Journalism

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What we've got here is failure to communicate -- debates about Cardinal Marx and gay blessings

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Our review of the US press coverage of claims that Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, the president of the Deutsche Bischofskonferenz (DBK), had given his permission to clergy to bless same-sex unions has sparked rigorous debate on social media.

Criticism of the article “Let your Ja's be Yes” has taken two general lines -- discussion of the underlying issues and discussion of our criticism of the Daily Caller -- the U.S. publication singled out in the review.

Please note that the question of whether Cardinal Marx should, nor should not, endorse same-sex blessings is outside the parameters of this site -- we focus on journalism. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guards themselves?) the Roman poet Juvenal asked in his Satires (VI, lines 347–348). This website seeks to answer this question as it pertains to the coverage of religion in the secular press.

The criticism of our reporting can be summarized in a tweet from reader Samuel Johnson, who challenged our translation of the German-language interview. He stated that our review was “a very problematic criticism, because the writer of the Crux published CNA authored piece, Anian Christoph Wimmer, is a native German speaker who also writes for CNA's German website. This is not a case of an English-speaking reporter misunderstanding.”

I responded by noting the critique was of the Daily Caller, not CNA. To which, Mr. Johnson responded:

The problem is that you write in criticizing the Daily Caller, "If we listen to the Marx interview then through German ears, rather than through the filter of English print, the story is turned on its head." But evidently, listening through German ears doesn't necessarily turn the story on its head, since after all Wimmer listened with German ears and heard a, "Yes."

While I am not a native German speaker, I do have some small fluency in languages, and am persuaded I had the better translation. The discussion essentially ended there, as it had become a question of competing truths -- mine versus the translation used in the Daily Caller story.

A new day, however, brought new developments to the story.


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Hey reporters, wanna know what's taught in a public school's Bible class? Ask teachers, students

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I'm always fascinated by news stories about Bible classes in public schools.

I first delved into the subject 20-plus years ago when I wrote a front-page story for The Oklahoman on a debate over elective courses in Bible and religion in the Oklahoma City School District.

In today's post, I want to highlight a Des Moines Register story that goes the extra mile — yes, the reporter actually talked to teachers and students — in reporting on a bill introduced in the Iowa Statehouse.

The Register's lede:

A Statehouse proposal to expand access to Bible literacy classes in Iowa public schools is causing controversy among parents and educators. 
Proponents say classes on the Bible provide important historical or cultural context for students. But opponents say the legislation is a backdoor to teaching Christianity.  
To get more perspective, the Des Moines Register went looking for places where the Bible is already being taught in Iowa classrooms. 
It found a course in one of eastern Iowa's most liberal enclaves: Iowa City. 
Three high schools in Iowa City offer a "Bible as Literature" class.

Now, that opening isn't the most exciting one I've ever read — but it certainly presents the facts in an impartial and straightforward manner.

Keep reading, and the paper offers some nice details from teachers and students about what the class actually encompasses:


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New York Times writer: The most sympathetic sources may lie -- even Rohingya refugees

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New York Times writer: The most sympathetic sources may lie -- even Rohingya refugees

One of journalism’s abiding truisms is that you’re only as good as your sources. Here’s exhibit A from the dawn of my own career, which is to say the mid-1960s.

My first newspaper job was as a glorified copy boy at Newsday, then headquartered in the New York City suburb of Garden City, Long Island. I say glorified because in addition to doing a lot of fetching I also wrote a spate of local obits when no one else was available.

I worked the overnight shift and it was on one such occasion that I called the home of a local man that a funeral home reported had died of natural causes.

Yeah, we did that, ignoring the intrusiveness of it all.

If we were lucky a relative or friend of the deceased would answer. To my surprise, the widow picked up the phone. She not only agreed to provide a few details of her husband’s life but sounded cheerful in the process. I took that to be odd but did not ask her why she sounded as she did out of my newbie reticence.

The following day, instead of running my three- or four-graph obit, the paper ran a lengthier piece on its prime news pages that carried the byline of a police beat reporter. My ebullient widow had been arrested on suspicion of murdering her husband.

Oh well, live and learn. Not every source is reliable.

