public relations

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Podcast: Can journalists and religious leaders learn how to talk about what 'news' is?

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Podcast: Can journalists and religious leaders learn how to talk about what 'news' is?

Day after day, year after year (this week opened year 35 for my national “On Religion” column) I receive all kinds of “press releases” from people who want me to write columns about this, that or the other.

Some folks still send these printed on dead-tree pulp, if you can imagine that. The vast majority arrive via email or in press kits (mainly for books) via UPS, Fedex or the U.S. Postal Service.

I am happy to check out most of this material. However, about 90% or more of these offerings are sent by PR professionals who appear to have zero idea what I write about or the audience for my columns. They are simply throwing cheerful digital spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.

In short, they do not understand “news” — what it is and what it is not.

What can religious leaders and/or organizations do to improve their success rates with reporters like me? That was half the equation that we discussed during this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here for temporary link to tune that in).

The other half? Just flip that reporter’s notebook around. How can reporters do a better job finding the right voices to include in their coverage of events and trends linked to religion? How can journalists convince clergy and other religious folks to cooperate with press coverage — especially when dealing with controversial topics and scandals?

The podcast was recorded while I was in Los Angeles for two forums hosted by the Poynter Institute under this title: “Telling the Stories of Faith and the Faithful.” The first forum was for reporters and editors, including quite a few who are not religion-beat specialists. The second day, yes, focused on talks with a small circle of religious leaders about understanding how journalists think and work.

We were talking about many of the same questions and issues on both days — only viewed from different sides of a reporter’s notebook (or smartphone, in this age). Here is a bite of the Poynter summary of the session with reporters:


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RIP Charles Stanley, a Southern Baptist media pro (and a megachurch preacher, too)

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RIP Charles Stanley, a Southern Baptist media pro (and a megachurch preacher, too)

There’s an old saying in the Sunbelt that goes like this: When Jesus makes his glorious return on the last day, He will still have to fly through Atlanta.

I will visit that giant airport myself, today, on my way home from speaking at a Poynter Institute conference — “Telling the Stories of Faith and the Faithful” here in Los Angeles. One day featured meetings with West Coast reporters, including many that don’t work the religion beat, and the second day focused on talks with a circle of faith-group leaders. There were great questions and lots of dialogue.

Thinking about the Atlanta airport reminded me of what I think was as highly symbolic encounter with the Rev. Charles Stanley, a pivotal Southern Baptist leader and preacher who died this week. See this Associated Press report: “Charles Stanley, influential Baptist preacher, dies at 90.”

The leader of First Baptist Church of Atlanta was elected SBC president in 1985 during what was, in my experience, one of the most intense, even angry, national conventions ever (and that’s saying something) during the near life-and-death Southern Baptist civil war of that era.

To get to that meeting in Kansas City, working for The Charlotte Observer, I had to (#DUH) change planes in Atlanta. I ended up on the same plane with Stanley, who was rumored to be a candidate for SBC president. He was in First Class, obviously, and I was not, obviously. After we had been airborne for an hour or so, I walked up front to give Stanley my card and to request an interview before the election.

Seeing that he was reading a document, I confess that I looked it over before I alerted him to my presence at his right shoulder.

Trust me — I wish I had a photographic memory. Why? Because he was reading a professional set of public-relations guidelines describing (#WaitForIt) how to deal with journalists after his election as SBC president.


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Thinking about missing pieces of Axios report on changes in Latino life, politics and, yes, faith

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Thinking about missing pieces of Axios report on changes in Latino life, politics and, yes, faith

GetReligion, as a rule, has never been interested in public-relations features.

So why lead the top of a weekend “think piece” with a Baptist Press story that is obviously the kind of glowing public-relations work that is a stable in church-market, denominational media of all kinds?

That’s easy to explain. You see, this feature — “Church ESL camp preps Hispanic elementary students for school year” — is a perfect example of a trend in the wider evangelical world that is linked to one of the most important political, and religious, stories in America right now.

Why is that?

Read the top of this story and think to yourself: This is an absolutely normal story in Southern Baptist Convention life at this point in time.

Fanny Baltanado planned to spend just six months visiting her new granddaughter in Texas when the unanticipated COVID-19 pandemic thwarted her return to Nicaragua. She would need to find a church home near Humble, Texas.

An adult English as a second language class attracted Baltanado in March to Cross Community Church, where she became a regular attendee and in August, helped the church teach ESL to local Hispanic elementary students in a back-to-school camp.

“For me, this was an amazing experience because we are able to bring the love of Jesus Christ to the people, especially kids,” Baltanado said. “I think they are the base of the society, and we need to help them to be more comfortable, to be more confident with themselves, because they are (in) difficult times.”

ESL classes ranked as a top community need when Del Traffanstedt and his wife Charmaine planted Cross Community Church in the majority Spanish-speaking Eastex-Jensen area of northeast Houston in September 2021. The couple learned of the need for the ESL camp for children after launching their first adult class in March, said Charmaine Traffanstedt, who directs the church’s ESL ministry.

