Journalism

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New York Times ghosts: ISIS offers its view of 'soul' of Paris and modern West (updated)

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Once again, mainstream journalists covering the actions of the Islamic State seem to be struggling to grasp the "why" factor in that old-school "who, what, when, where, why and how" equation.

Why attack Paris, once again? Why hit certain parts of Paris, as opposed to other more famous, if well protected, locations? And what does all of this have to do with that word -- "caliphate" -- that ISIS leaders say is at the heart of everything they do?

Let's walk into this slowly, starting with the top of a July 31, 2014 BBC profile of The Man:

On 5 July, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, known by his supporters as Caliph Ibrahim, left the shadows and showed his face for the first time, in a Friday sermon in Mosul, Iraq.
While previous pictures of him had been leaked, Baghdadi had not shown himself in the four years since he became leader of what was then the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq (forerunner of Isis, then the Islamic State). ...
In July 2013, a Bahraini ideologue Turki al-Binali, writing under the pen name Abu Humam Bakr bin Abd al-Aziz al-Athari, wrote a biography of Baghdadi. It highlighted Baghdadi's family history which claims that Baghdadi was indeed a descendant of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad's Quraysh tribe -- one of the key qualifications in Islamic history for becoming the caliph (historically, leader of all Muslims).
It said that Baghdadi came from the al-Bu Badri tribe, which is primarily based in Samarra and Diyala, north and east of Baghdad respectively, and known historically for being descendants of Muhammad.

The key word there, in terms of the mindset of journalists covering ISIS, is "historically," as in the definition of a caliph as "historically, leader of all Muslims."


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As clock ticks toward midnight, it's generic terror in Paris; this morning it's all ISIS

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What a difference a night makes.

In America, news consumers -- as the clock ticked past midnight on the East Coast -- read story after story about generic terrorist attacks on Paris. Almost all references to eyewitnesses accounts of the words of the terrorists, or those of the social-media armies that celebrated their acts, were missing or were buried.

Coverage was radically different in British and European papers, in which terrorists shouts of "Allahu Akbar (God is great)" and references to Syria -- reported immediately by survivors and witnesses -- went straight to the tops of stories in a wide variety of media.

As I see it, there are two ways to look at the journalism questions here.

First, it is certainly good to be cautious in accepting claims of responsibility in the wake of hellish acts of these kinds and the reporting this morning is making it clear that early ISIS messages about Paris were hard to verify. However, is it now editorial policy, in America newsrooms, to downplay or ignore information from eyewitnesses at these events?

Second, some journalists would say that the goal (a worthy one) in early news coverage is to avoid pouring insult and injury on non-radicalized Muslims, believers in a global faith who utterly reject the actions of the Islamic State. However, there is another way to interpret the results of this policy -- which is that news consumers no longer need to be told when there is early evidence that terrorists claim they are acting in the name of Islam.

The bottom line: Is the assumption that American news consumers can automatically assume they are reading about terror linked to radicalized Islam and, thus, do not need to be given relevant information available in news media elsewhere in the world? What is the journalism logic for this?


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MMA fighter's profile shows fancy footwork, but doesn't score a knockout

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Holly Holm is a formidable mixed martial arts fighter, skilled with accurate kicks and punches. But the Albuquerque Journal's profile on her lands only glancing blows on her spirituality.

The undefeated 9-0 MMA fighter goes up against champion Ronda Rousey Saturday night for the bantamweight title, and the Journal took the occasion to write a profile on Holm. And it found a good hook: her blend of ferocity and gentleness.

Here's the opening:

Two sides of Holly Holm’s nature were on display in a Houston cage on July 19, 2013.
First, the Albuquerque MMA fighter felled Allanna Jones with a vicious kick to the head. Holm dropped to finish her opponent on the ground, but it wasn’t necessary; Jones was out cold.
Then, instead of celebrating the spectacular victory, a somber Holm knelt on the canvas – waiting for a sign that Jones was going to be OK. Only after Jones stirred did "The Preacher’s Daughter" get to her feet and acknowledge the crowd.

What a great start, hinting at a link between religion and compassion. I wish the story had spelled out that link.

Much of the piece turns on the relationship of father and daughter. A former farm boy and high school football player, John Holm "exudes a certain toughness," the Journal says. Like Holly, his two sons are physically active: wrestling, football, bronco riding.

But he also set a nurturing example, the article says:


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Religion news story of 2015? Epic Time cover on forgiveness in Charleston, S.C.

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It's hard to know where to start in praising the Time magazine cover on the legacies of the nine believers lost at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. This story sets out to let readers meet all of them, using the voices of those who survived and others touched by the glimpses of hell, and heaven, during that nine-minute massacre.

