the improvement.

We didn’t even discuss much of the Washington Post coverage here at GetReligion. I’d pointed out the reporters rather odd crutch on the phrase “antiabortion ideology,” which she repeated throughout her piece, but we didn’t talk about slides. We did have some readers complain and apparently the Washington Post ombudsman got an earful as well. He devoted his column to the matter:

Abortion is an issue that evokes passion on both sides, and journalists have to be deft in covering it lest their in-boxes overflow with angry e-mails.

So it was this week with the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in 1973 and the accompanying March for Life that has taken place here every January since.

The demonstration was a big event, as it always is. As the Associated Press pointed out in one of its stories that ran on The Post’s Web site on Jan. 23, it is “consistently one of the largest protests of the year in Washington.”

He then discusses how absolutely no one knows the size of the crowd as no one does official estimates. The only event with an actual headcount is one of the masses that precedes the march. It had some 17,000 people, he writes, but that’s the only official count that was even mentioned in the story. So how well did the articles and accompanying slideshows explain the size of the crowd? Not so well:

Still, you can find images of the large crowd taken by amateurs on Flickr or Facebook, and I imagine the AP took some, too. Probably Post photographers did as well.

But these shots didn’t find their way into the main Web photo gallery on the march. And I think this is where The Post fell down in its coverage of the march this year. And that’s mostly what antiabortion readers wrote to me about.

The online photo gallery contains 10 photos: seven tight shots of antiabortion demonstrators, two of protesters from the small abortion-rights counter-demonstration on the steps of the Supreme Court and one that showed both sides confronting each other there. In fact, eight of the 10 shots were taken at the high court.

Emotional shots make better photos, yes, but I would have chosen more from the broad expanse of the rally, and at least one photo showing a lot of cheerful, festive people, which is what I see at most demonstrations that I have covered over the years, regardless of the issue at hand.

As anyone who has been at a March for Life can tell you, it is if anything criticized for not being somber enough. It is a festive celebration of life at least as much as it is a somber remembrance of legalized abortion. That photos didn’t capture that is not good.

But what I found interesting about the ombudsman column, which is totally responsible and fair, are this quotes from the editors. The local editor basically apologizes for making it sound like the crowd was only 17,000 or so people. The photo editor? Well:

Said Post Director of Photography Michel du Cille, “We can never please this crowd. We try for fairness to show both sides.”

Are you freaking kidding me? Now, you can peruse the several years of March for Life mentions here on this blog and find that we go overboard trying to praise anything even remotely fine about March for Life coverage over the years. And that goes quadruple for the Post over the years. Considering how low the bar was (some coverage at various papers during the 1980s and 1990s still gets mentioned by media observers), we’ve been downright generous. But I can’t think of an incident where the Post photography department even tried to please “this crowd.” And let’s say they did try to “please” the crowd by accurately portraying the march, that doesn’t justify failing to accurately portray it in subsequent years. If he wanted to defend the coverage this year, he should try to do that. Blaming the victim is just not appropriate. And this appeal to “both sides” is not relevant in this case, obviously. It suggests that some commenters to the previous post were right when they blamed not the photographers but their editors.

The rest of the article looks over other aspects of the coverage and Pexton has some favorable and unfavorable comments.

On the other hand, maybe Post Director of Photography Michel du Cille was merely comparing himself to the West Coast, where things are — somehow — even worse. The California Catholic Daily says the efforts required by San Francisco’s major media outlets to avoid covering the Walk for Life West Coast bordered on obsession:

Any event that would bring 50,000+ persons to a demonstration, any event that would cause the closure of San Francisco’s busiest street for more than a mile, any event that would cause the San Francisco Muni to reroute rail line F, and bus lines 2, 5, 6, 8, 8X, 9, 10, 12, 14, 14L, 19, 21, 27, 30, 31, 38, 38L, 45, and 71, could fairly be classified as “news.”