I relate this (at the time, highly embarrassing) personal story as a lead in to a remarkable New York Times piece written by its Southeast Asia bureau chief Hannah Beech, who I've praised before.

In addition to filing the expected stories on Buddhist Myanmar’s genocidal attacks on it's Rohingya Muslim minority, Beech ably provides keen insight into how the media influences the conflict. She does so with great sensitivity. That makes her the perfect GetReligion subject, in my book.


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Not the right kind of paper to report both sides? About that story on fired Catholic teacher

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Just last month, I highlighted a quasi-piece of reporting by the Washington Post on a pastor "lighting into" President Donald Trump with Vice President Mike Pence sitting in a front pew.

I noted that it's often difficult these days — even in the Post — to tell what's supposed to be real news and what's simply clickbait and/or aggregation.

Well, here we go again ...

A reader emailed us about a new Post story that raises some of the same "What is this?" questions as the earlier piece.

The latest story — with the headline "‘Not the right kind of Catholic’: Private schoolteacher fired days after same-sex wedding" — prompted a GetReligion-style analysis by the reader who emailed us.

I thought I might share highlights of the reader's thoughts and respond to each.

From the reader:

The article is about a teacher fired from a Catholic school after she married her same sex partner. The opening few paragraphs make it clear whose side the writer is on by carefully describing the upcoming wedding, then dropping the bombshell of her being fired.

Certainly, the lede is sensitive to the teacher's situation and seems designed to evoke a response from readers. But honestly, I don't have a major problem with the lede. It's the rest of the story and the much-delayed and incomplete reporting on the other side that concerns me, from a journalistic perspective.

More from the reader:


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Here we go again: New York Times says White House door wide open for all 'evangelicals'

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Before we dive -- yes, it's time to try again -- into another example of "Gosh, all those evangelicals sure do love Donald Trump" coverage, let's pause to, uh, separate the sheep from the goats.

If you understand that image, the odds are good that you are an evangelical or some other brand of Christian who has cracked open a Bible more than once.

Whatever. A few months ago, Sarah Pulliam Bailey of The Washington Post tweeted out a fun little link to a MereOrthodoxy.com "Are you an evangelical?" quiz that is kind of fun. Click here to take the test. (Or click here for her original tweet, which has some interesting comments.)

So I took the test, as a former Southern Baptist preacher's kid from the Jesus Movement era, and scored 10 out of 31. The site's judgement:

Spiritual but not religious: You are definitely not evangelical, but you might still have feelings that you associate with Jesus in some way when you are standing on a mountaintop or contemplating the ocean. 

Well, at least I know where I stand when writing about the press and its struggles to realize the complexities of evangelical identity in this day and age. I would have done better if it included a question asking how many Bruce Cockburn CDs are in my collection (I think I own every note the man has recorded).

Anyway, the New York Times recently (pre-National Prayer Breakfast) weighed in with another report on you know what. The headline: "Evangelicals, Having Backed Trump, Find White House ‘Front Door Is Open’." Once again, readers are told that all "evangelicals" backed Trump and, today, all of them are welcome at the White House." I am sure that will come as a shock to many.

However, this story is slightly better than that headline. At the very least, it acknowledges that even the early, core evangelical supporters of The Donald are a bit more complex than many would think. Hold that thought. First, here is a solid paragraph on why evangelical poll numbers remain high, when it comes to this White House. It starts with the prayer breakfast crowd, saying that the president stood:


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National Prayer Breakfast finally gets the intelligent coverage it has long deserved

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Covering the National Prayer Breakfast, always on the first Thursday of February, is a lot tougher than it looks. First, you have to be up before the crack of dawn to drive downtown, find a parking place and make your way to one of the White House gates where you have to go through a security check before sprinting over to the press briefing room in the West Wing where you’re directed to a convoy of about 20 cars.

The reporters and photographers (along with camera equipment) all have to cram into the last three cars for the mile-or-so long ride to the Washington Hilton, where some 3,800 people are waiting for the President to arrive. While he strides onstage, the press pool gets to pile off to one side. After the president makes his remarks, he then leaves, taking the reporters with him.