What is the political angle in that local-church story?

Answer: Flash back a few days ago to my post that ran with this headline: “Axios looks at the hot political (of course) trend of Latinos becoming evangelical voters.”

I am returning to that topic again because (a) this truly is a story that news consumers will be hearing about as we head into midterm elections and beyond and (b) because I had an obvious “senior moment” when writing that earlier post.


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Fallout from Supreme Court abortion decision: When reporters parrot partisan talking points

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Fallout from Supreme Court abortion decision: When reporters parrot partisan talking points

With emotions running high, the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade marked a cataclysmic shift in the ongoing culture wars. What it means for the upcoming midterm elections and beyond has been the topic of much speculation since the ruling was handed down.

The decision was marked by joy on one side and anger on the other, with may reporters wearing their emotions on their faces and under their bylines. However, many people I know reacted with mixed emotions. Even conservatives were uneasy about the decision, mostly because they feared the violence that could be a part of the fallout. Indeed, the National Catholic Reporter’s news account put it best in its headline: “As Court overturns Roe v. Wade, Catholics react with joy, anger, trepidation.”

We do live in a time when political decisions often inspire violence.

Lose an election? Storm the Capitol Building.

Unhappy with police misconduct? Burn down stores.

Both sides are guilty of this, although the mainstream press — which has grown ever-partisan in the Internet age — hasn’t always been good about calling out both sides for such intimidation.

The fallout from the Dobbs decision? It’s only been a few days, but there was violence in some parts of the country from Rhode Island to Iowa to Arizona. The rhetoric was vile on Twitter, quickly aimed at Christians, and that was soon on display in the streets in a variety of forms.

Again, national legacy media have not always been good about giving proper background and context to the events of the recent past, especially in terms of coverage of violence against churches and crisis-pregnancy centers.

The fissures in American public life are real. So are the distorted realities partisan news organizations like to perpetuate these days.

Just two weeks ago, Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, argued that opinion pages are alienating readers and becoming obsolete. They doubled down by warning their reporters to refrain from using social media platforms to comment on the decision. However, take a look at this morning’s news summary from USA Today. Spot any patterns?


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It's time for journalists to ask: What has happened to the Vatican press office?

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Let’s start with a loaded question. But it’s a questions that journalists really need to ask, because of trends during recent events in Catholic life.

So here goes: Is the Vatican’s press office helping to push a progressive agenda that could forever change the Catholic church?

Here’s the background: The Pan-Amazonian Synod that ended over a week ago wasn’t without controversy, to say the least. The recommendations put forth regarding bestowing Holy Orders to women in the form of making them deacons is something Pope Francis has to make a decision on by the end of the year. Toss in the theological debate over the Pachamama statues present at the Vatican and at a nearby Rome church and there was no shortage of fodder for reporters and columnists.

That takes us to the Vatican’s press office, the people on the front lines of getting out the pope’s message to the world’s media.

Like the White House in the age of Trump, so too does the Holy See’s messaging need some further examination. Former White House Press Secretaries Sean Spicer, followed by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, were all placed under the news media’s microscope for their statements and actions — and rightly so. The PR men and women behind Francis also deserve similar examination by the press.

Long gone are the days of Joaquin Navarro Valls. A “suave, silver-haired Spaniard,” as the Los Angeles Times described him in their 2017 obituary, Valls was both a close confidant of Pope John Paul II and served for more than two decades as chief Vatican spokesman. He defined what it was to be the pope’s press man. And he defended church teachings while doing it.

Navarro-Valls, a lay member of the conservative Catholic movement Opus Dei, had worked as a foreign correspondent for the Spanish newspaper ABC when the Polish pope offered him the job as director of the Vatican press office. He was the first journalist to hold the post. He was the right man at the right time for a globe-trotting pope at a time when mass media was growing.

Fast-forward to the present. The backlash to Francis by traditionalists is based on convictions that he has politicized the church, wanting to transform it into a social service agency.


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Amid bush-league PR operation, Houston Astros could use some good -- er, God -- news

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God and baseball.

Both are favorite subjects of mine, and sometimes, they intersect.

We eventually will get to the religion angle in this post, so please hang with me for a moment. But first, let’s set the scene with a little unfortunate background: It’s been a rough few days for the bush-league PR operation of the Houston Astros.

Even as attention should be focused on the team’s feel-good pursuit of its second World Series title in three years, a foul-mouthed, female-sportswriter-bullying assistant general manager named Brandon Taubman managed to rile even local Astros fans.

Major League Baseball is investigating what happened after the Astros’ pennant-clinching win on Saturday night, as CBS News notes:

The Houston Astros lost Game 1 of the World Series Tuesday night against the Washington Nationals, but it's drama off the field that's making headlines. Major League Baseball is investigating the expletive-filled celebration of a controversial player that an Astros executive apparently directed to a group of female reporters.

Sports Illustrated reporter Stephanie Apstein wrote that Astros assistant general manager, Brandon Taubman, turned to the female reporters, one of whom was wearing a domestic violence bracelet, and yelled: "Thank God we got Osuna! I'm so f— glad we got Osuna!"