But when a newspaper’s agenda prevents it from covering news, one is almost forced to sympathize. It’s like watching a recovering alcoholic stalking down the liquor aisle at Safeway — jaw clenched, looking neither to the right nor left, hoping to reach the safe haven of frozen strawberries or Occupy Wall Street. …

The only article the San Francisco Chronicle, the city’s major daily, did on the Walk For Life West Coast was prior to the event — and that C.W. Nevius’ column advising San Franciscans to ignore it! His editors, at least, appear to have taken his advice. The paper did send photographer Michael Macor to cover the event. He took some nice shots. They reproduced one in their newspaper. No article accompanied the photo. The Chronicle did reproduce nine photos on its website, still with no story, only a caption that read: “Thousands protest abortion Saturday at the eighth Walk for Life West Coast on S.F.’s Market Street. The crowd stretched from City Hall to Powell Street. Abortion rights supporters rallied at Justin Herman Plaza.”

Come on people. And it’s not that the Chronicle doesn’t cover ongoing protests. According to the California Catholic Daily, over the past 90 days, the Chronicle has published 415 articles on Occupy Wall Street. That’s a new ongoing protest and certainly we’d expect to see more coverage of it, but given the size of the crowds and the disparity in coverage, that’s just embarrassing.

So there’s certainly room for improvement. I’d advise the Post’s photo director and all other journalists covering public protests to think far less about “pleasing” people — whether it’s the folks they hang out with in their newsrooms or the masses who are out in the streets protesting — and far more about just reporting the news as quickly and accurately as possible.

Back in June, a local man was arrested in a string of shootings at military targets. He was born in Ethiopia and was named Yonathan Melaku. There were also reports that he’d had al Qaeda materials and had shouted “Allah Akbar” (it was actually “Allahu Akbar”).

Naturally, I had questions.

There were details that indicated Melaku was disturbed. His name struck me as decidedly Christian, not Muslim (which commenters confirmed). But the other details sounded like signals that the acts might have a basis in Islamic terrorism.

So I wondered why the media weren’t more curious. There are tons of D.C. media outlets and yet nobody seemed to answer what struck me as basic questions.

Yesterday, Melaku pled guilty. The local and national news covered it. Here’s the local NBC outlet:

An ex-Marine from Virginia, accused of firing shots at the Pentagon, the Marine Corps museum in Quantico and other military-related targets, pleaded guilty in court Thursday.

But other than a mention that Melaku’s family requested a psychological evaluation be done on him, we didn’t get any answers.

Here’s what ABC added:

Yonathan Melaku, then 22, was arrested on June 17, 2011 after he was seen in Arlington National Cemetery at night with a backpack. The backpack allegedly contained a package labeled ammonium nitrate, a common fertilizer than can be used in explosives, spent firearm ammunition and a notebook referencing the Taliban, Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda.

After his arrest, FBI agents searched his Virginia home and found a list of bombmaking components as well as a video of Melaku shouting “Allahu Akbar” as he fired his gun at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in October 2010. The shots did $90,000 worth of damage to the museum windows.

That’s almost exactly what we heard at the time of the shooting. The ABC report doesn’t mention anything about mental illness.

Finally, let’s look at the Washington Post. Tons of interesting information:

Federal prosecutors revealed Thursday that Melaku, a 23-year-old former Marine Corps Reservist, was on a mission to desecrate the graves of veterans who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. They said he was poised to spray paint Arabic statements on the markers and leave the explosive materials nearby, part of a solitary campaign of “fear and terror” that included the earlier shootings. …

Though Melaku acknowledged shooting at the buildings — attacks that did not injure anyone but caused an estimated $111,000 in damage, mostly to windows at the Marine Corps museum — it still remains unclear why he did it. In a video entered into evidence and released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Melaku says that he wants to target the museum and “turn it off permanently.”

FBI officials and prosecutors said Melaku was on a personal terror mission, but they could not say what started Melaku down that path. They said it does not appear his service in the Marine reserves provides any clear sign of trouble, but they said he researched jihadism on the Internet, had references to terrorism in a notebook and on his computer, and yelled “Allahu Akbar” repeatedly during a video of a shooting. …

Authorities later found instructions for making improvised explosive devices in Melaku’s home in the Alexandria section of Fairfax, and they found a notebook with references to Osama bin Laden and “The Path to Jihad.”

