Journalism

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Mormon leader calls for balance, and Associated Press calls it 'transformation'

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Mainstream media apparently are still hyperventilating over Pope Francis' "Who am I to judge?" remark, plugging it into other news stories. This week's version is a speech by Mormon Elder Dallin H. Oaks, who called yesterday for religious and secular people to respect each others' rights and beliefs.

"Compromise" and "balance" were the keywords in Oaks' speech at the Second Annual Sacramento Court/Clergy Conference in California. Oaks, a member of the first-echelon the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, urged his listeners to tune out extremist voices on either side.

He preached a view not of an opaque wall between church and state, but a "curtain" that allows "the passage of light and love and mutual support." But he also said that county clerks -- all but saying Kim Davis' name -- need to put aside their own beliefs and perform their sworn duties.

Nice olive branch, don't ya think? But the Associated Press version makes it sound like a p.r. strategy, inserting commentary into what was supposed to be a news report:

The speech marked another landmark moment in the conservative religion's transformation from a faith that frowned on gays and lesbians to one becoming more welcoming and compassionate, albeit in small steps that may seem nominal to outsiders.
As with the Roman Catholic Church under Pope Francis, the conservative Mormons are trying to assert a softer position in society, while holding firm inside the church to its own doctrines against gay marriage and homosexual activity.

This story is almost like a candy store for media critics like myself. First, we have the LDS Church called "conservative" -- the word is used three times in this story -- without explaining what that means. Social? Cultural? Political? Theological?

The article also calls the talk a big sign of "transformation," as if the church is about to change its basic beliefs. It's odd that AP invokes Francis, who is likewise prodding the Catholic Church toward a gentler attitude without anything like a transformation.  


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Are two more major American newspapers dropping the Godbeat? Say it ain't so

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Tuesday marked religion writer Lilly Fowler's last day on the job at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

After less than two years with the Post-Dispatch, Fowler announced plans last week to join the PBS newsmagazine "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly."

So, does that mean there's a Godbeat opening at the Post-Dispatch, where Fowler — like her predecessor Tim Townsend — produced award-winning religion journalism?

Apparently not.

"I know there are no immediate plans," Fowler said of the St. Louis newspaper hiring a new religion writer. "Part of the reason I left is that they took me off my beat after the newsroom was recently offered buyouts."

That's unfortunate. 

I enjoyed interviewing Fowler last year on covering faith and the front lines in Ferguson, Mo., and wish her all the best in her new gig.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel religion writer Annysa Johnson revealed on Twitter that she won't be covering faith for the next year.


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Detroit Tigers pitcher with cancer believes in 'power of prayer,' but why?

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Daniel Norris believes in "the power of prayer."

The Detroit Tigers pitcher made that clear in an Instagram post Monday in which he revealed he will undergo surgery for a malignant growth on his thyroid.

However, sportswriters seem to be leery of Norris' faith. Again.

This is the Detroit Free Press' lede on Norris' cancer diagnosis:

Daniel Norris will be put to the test.
His opponent: thyroid cancer.
The Detroit Tigers’ young left-handed pitcher announced on Instagram and Twitter this afternoon that he was diagnosed with the disease earlier in the season while playing with the Toronto Blue Jays and will undergo surgery to remove a malignant tumor in the off-season.
He acknowledged playing baseball helped him deal with the troubling diagnosis and that a doctor determined he could wait until after the season to have surgery.
"I've been debating for months as to how or even if I should share this with people," he posted on Instagram. "I'm a firm believer in the power of prayer. So now, I'm asking for prayers.”

Give the Free Press credit for using Norris' direct quote asking for prayers in the fifth paragraph. But did the Detroit newspaper bury the lede?


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Blest be the strong, but vague, ties that bind in remarkable Knoxville neighborhood

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What is the boomerang art about? We will get to that in a moment.

One of the nice things about being back in the Hills of East Tennessee is that I am living in a part of the world in which newspapers devote quite a bit of ink to the lives of ordinary people, often when they are doing rather ordinary things that still have great meaning.

Yes, part of me misses the daily snark of The Washington Post Style section. I am also struggling to get used to living in a zip code in which SEC football is pretty much all that matters in sports. There is a rumor that an NFL franchise exists in Tennessee, but you have to dig into the back pages to find that out. Oh, but the Lady Vols are a big deal in the hoops world, which is good.