He was referring to pitcher Roberto Osuna, picked up by the Astros after he was arrested on domestic violence charges in 2018 for allegedly assaulting the mother of his young child. The Astros had initially been criticized for acquiring Osuna after he had been accused of domestic violence. 

The Poynter Institute’s Tom Jones — in a daily briefing that highlights “The Astros’ sexist mistake” — runs down the team hierarchy’s bungling of Taubman’s tirade all along the way:


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The Vatican press office has turned over, again. There are new challenges ahead

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The Vatican press office may be second only to the White House communications department when it comes to ranking the world’s busiest public relations operation.

Like President Donald Trump, Pope Francis and the Holy See are in some serious need of daily damage control. The resurfacing of the clergy sex abuse scandal — year after year for decades — and the allegations that led to the downfall of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick have been the Vatican’s biggest PR headaches over the past year.

Responsible for handling the Holy See’s messaging on the clergy scandal and a host of other issues will be a retooled press office. Much of the turmoil that has surrounded the pope and the Catholic church over the past year called for an overhaul of the Holy See’s press operation.

The past two weeks has seen a flurry of announcements, including the naming of a new press office director and vice director (more on this position further down), two of the biggest jobs at the Vatican held by lay people.  

Pope Francis appointed Matteo Bruni as director of the Holy See Press Office earlier this month, replacing Alessandro Gisotti who’d been serving in the role on an interim basis following the abrupt resignations of Greg Burke, a former Fox News Channel reporter, and Paloma Garcia Ovejero, who had also worked as a journalist in her native Spain, at the end of last year. Gisotti was in charge throughout the Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano saga. Vigano has claimed that Francis covered up the misconduct of McCarrick, something the pontiff has repeatedly denied.

With Bruni’s appointment, Gisotti has been given the role of vice editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication. He will serve under editorial director Andrea Tornielli, who’s been in the job since December, and Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Dicastery for Communication since July 2018.

Bruni, Gisotti, Tornielli and Ruffini are all Italians, experienced PR men loyal to the church.


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KHOU takes a quick, and sadly typical, trip into another public classroom culture war

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Rare is the week in which your GetReligionistas do not receive some kind of note from a reader pointing us toward a news report in which there are claims that conservative Christians have suffered some kind of discrimination at the hands of the agents of "political correctness," usually public-school officials.

It's pretty clear that the correspondents are primarily upset about the contents of the story, as opposed to the efforts of journalists to cover it. In other words, these readers want GetReligion to publicize or protest THIS CASE, as opposed to critique the coverage.

Now, don't get me wrong. Often the coverage of these stories is pretty lousy, and that's usually just as true in alternative "conservative" media as it is in the mainstream press.

The basic problem is one that reporters face all the time: Once the conflict begins, public officials tend to stop answering questions and hand things over to their public-relations teams. This leaves journalists with quotes from one side of the story -- the angry activists -- and that's that. Some journalists turn this around and only quote the public officials, thus assuming that the people complaining about discrimination are totally out of line and have no facts on their side.

A classic Catch-22.

Consider this recent story from KHOU about an all-too-typical conflict in a public-school classroom in Katy, Texas:

A Katy seventh grader has some strong accusations. She says her teacher asked the class to deny God exists.


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New York Times on the Planned Parenthood videos: It's all politics, politics, politics

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Media coverage of the Planned Parenthood-undercover-abortion-videos matter has been underwhelming to say the least. However, this week there have been a few more articles out there about the controversy -- plus a third video.

The latest non-news news is that Planned Parenthood has actually asked the media to back off from the story and to date, I've seen no media organizations tell PP to go take a hike. Just before Planned Parenthood's request came this New York Times story about how Republicans are taking advantage of it all.

WASHINGTON -- Rick Perry’s voice softens when he talks about the joy he gets from looking at his iPad and seeing “that 20-week picture of my first grandbaby.” Marco Rubio says ultrasounds of his sons and daughters reinforced how “they were children -- and they were our children.” Rand Paul recalls watching fetuses suck their thumbs. And Chris Christie says the ultrasound of his first daughter changed his views on abortion.
If they seem to be reading from the same script, they are.
With help from a well-funded, well-researched and invigorated anti-abortion movement, Republican politicians have refined how they are talking about pregnancy and abortion rights, choosing their words in a way they hope puts Democrats on the defensive.
The goal, social conservatives say, is to shift the debate away from the “war on women” paradigm that has proved so harmful to the their party’s image.
Democrats were jolted by the latest and perhaps most disruptive effort yet in this line of attack by activists who want to outlaw abortion: surreptitiously recorded video of Planned Parenthood doctors casually discussing how they extract tissue from aborted fetuses.

Once again, we have a story that uses the much-maligned Planned Parenthood videos as a segue into what many reporters *really* think the debate is all about -- politics and politics alone. No religious beliefs. No convictions about the science issues involved. 


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