It’s somewhat odd to see the line “it still remains unclear why he did it” combined with information about “references” to bin Laden and the like. But I’m curious why — with charges filed and guilty pleas announced — we still don’t know more about these “references.” Counter-terrorism officials probably have notebooks in their house with “references” to such things. That doesn’t really tell us what we need to know. Haven’t the intervening seven months given us an opportunity to find out more?

And one other thing. I noticed this comment posted in the reader section below the story:

This is Josh White, the reporter who wrote this story. Thank you all for reading and commenting. As the issue of religion has been raised here numerous times, I wanted to provide some additional information I was able to find this afternoon:

Melaku’s defense attorney told me today that Melaku’s family is of the Coptic Christian faith and that they were stunned to learn of the crimes and any connection between their son and Islam or jihad, as there were no overt signs to them that he had any involvement with it whatsoever. It is unclear to everyone I have interviewed — prosecutors, police, Melaku’s attorney — why exactly he was shooting at the buildings or wanted to deface the gravestones or what led him to that point. It is possible that only he knows that. We will continue to post and publish new information as we get it.

It really is “unclear” what was going on. I think that the information contained in this comment is important and actually should be included in stories about Melaku. It is understandable that even after reporting the heck out of a story, you may not be able to find out key information. But I think it’s good to tell readers exactly why you are writing that motivations aren’t clear.

I had already been wondering — based on his very Christian name — whether this was a standard case of Islamic terrorism. But I noticed many people thought that the Washington Post was trying to hide his Islamic terrorism. There are good reasons that readers are skeptical about how religious terrorism is covered. In this case, the reporter had very good reason for writing about the lack of clarity with regard to motivation.

The online producers at CBS posted a photo slideshow the other day that appeared under the following rather literal headline:

Activists Hold Annual March For Life On Roe v. Wade Anniversary

So, just thinking out loud, what percentage of the pictures in this gallery would you expect to be of, well, the thousands and thousands of activists who traveled to Washington, D.C., in order to take part in the annual March For Life on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade?

If you guessed anything other than zero, you would be wrong.

There are literally no pictures of any pro-lifers in this feature.

Instead, the entire slideshow consists of images such as the one embedded below. Really, go click through it, if you don’t believe me. (UPDATE: Around 7:00 PM on January 26, photos of pro-lifers were added to the gallery.)

Now, it is true that each year at the March For Life, you can count on seeing a handful of pro-abortion-rights protesters. Usually around a half dozen to two dozen.

The March for Life, on the other hand, features many more. How many more? Well, I imagine that the estimate put out by organizers of half a million is an overstatement, but you get the idea. Perhaps you can take a gander at this picture of this year’s (frigid, rain-soaked) march here that CBS was unable to get. One Mass — alone — at the National Shrine had an official attendance of 17,851. So basically about the same number on both sides, right?

No joke. Pro-lifers might recall the 2010 incident when CNN surmised that there might be more pro-choice activists at the annual March for Life than opponents of abortion. I’m not exaggerating. CNN’s Rick Sanchez stated that “there are both sides being represented” and then asked his producer, “Which side is represented the most Angie, do we know?” He didn’t get an answer and, thus, he went on to promise that CNN would “keep an eye” on the situation and report on the matter “fairly and squarely.”

When I noted in a recent post that the New York Times, which is normally accused of over-reporting on other protests, had failed to cover the march (again) and that the Washington Post was using weird language to describe Catholic doctrine on life issues, a commenter wrote:

It’s the third week of January so it must be time for the annual GR bashing of the MSM “coverage” of the annual “March for Life”.

Yep! You got it. It must be about that time. It’s really amazing, isn’t it, that we don’t fall all ourselves with praise for a media culture that ignores this large event.

Now, thankfully you can get the news from other sources, thanks to the wonders of social media. But should you have to? Of course not.

So what gives? Why do the media fail at this so consistently, year after year after year? What is it? Pro-life writer Elizabeth Scalia has some thoughts:

Unfortunately, the “big picture” is hard to come by, particularly if you’re looking for “big pictures” of this well-attended march. We have reached a remarkable era of photojournalism, as demonstrated by the once-noble Washington Post — one where a half million people can march, the headlines can call it “thousands” and the pictures show you none of it.