I have lived in East Tennessee before -- teaching for six years at Milligan College up near the Virginia line -- and I get the rhythms of all of this. I have also read The Knoxville News Sentinel for a long, long time, since that is the newspaper that first asked the old Scripps Howard New Service to start a weekly religion news column. So 26 years later, it's nice that the News Sentinel is the newspaper that lands in my driveway each morning.

So the other day, the editors in the Life section there ran a very interesting and touching story about something that used to be normal, but is very unusual today -- members of several generations of a family going out of their way to live right next to each other, right there in a normal neighborhood.

This story is actually downright countercultural. Here is how it starts:

Boomerang kids move back home because they have to. But in a small neighborhood off Emory Road, kids move back because they want to.
One at a time, about half the kids who grew up in Imperial Estates have moved back from places like San Francisco, Australia, Kenya and New York City. They decided that life along Beaver Creek couldn't be beat. They bought houses just down the street from their parents. They want to raise their children as happily as they were raised.


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Jerusalem violence: Associated Press pretty much blames Israel for it all

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It's Israel's fault. Again.

Jews can get shot, stabbed, stoned and run down in their own homeland, and what do you get for coverage? "Arab areas of Jerusalem blocked off in Israeli crackdown."

The Associated Press may call this one of their Big Story entries; but in telling the story of the latest Israeli roadblocks solely from the Arab point of view, AP runs a very one-sided story. It also pays little attention to a couple of religious "ghosts."

Several times, this article, has a sentence or two about the attacks on Jewish civilians that's gone on for a month thus far. It follows with two or more paragraphs on Israeli government actions that allegedly sparked the actions.

And who gets quoted? An Arab who resents the Israeli treatment, a representative of the Netanyahu government, and two Jews who scold the government for its land policies. Hardly what you'd call balanced treatment.

I don’t usually quote five paragraphs at a time, but the top of this story is telling in its setup:

JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians in Jerusalem, more than a third of the city's population, have awoken to a new reality: Israeli troops are encircling Arab neighborhoods, blocking roads with concrete cubes the size of washing machines and ordering some of those leaving on foot to lift their shirts to show they are not carrying knives.
The unprecedented clampdown is meant to halt a rash of stabbings of Israelis. Many of the attacks were carried out by residents of east Jerusalem, the sector captured and annexed by Israel in 1967 and claimed by Palestinians as a future capital.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has portrayed the measures as temporary, in line with what his advisers say any police department in the U.S. or Europe would do to quell urban unrest. But some allege he is dividing Jerusalem, something Netanyahu has said he would never do.
Arab residents, who have long complained of discriminatory Israeli policies, say the latest closures are bringing them to a boiling point and lead to more violence.
"They want to humiliate us," said Taher Obeid, a 26-year-old janitor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He spoke over the din of car horns, as drivers stuck at one of the new checkpoints vented their anger.

Let's dissect this section. It starts with Israeli actions and Arab feelings, rather than the Arab actions that gave rise to the tough measures. The "rash of stabbings" is saved for the second paragraph, with the Arab viewpoint before and after that.


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About the Republican presidential race and that 'Christian army' assembled Sunday in Texas

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A friend of mine — a progressive evangelical who doesn't always agree with GetReligion's take on media coverage — asked me what I thought of a front-page story in today's Dallas Morning News.

The story, with the main headline "Faith takes the stage" in the dead-tree edition, reports on a Southern Baptist megachurch hosting six Republican presidential candidates at a Dallas-area forum Sunday.

My friend didn't care much for the coverage:

This looks and feels to me like religious bias from The Dallas Morning News. (It was political bias by Prestonwood Baptist, but that's an entirely different story.)
Where are the interviews with progressive Christian leaders, reminding readers that these six men do not represent the views of every Christian? By not mentioning us, aren't they perpetuating the myth that all Christians vote alike?
The DMN is covering an event that was decidedly Republican (an event to which Democrat candidates declined attendance). On the other hand, isn't the DMN contributing towards the assumption that evangelical voters represent the "Christian vote" by not mentioning the rest of the Christian voting bloc?

I am, of course, familiar with Prestonwood Baptist from my time covering religion and politics in Texas for The Associated Press. When I interviewed Prestonwood pastor Jack Graham, then the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, in 2004, I couldn't help but notice a prominent photo of President George W. Bush welcoming him to the Oval Office.

This is the lede on today's Morning News story:


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Spotting two Catholic 'ghosts' in the lives of Paul Ryan and David Daleiden

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Spotting two Catholic 'ghosts' in the lives of Paul Ryan and David Daleiden

This week's "Crossroads" podcast (click here to tune that in) is about "religion ghosts" in mainstream news, which is about as basic a GetReligion topic as you can get, seeing as how that was the subject of the very first post on this weblog back on Feb. 1, 2004.

