Journalism

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Shades of Zarathustra: The New York Times maps dying woman whose brain may live on

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Last weekend, a giant New York Times story came out that combined elements of "The Matrix" and “That Hideous Strength” (the C.S. Lewis classic) with a dollop of Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old Oregon woman who ended her life last year rather than suffer the final months of a brain cancer known as a glioblastoma. GetReligion covered the media circus about this last November, which involved Brittany's media campaign to serve as a poster child for euthanasia.

This time, we have a story again about a 20-something woman with the same kind of brain cancer who chose to preserve her brain. She died in early 2013.

Only now is the Times revealing how it followed this woman about in her final months as she explored the use of her brain for a futurist fantasy where even science fiction writers rarely tread. Although the science involved spans the next few centuries, what the woman wanted is as old as Adam and Eve: To live forever.

In the moments just before Kim Suozzi died of cancer at age 23, it fell to her boyfriend, Josh Schisler, to follow through with the plan to freeze her brain.
As her pulse monitor sounded its alarm and her breath grew ragged, he fumbled for his phone. Fighting the emotion that threatened to paralyze him, he alerted the cryonics team waiting nearby and called the hospice nurses to come pronounce her dead. Any delay would jeopardize the chance to maybe, someday, resurrect her mind.
It was impossible to know on that cloudless Arizona morning in January 2013 which fragments of Kim’s identity might survive, if any.


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Pope Francis and the Republicans: AP story has little interest in the pope and Democrats

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Republicans are jockeying to share the spotlight with Pope Francis when he comes to America this month. Democrats? (shrug)

That's a logical takeaway from an Associated Press story on views of Pope Francis by seven of the GOP's presidential candidates.

And before you can say, "Hey, wait a minute," the story fires a shotgun blast of paragraphs:

To some Republican presidential candidates, it's better to be with the popular pope than against him.
Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have deep policy differences with Pope Francis, but the senators will break off campaign travel to attend his address to Congress later this month, a centerpiece of his eagerly anticipated visit to the United States.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a devout Catholic, will attend Mass with Francis in Washington. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another Catholic candidate, plans to attend one of the pope's East Coast events.

AP does nuance that a bit. It explains that Francis has drawn popular admiration, not only for his kindly manner, but also for his "humility and efforts to refocus the church on the poor and needy." It also says he has waded into "numerous hot-button political issues" like immigration, climate change, the Iran nuclear deal and diplomatic relations with Cuba.

So the article has Bush applauding Francis as an "amazing man" with a "gentle soul." And Rubio honors Francis as a "moral authority" but adds, "I'm a political leader and my job as a policymaker is to act in the common good."

The story also reports sidesteps by Scott Walker and Rick Santorum, who say they’ll be out of town when the pope visits Washington. That strikes me as odd to single out those two but not, say, Ben Carson, named last week in a CNN poll as GOP's current front runner.

More glaring is the omission of Donald Trump, whose religious talk has often raised eyebrows. Last month, Trump said this to CNN's Chris Cuomo:


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Washington Post gets crucial Kim Davis compromises into new front-lines report

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The latest from Rowan County, Kentucky? Sure, why not.

But before we look at some of the coverage of clerk Kim Davis and her first day back on the job, let's review the primary journalistic point that your GetReligionistas have been making, over and over, about this media circus.

Most of the national coverage, has portrayed this dispute as a clash between two national armies -- with the Religious Right on one side and gay-rights supporters on the other.

We have argued that this is too simplistic and that, to anticipate where the story is going, reporters need to focus on the actual laws in Kentucky and the ground-level efforts to realign them with the U.S. Supreme Court's 5-4 Obergefell decision to back gay marriage. At the very least, there appear to be four camps involved in this sad circus. 

(1) Cultural conservatives whose primary goal is to reject same-sex marriage.

(2) A coalition of state political leaders -- Democrats and Republicans -- seeking to comply with the Supreme Court ruling and recognize the rights of gay couples who seek marriage licenses. However, these officials and activists also want, in a way consistent with past legal efforts to offer "work around" accomodations for officials caught in conflict-of-interest binds, to recognize the religious-liberty rights of traditional Christians, Jews, Muslims and others who cannot endorse same-sex marriage.

(3) Activists of various kinds who want to defend religious liberty, but who believe Davis has hurt their cause, in the long run, by going to jail rather than either (a) resigning or (b) allowing others to distribute marriage licenses in her name until the state legislature acts to amend state laws in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. (See this earlier Bobby Ross Jr., post.)