Someone asked me on Twitter, “why don’t they just report the truth” and I thought, “because they have given themselves wholly over to a lie, and they fear the truth. Having built up the lie for so long that it’s become their foundation, they know they cannot withstand an assault by the truth.”

So they have become truth-phobics, our mainstream media. They can’t tell you the truth about anything, anymore — they can only do whatever it takes to sustain the narratives they’ve constructed. …

You want the truth? You think you deserve it? The press can’t handle the truth; they can’t bring it to you. The New York Times just ignores inconvenient truth, entirely.

That’s why 250 people camping out in a park gets thousands of stories, while half-a-million marching on Washington does not get reported at all, or if it does, the pictures are cropped; the attendees are caricatured, mis-named and under-represented while their opponents are over-represented.

Scalia is writing from a particular point of view, obviously. But what do you think? Why do we see such problems year after year? What’s going on? What can be done to help reporters do a better job? In the case of CBS, for instance, maybe a pro-life marcher could have simply tapped the photographer on the shoulder and told him to look behind himself at the large crowds marching by the Supreme Court for hours on Monday afternoon? Something like that? What else?

Image of actual activists in annual March For Life via Telecare. And h/t to Vestal Morons.

If I watch late-night television, I watch Craig Ferguson. Not Jay Leno. Apparently Jay Leno angered some people in the Sikh community the other night. Here’s how Politico explains it:

Late-night comedian Jay Leno has landed in hot water with the Sikh community for showing a picture of the sacred Darbar Sahib, also known as the Golden Temple, on his show last week and jokingly referring to it as Mitt Romney’s summer home.

During the segment, “The Tonight Show” host shared with the audience a “behind-the-scenes look at all the presidential candidates’ homes,” calling the pictures “quite revealing” of the 2012 hopefuls.

After unveiling pictures of Newt Gingrich’s estate in Virginia and Ron Paul’s ranch house in Texas, the comedian purported to show a photograph of Romney’s summer home on Lake Winnipesaukee but flashed an image of the famous golden shrine located in Punjab, India, instead.

Thousands from the Sihk community have already signed an online petition called, “NBC — The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Stop defaming Sikhs and using derogatory remarks against the Sikh shrines.”

OK, so what’s missing from this report? Well, speaking as someone who is neither Sikh nor familiar with what constitutes derogatory remarks against Darbar Sahib, I’m completely lost. What, exactly, angered these thousands of Sikhs? It seems like such a basic fact to include, no?

The Politico article goes on to quote the petition creator as saying that Leno has previously made racist comments but the article simply cites the claims, rather than putting them in context or verifying them in any way. For instance, many media outlets are repeating this claim that in 2007, Jay Leno called Sikhs “diaper heads.” I did a very simple Google search from January 1, 2007, to January 1, 2008, and didn’t find the basis for the claim. It’s a scurrilous charge, but is it true?

Anyway, I’m sure it’s not that difficult to explain why Leno’s joke was offensive to some Sikhs. Even if it is, it’s vitally important information for readers. Particularly since it’s become an international incident, according to this Reuters report:

American host Jay Leno has sparked anger among Sikhs with a joke about their holiest shrine and the Indian government is making its displeasure known.

In his ‘Tonight Show’ last week, the comedian poked fun at the wealth of U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney, suggesting that Sikhism’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, was his vacation home.

A complaint against Leno will be officially filed by India’s ambassador to the United States, Nirupama Rao, after 2,000 people signed an online petition.

“The Right to Speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution excludes defamation and spreading hate, incitement and false advertising,” the petition urged.

Reuters rather humorously quoted a State Department official explaining how both satire and the First Amendment work.

But the Reuters article also fails to explain the religious objection raised by some Sikhs.

Image of Sikh at prayer in pond of Golden Temple via Shutterstock.

Yesterday was the annual March for Life. This is a large annual event where people come in from all over the country — and world — to march to the Supreme Court on the anniversary of the date it handed down Roe V. Wade. This has been going on for almost 40 years and it’s been covered poorly for many of those years. This year was brutally cold and wet and yet the crowds were still there, marching as they always do. They may have been wondering why the Supreme Court hadn’t handed down the decision in June instead of January, but they were there.