It's true that the reporting team that produced "What it Takes to Forgive a Killer" -- David Von Drehle, with Jay Newton-Small and Maya Rhodan -- were given an extraordinary amount of space in which to paint this masterwork. When you start reading this, close the door for privacy and have some tissues ready -- especially if you watch the YouTube at the top of this post, which is referenced in the article.

In a way, the size of this article only raises the stakes. You see, forgiveness is a massive personal and theological subject and the goal of the article was to show that people are complex and that grace works in different lives at different paces. There are several theological perspectives to consider, and tons of biblical material to reference, with many places to stumble in handling the facts and the background. In a way, this article seems short, when one considers its ambition.

For me, as the son of a pastor in a Bible-driven tradition, the key is that this story focuses on a small circle of "Wednesday night" people, the ultra-faithful folks who end a long, long day by gathering with their shepherds for Bible study. This is not the Sunday morning crowd. If you were looking for the true believers, Wednesday night Bible study in Mother Emanuel is where you are going to find them.

At the heart of the story are three words, spoken by Nadine Collier, daughter of the fallen Ethel Lance,  to gunman Dylann Storm Roof. Sharon Risher is her sister. This is long, but essential:

“I forgive you.” Those three words reverberated through the courtroom and across the cable wires, down the fiber-optic lines, carried by invisible storms of ones and zeros that fill the air from cell tower to cell tower and magically cohere in the palms of our hands. They took the world by surprise.


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Asatru: Is that true? Were terrorist wannabes pagans? Do news media care?

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FBI agents crack a plot to kill blacks and Jews, allegedly planned by members of a little-known religion. How do you cover the story?

If you're like many mainstream media, you ignore or downplay the religion.

The guys in question are Virginians who allegedly wanted to buy guns and bombs, then attack synagogues and black churches. Unfortunately for them, their contacts were undercover FBI agents, who then arrested them.

Oh yeah, FBI also said they were Norse neo-pagans.

How did the media handle all this? We'll start our survey with the typically spare hard-news story from the Associated Press:

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Two men described by authorities as white supremacists have been charged in Virginia with trying to illegally buy weapons and explosives to use in attacks on synagogues and black churches.
Robert C. Doyle and Ronald Beasley Chaney III tried to buy an automatic weapon, explosives and a pistol with a silencer from three undercover agents posing as illegal firearms dealers, FBI agent James R. Rudisill wrote in an affidavit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Richmond.

If the FBI is right, they're clearly racist anti-Semites. What about their spiritual leanings? AP doesn't tell us until more than halfway down, and then only a little more:

According to Rudisill's affidavit, Doyle and the younger Chaney "ascribe to a white supremacy extremist version of the Asatru faith," a pagan sect that emphasizes Norse gods and traditions. The affidavit says the FBI learned that Doyle planned to host a meeting at his home in late September to discuss "shooting or bombing the occupants of black churches and Jewish synagogues, conducting acts of violence against persons of Jewish faith, and doing harm to a gun store owner in the state of Oklahoma."

The AP report was based partly on one by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. That story says pretty much the same phrases about Asatru and bombing black and Jewish congregations. "Asatru is a pagan religion," it unhelpfully adds.

CNN heavy hitters Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown mention only the men's membership in a "white supremacist group." They reference the case of Dylann Roof, the church bomber in Charleston, S.C., but only because he and the new defendants both talked about starting a race war.

Even this morning, a local CBS affiliate, which boasted of having broken the story, merely adds that police and FBI agents raided two other homes, including that of Chaney's father.

Ah, but the Washington Post was on the job. They'd help us understand, right? Well, kinda:


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Wow! Wall Street Journal demonstrates how to cover gay rights vs. religious liberty

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When it comes to gay rights vs. religious liberty, framing is frequently an issue in mainstream news reports.

Too many journalists — unable to keep their personal worldviews to themselves — ditch impartiality for advocacy on this subject matter.

The funny thing is, unbiased reporting makes for much better reading. Right?

I mean, who doesn't enjoy a story with real-life nuance, conflict and intrigue? Enter The Wall Street Journal with a six-month update on the "Utah Compromise": 

Every morning for about the past year, Angie Rice woke up to go to work as a special-education teacher at Roy Elementary School near Salt Lake City, sat on the edge of her bed, and wept.

She then layered four men’s shirts and put on baggy cargo pants to hide her changing shape—and arrived for work in her old identity as a man named Art.

But this fall, because of a new Utah law that protects lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from being fired for their sexual orientation or gender identity, Ms. Rice, who over the past four years had transitioned from a man to a woman, felt comfortable going to school as herself for the first time.

“That law saved my life,” said Ms. Rice, 53 years old.