(4) Activists on the secular and religious left whose primary goal is to force public officials whose duties touch same-same marriage to either resign or endorse, with their actions, the Obergefell decision.

Every now and then, The Washington Post team has included in its coverage details that point toward this complex four-level drama at the state level -- such as the fact that Davis herself supports compromises that would allow gay marriages to proceed (such as the legislature approving the removal of the clerk's name from the license or allowing couples to seek licenses through other government sources).


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Religious liberty advocates split on Kentucky clerk's stance? Yes, Associated Press reports

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Tmatt has been all over the lack of media reporting on efforts to forge a Kentucky compromise that would protect the rights of same-sex couples and traditional religious believers.

Along those same lines, much news coverage has failed to reflect the disagreement among many same-sex marriage opponents themselves over the stance taken by Rowan County clerk Kim Davis.

That's why I was pleased to see a weekend story by Associated Press writer Travis Loller highlighting that split among religious liberty advocates.

Loller even quotes Rod "Friend of this Blog" Dreher:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Kentucky clerk Kim Davis has become a hero to many conservative Christians who see her refusal to issue marriage licenses after the Supreme Court effectively legalized same-sex marriage as a litmus test for religious liberty in an increasingly secular culture.
But lost in the uproar are the voices of Christians, some equally conservative, who disagree with Davis' stance and worry that holding her out as a martyr will ultimately hurt the cause of religious liberty.
"I think she's wrong on the merits, wrong theologically and her stance is harmful to Christians both in the religious liberty debate and in trying to present Christianity to the watching world," said Peter Wehner, a Christian commentator who served in the last three Republican presidential administrations.
Many religious conservatives have shifted their focus in recent years from trying to stop the legalization of same-sex marriage to carving out protections for those who object to it on religious grounds. A Washington florist who was fined over her refusal to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding is celebrated by conservative Christian leaders across the U.S. who point to her story as an example of government overreach they fear will only grow.
But Davis' position as a government official has some of those same conservative leaders warning that she may not be the ideal figure to rally around. As Rod Dreher, a senior editor at "The American Conservative," put it in a recent essay, Davis' case is "not the hill to die on." Rather, a line in the sand should be drawn "when they start trying to tell us how to run our own religious institutions - churches, schools, hospitals, and the like - and trying to close them or otherwise destroy them for refusing to accept LGBT ideology."


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A must-read weekend think piece: Trying to find compromise in Kentucky laws

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So, journalists interested in covering the real legal issues at stake in the Kim Davis case, did you read the piece that the editorial pages team at The New York Times -- in a moment of intellectual diversity that is worthy of applause -- ran by Ryan T. Davis on the framework for a compromise that benefits gay couples and traditional religious believers?

It you did not read it, now is the time. Read it all.

Now, this essay is directly linked to the key facts on the ground in Kentucky. While the mainstream press has focused on screaming armies on the cultural left and right, actual legislators in that state -- Democrats and Republicans -- have been trying to get to Democratic governor to call a special session so that they care respond to the 5-4 Obergefell decision at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The centrist goal -- this is the story, folks -- is to find a centrist compromise that give gay couples marriage licenses, with no hassles or penalties of any kind, while also giving traditional Christians, Muslims and Jews the same kind of conflict-of-interest "work around" accommodations as thousands of other public servants on other issues.

That's what this Times op-ed is all about. It is not part of a campaign to deny LGBT people their rights. It is about an effort to promote compromise. Again, one does not have to agree with these liberal and moderate people in the middle to recognize that this effort to craft the ACTUAL LEGISLATION in Kentucky is a key element of the real news story. Right?

So here is a crucial chunk of the Anderson essay. 

Some on the left say that you must do every aspect of your job, despite your beliefs, or resign. But this has never been the practice in the United States. We have a rich history of accommodating conscientious objectors in a variety of settings, including government employees. Do we really want to say that an otherwise competent employee must quit or go to jail if there is another alternative?


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Does Stephen Colbert's progressive Catholicism still make some journalists nervous?

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Forget, for a moment, whatever you are thinking right now about American politics.

Just think about journalism, for a moment.

Forget what you think about Vice President Joe Biden. If you are, like me, one of America's surviving pro-life Democrats, or you are a traditional Catholic, try to forget what you know about Biden's political career on legislation linked to abortion and how he has tried to mesh his actions with his acceptance of core doctrines in his Catholic faith. For a moment, forget his loyal-soldier work in the current administration.

Now, also try to forget for a moment what you think of the laugh-to-keep-from crying humor of funny man Stephen Colbert.