But guess what! This year, this march — larger than all of the Occupy Wall Street groups combined — actually received a mention in the New York Times! Twice! Things are looking up!

Oh wait, actually they’re not. One of the references was in a blog post about how Sen. Rand Paul was detained by TSA during his security screening on the way to Washington. In the last paragraph:

A posting on the senator’s own Twitter account shortly before the incident announced that he was headed to Washington to speak at the March for Life, an antiabortion rally.

By the way, reading that line makes me wonder if the media really need to come up with a better way to describe a movement that is about more than just abortion. Speaking of, this Washington Post treatment of Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life is intriguing, to say the least:

The Catholic Church has increasingly focused on educating and mobilizing its youth around its antiabortion ideology…

With another presidential election looming, many antiabortion advocates at the event said educating youths in their ideology is more important than ever…

Group chaperone Karina Franco, 37, said this was the first real education in antiabortion ideology for most of the youths…

Exsqueeze me? I don’t know Karina Franco but I suspect the words “antiabortion ideology” hadn’t even entered her mind, much less exited her mouth. But apparently it’s the new media term for describing the same Catholic doctrine that is linked to beliefs on a wide range of subjects, not just abortion. It would be like saying the church has an “ideology” on salvation.

Anyway, the other mention of the March for Life in the Times comes from the editorial page editor mocking Rand Paul’s beliefs on both TSA security and the abortion of unborn children. If the only way the March for Life gets mentioned in your paper is because a libertarian Senator missed his flight thanks to TSA’s security procedures, you’re doing it wrong.

Speaking of doing it wrong, I endured the unbelievably boring NBC debate of the Republican candidates. If you’ve missed a few or most, I hope last night’s was one of them. Unless you like lots of questions about what the candidates themselves think of the horse race of running for office. (Newt Gingrich did discuss his unique views on divine judgment and one Fidel Castro.) One of the few substantive parts of the debate was a question about something that happened seven years ago. Here’s how the Huffington Post wrote it up:

Exhuming Terri Schiavo

Adam Smith, citing a 2005 case that gripped the state of Florida, and, eventually the nation and the federal government, reminds Rick Santorum about his support for the family of Terri Schiavo. Santorum said that the support he offered was sincere, but made sure to indicate that he “did not call for congressional intervention.” Rather, he said, “I called for judicial intervention on behalf of the parents,” who were from Pennsylvania, and thus, his constituents. Santorum said that his intention was simply to ensure that the judicial process worked as fairly as it could.

Asked if “do not resuscitate” orders were “immoral,” Santorum said, “No, I don’t think so.”

This is a very abbreviated and not entirely accurate summary but the question was “Do not resuscitate directives, do you think they’re immoral?” and the response from Santorum was “No, I don’t believe they’re immoral. I mean, I think that’s a decision that people should be able to make, and I have supported legislation in the past for them to make it.”

It was interesting that neither the journalist nor Santorum mentioned that the legislation Santorum sponsored regarding Schiavo received votes from every Democrat, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. However, the “do not resuscitate” question was supposed to be the follow-up to the Terri Schiavo question. And why? I have absolutely no idea. The question about Terri Schiavo’s life was about whether her husband should be permitted to starve and dehydrate her, not whether she should be resuscitated. In fact, her husband had obtained a do-not-resuscitate order on her life 12 years prior. It is staggering to me that a reporter who had prepared such a dated question wouldn’t have some grasp of the most basic facts of the case. Particularly considering he’s at a local newspaper there (the Tampa Bay Times). Even before I experienced dehydration in 2010, I knew this (once you’ve experienced dehydration, if you survive it, you will not forget it — unbelievably painful).

Speaking of debates and “life issues,” I also wonder if anyone caught this question from CNN’s John King during the last South Carolina debate:

(APPLAUSE) KING: I think we have nodding heads. I assume we have agreement on that. But let’s move on to another issue that came up in the campaign right here in South Carolina this week, and that’s the life issue.

Mr. Speaker, your campaign sent out a mailing to South Carolina Republicans across this state essentially questioning Governor Romney’s commitment on this issue, saying that he has changed his position on the abortion issue.

“The life issue.” That has to be the first time a moderator has used this vocabulary in a debate.

Photo via Catholic University of America gallery.