In the same county as Ms. Rice’s school, Ricky Hatch, a clerk who opposes same-sex marriage, has been able to continue in his job without performing weddings. A provision in a companion law passed on the same day as the antidiscrimination measure lets him appoint others to perform weddings as “clerk designees”; all have agreed to perform same-sex weddings.

“I don’t want to discriminate as an elected official, but I also don’t want to violate my religious conscience, and this law allows me to do that,” said Mr. Hatch, 48.

Six months after the “Utah Compromise” antidiscrimination law took effect, both gay-rights activists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say the law helps preserve the rights of religious believers who oppose same-sex marriage while protecting LGBT people from discrimination. At the same time, new church policies last week barring young children of gay couples from church membership, and requiring disciplinary action for Mormons in same-sex marriages, illuminate the church’s complicated path in its “fairness for all” approach that attempts to separate its teaching from its politics.


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NPR trips on 'evangelical,' while covering big story on converts in Germany

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If you were going to pick a major news outlet that was high on the distrust/hate list of cultural conservative in America, it would have to be National Public Radio.

You know the old saying: How can you can tell when a Republican in Washington, D.C., has lost his soul? When the first button on his car radio is set to NPR. Or how about this one: What is the Episcopal Church? It's National Public Radio at prayer.

This is all quite sad, because a decade or so ago NPR's religion-beat work (as opposed to religion-linked coverage by political or cultural pros) was actually very good. If you know the history of the Godbeat there, you'll get my drift.

Anyway, it's interesting to get an email from a GetReligion reader that starts out like this, discussing an NPR feature about Muslims converting to Christianity in Germany:

As someone who tends to listen less and less to NPR, disillusioned with what I perceive as an absurdly left-wing bias in much of their reporting, I was pleasantly surprised by their attempt to cover several sides of the issues.

We will come back to this reader in a bit. But let me start off by saying that I was also impressed at the kinds of voices that were featured in this piece. This is a very complicated and emotional subject, as I stressed in a recent post about this topic that ran with the headline: "Muslims fleeing to Europe: Yes, press can find religion angles in this ongoing tragedy." This NPR report is way better than the norm.

Here is the start of the NPR piece, setting up the major themes:


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This is not a news story! But, alas, we are likely to see more brews coverage about it

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This is not a news story! But, alas, we are likely to see more brews coverage about it

It's the question that drives editors crazy in this age of click-bait media: Why do some stories go viral, while others do not?

How about viral news stories in which there is little or no evidence that there is actually a story to be reported in the first place?

I'm talking, of course, about the spew your liquid caffeine on your keyboard levels of media attention dedicated to the Starbucks hates Christmas story that broke out this week, after the usual craziness in social-media land. See the post by our own James Davis with the pun-tastic headline, "Red Cup Diaries: Mainstream media cover Starbucks' Christmas brew-haha." Apparently, there is some kind of pay-cable reference in that naughty headline, too, but that went over my head.

On Facebook, I offered this mini-rant:

Is it acceptable for me to be very upset that millions of Xians think that it's already Christmas and we haven't even started Nativity Lent yet? I mean, who runs their churches, the god of the local mall?

The graphic at the top of this post, passed along by the edgy and hilarious graphic novelist Doug TenNapel, says it all.

At least, I thought it said it all, until M.Z. "GetReligionista emeritus" Hemingway, now with The Federalist, went old-school GetReligion on this mess in a piece that ran under this headline: "Nobody Is Actually Upset About The Starbucks Cup. Stop Saying Otherwise." MZ did her thing, but then turned this piece into some completely different -- making it must reading for journalists facing the challenge of finding valid pre-Christmas stories to cover this year (and every year, come to think of it). Her piece opened with this summary:


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Delving into CNN's 'dirty little secret' about religious conversions and Ben Carson

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My Christian Chronicle colleague Erik Tryggestad wrote a column from New Zealand recently in which he lamented his somewhat pedestrian decision to give his life to Jesus:

I’ve always found my own story to be lacking in drama, I told the group. I grew up in the church with great, godly parents. When I was 14 I was baptized. My salvation was an assumption — an expected journey, hardly worth sharing.

Tryggestad's not-so-boring reporting adventures have taken him to 60 countries. ("Plus, y'know ... Canada," he told me. And yes, I'm including that comment just to agitate my friends north of the border.)

Apparently, my Chronicle colleague is not alone in wishing he had a better conversion story.

Enter CNN Religion Editor Daniel Burke with the "Religion News Clickbait Headline of the Week":

The dirty little secret about religious conversion stories

(Here at GetReligion, we're much too sophisticated to ever resort to such a headline. Obviously, we'd never put "dirty little secret" in a title just hoping to gain a few extra clicks. But anyway ... )

Like the CNN headline, Burke's lede takes ample creative liberty (as opposed to an inverted-pyramid approach):


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