Lay aside, if you can, whatever you think he does or does not believe when it comes to the fine details, especially on moral theology, of the Catholic Catechism he taught as a leader in his New York-suburb parish during his Comedy Central years. If you are a traditionalist, when it comes to Catholic doctrine, go ahead and assume that Colbert is a "progressive," whatever that term means these days.

Then again, be honest and wrestle with the content of the nights when Colbert embraced and riffed with Catholic conservatives or shredded some liberals, on his old talk show.

Now, after saying all of that, watch the Late Night interview between Biden and Colbert and ask yourself a question about journalism: How would you deal with the content of this chat without facing the fact that its intimacy and depth (unless they are both really good fakers and I've seen people on CNN suggest that) is rooted in the fact that this is a pair of Catholic guys talking about faith and family?

Looking at Colbert, is it possible -- whether his work inspires you or troubles you -- to deal with his talent, his brain and his heart without taking into account the content of his Catholic faith and its role in his grief-haunted life? This was the subject of one of my recent On Religion columns ("From John Henry Newman to Stephen Colbert: Ancient truths on suffering and death") and the topic surfaced again in a follow-up post here at GetReligion.

Well, this past week kept adding layers of news content on top of this topic -- leading up to the Biden interview -- and provided the hook for this week's "Crossroads" podcast, with host Todd Wilken. Click here to tune that in.


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A newsman's faith: David Gregory opens up about his spiritual journey

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Mostly, GetReligion critiques religion news coverage in the mainstream media.

But occasionally, we simply make note of stories that point to the relevance of religion as an issue and a part of life in the journalism marketplace.

Such is the case with this post, which calls attention to news that David Gregory, former moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," has written a new book titled “How’s Your Faith?: An Unlikely Spiritual Journey."

Gregory shares his story firsthand in today's Wall Street Journal:

The top of Gregory's Journal column:

I’ve spent a career in journalism questioning others, and yet it was three questions asked of me that pushed me to figure out, as everyone must at some point: What do I believe, fundamentally, about life and the world? The first question came, however unusually, from a president of the United States.
“Gregory, how’s your faith?” George W. Bush asked me one December afternoon in the Oval Office. We had met privately before, as I had covered the entirety of his presidency, but that day in 2008 stood out in part because I had recently been promoted to moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”


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Islam in public schools: Educators and media alike miss a crucial point

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Every human heart has a "God-shaped vacuum," Pascal famously said. This month, he might say that a Tennessee curriculum has an Islam-shaped hole -- and so do most mainstream media covering the controversy over it.

Ground Zero is Maury County, where parents of seventh-graders have complained that their children were being forced to learn the basics of Islam in seventh-grade social studies classes.

As part of curricula in history, geography and government, middle school children are required to learn about several religions, including Buddhism and Hinduism. But parents were startled this year when a unit on Christianity was skipped in favor of teachings like the Five Pillars of Islam.

Brandee Porterfield, who has a daughter at Spring Hill Middle School, complained to the Columbia Daily Herald:

The mother said she was concerned about her child being taught the “Shahada,” the Muslim profession of faith which was contained in a foldable teaching material.
One of the translations of the creed reads, “There is no god but Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”
“I have no problem with the teacher at all. It’s just that yellow foldable seems to be teaching our children religion in schools, and only that religion,” Porterfield said. “From a religion point of view, if the schools are going to be teaching religion in history, they need to teach them all equally.”

Other parents complained that children were told to write and recite the Shahada, which they said amounts to teaching Islam. Parent Brandee Porterfield told the Spring Hill Home Page:


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Surprise? Non-alcohol-serving Muslim flight attendant gets respectful media treatment

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With all the coverage of the embattled Rowan County, Ky.  clerk recently released from jail after she refused to process same-sex marriages, it was inevitable that we would be hearing about protests from similar protagonists.

There are all sorts of people of faith caught in sticky employment situations where what they’re being asked to do is not precisely what they signed up for when they accepted the job.

As GetReligion has reported quite recently, reporters have had problems getting the facts right plus the degree of snark and outright hostility towards people such as Kim Davis has, at times, been so over the top. Our own Terry Mattingly passed along M.Z. "GetReligionista emeritus" Hemingway's bold use of term “slut-shaming” to describe it.

And so, what happens when someone from a different faith entirely makes a similar argument? Does that change the journalistic equation? Here’s what the Huffington Post said about a Muslim flight attendant suspended for not serving alcoholic beverages:


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