In this case, host Todd Wilken and I were talking about posts in which I focused on Catholic ghosts in the lives of two public figures caught up in very big stories in the mainstream press.

First there was this one: "Spot a religion ghost? Paul Ryan is a busy father who wants to help raise his kids." And the second post was about the young man at the heart of the hidden-camera Planned Parenthood videos: "Washington Post meets David Daleiden, whose Catholic faith is less important than his socks."

In both cases, we were dealing with features stories that were supported to help readers understand what makes these men tick, when dealing with major moral and ethical issues. In both cases, their Catholic faith was all but ignored.

Which brings us back to that "ghost" concept, as explained on GetReligion Day 1. Let us attend:

Day after day, millions of Americans who frequent pews see ghosts when they pick up their newspapers or turn on television news.
They read stories that are important to their lives, yet they seem to catch fleeting glimpses of other characters or other plots between the lines. There seem to be other ideas or influences hiding there.
One minute they are there. The next they are gone. There are ghosts in there, hiding in the ink and the pixels.


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AP forgets a tiny detail in story about Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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So this error is a small thing.

Maybe that's true, but in journalism the small details really matter. This includes using the proper name for things.

Try to imagine, if you will, a sportswriter producing a story about a game involving a sports team from the University of Tennessee and simply referring to the squad as the Volunteers, with no mention of the full name of the institution.

Now, a writer here in the mountains of East Tennessee near the giant, iconic structure called Neyland Stadium might be able to get away with that. But what about a news writer for a global wire service, with readers all over the place? After all, Tennessee has a lot of teams and, come to think of it, the word "volunteers" has meanings elsewhere other than the historic hook that is well known around this neck of the woods (I live in Oak Ridge).

So imagine traveling to Salt Lake City and producing a story about African-American Mormons for the global Associated Press and, well, forgetting to use a rather important term. Here's the top of the report. What's missing in this sizable chunk of the text?

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- African-American Mormons discussed the ongoing challenges of belonging to a predominantly white religion ... during a university conference designed to address the status of blacks in the faith.
Darius Gray, a pioneering black Mormon, commended church leaders for publishing an essay in 2013 that disavowed a previous ban on blacks in the lay priesthood. The essay offered the most comprehensive explanation ever from church headquarters about the ban that was in place until 1978. Still, Gray noted, only two in 10 Mormons have read the essay, limiting its impact.
The common theme at the conference at the University of Utah: Discussions about race in the Mormon religion don't happen enough at congregational levels.


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Lifeboat ethics for sixth-graders, and media don't bother with religious insights

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You have your traditional leaky boat and 15 people aboard. Whom do you throw out first? Second? Third?

People get upset over stuff like that, you know: grading one human's worth over that of another. Especially when it's forced onto preteen children.

Yes, forced. Students in a middle school near Tampa were required to decide whether a variety of people -- from a Hispanic woman to a "black guy" to a pregnant woman to Justin Bieber -- were worth saving. Yet no one reporting it sought feedback from ministers, ethicists or anyone else who deals with such matters all the time. 

At least one parent was mad enough to raise hell to a local NBC affiliate, yielding a story that echoed in several states and even overseas.

Our saga starts at Giunta Middle School, where a history teacher set out the wrenching "activity." As WFLA tells it:

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) – Valerie Kennel is mad and she wants answers. She was furious when her sixth-grade daughter from Giunta Middle School in Riverview came home with something called "The Lifeboat Test," where students were forced to make a choice.
Who would they save on a sinking ship? Who lives and who dies? There are 15 choices listed on the test, but only nine people can be picked to survive. Their descriptions include race, gender and religion. Kennel tells News Channel 8, "It’s racist in every form."
"This had nothing to do with history, nothing to do with it, and what is it teaching them?" she added.

The very choices sound absurd, according to the list published in the London Daily Mail. Besides the above-mentioned, they include Donald Trump and Barack Obama, male and female doctors, black and white men, an ex-convict and a police officer, someone named "Mr. Bobo," and even the class teacher, Mr. Hagerman (no first name given).

Oh yeah, they also got religion into the exercise. Among the candidates for sink-or-swim were a rabbi and a minister.  Maybe that's appropriate: The whole moral/religious aspect of the lifeboat drill was submerged, not only by the school but by the media.  More on that shortly.


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