I was always tasked with covering the religion angle of the event, so returning to the White House with the event only half over wasn’t in my best interests at all. I ended up leaping from the stage onto the ballroom floor and finding an empty seat, much to the consternation of Secret Service folks who yelled at me for breaking some obscure protocol. (Apparently if you come with the president, you’re expected to depart with him).

One of my aims was to put together something interesting about the prayer breakfast, itself. You see, very few media bothered to cover it –- or at least cover it well -- back in the George W. Bush era, which was when I was there. More than a decade later, I’m glad to see the coverage has gotten much more sophisticated, no doubt because the evangelicals organizing the breakfast have become power players in their own right.   

So I want to call attention to some of the more creative ways the breakfast was covered this year. It’s no secret that the prayer breakfast is part of a multi-day conference that involves a lot of secret gatherings that reporters know about, but rarely can sneak into. Michelle Boorstein of the Washington Post found out about an alliance of evangelicals and Muslims connected with the breakfast. 

The best paragraphs were the following:


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Friday Five: Olympic miracle, homeless Super Bowl player, faith of TV dad, cheating mayor and more

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"Do you believe in miracles? Yes!"

With the Winter Olympics starting in Pyeongchang, South Korea, what better time to recall one of the greatest calls in sports history?

How many GetReligion readers are old enough to remember Al Michaels' excited description of the U.S. hockey team's 4-3 victory over the heavily favored Soviet Union in the 1980 games in Lake Placid, N.Y.?

Later, Kurt Russell starred in the 2004 movie "Miracle," which tells the true story of the Americans' improbable gold medal performance and makes some lists of all-time best sports films.

But enough reminiscing. 

Let's get to the "Friday Five":

1. Religion story of the week: Some weeks, this is a difficult choice. Not this week. 

As I described it in a post this week, "There are must-read stories, and then there's this incredible story on 'The search for Jackie Wallace.'"

The viral piece by retired Times-Picayune photojournalist Ted Jackson — now approaching 300,000 retweets — explores the downfall, redemption and disappearance of a New Orleans football legend.


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Beyond sex carnivals and drag queens: Facts appreciated in furor over disinvited campus speaker

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Since I live in Oklahoma and write about religion, friends started asking me yesterday about a controversy brewing at the University of Central Oklahoma.

"Know anything about this?" said one GetReligion reader, sharing a link to an item on the Answers in Genesis website. The headline: "University Denies Free Speech to Ken Ham and Boots Him from Speaking."

Nope, I replied.

That was the first I was hearing about it.

I Googled to see if I could find any mainstream news coverage. I couldn't. But my search did turn up a column by Todd Starnes, a conservative commentator at Fox News. The headline: "Sex carnivals, drag queens are welcome, Ken Ham and other creationists are not, university says."

Starnes' take:

The University of Central Oklahoma has opened its arms to drag queen shows and safe sex carnivals but they draw the line at Christians who believe God created the Heavens and the Earth in six days.
The university apparently has no problem with students tossing dildos through cardboard vaginas, but they draw the line at exposing impressionable young minds to the teachings of a creationist.
Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis and founder of the popular Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, was disinvited from speaking on the public university campus after an ugly campaign of bullying by LGBT activists.

Alrighty then.

"Well, if Starnes is reporting it :-) ..." said a friend who, like me, was hoping for a more impartial source.

Suffice it to say I was pleased when I woke up this morning and found the story at top of The Oklahoman's front page:


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There are must-read stories, and then there's this incredible story on 'The search for Jackie Wallace'

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Ted Jackson calls the response to his story on "The search for Jackie Wallace" unreal.

Yeah, you might say that.

As of the moment I'm typing this, Jackson's Twitter post sharing the story has been retweeted 127,641 times and received 273,000 likes. 

"This might be the most amazing bit of reporting I've seen in years," veteran religion writer Bob Smietana said in his own tweet. "There are stories that haunt journalists for years. This is one of them."

This is one of those cases where, if you insist, you can keep reading my post. Or, and I promise  you won't hurt my feelings if you choose Option No. 2, you can proceed immediately to the story in question and devour it just like Smietana and I did. It really is that good.

I mean, there are must-read stories, and then there's this incredible tale.

It's a lengthy read but so, so worth it. Here's the nuts-and-bolts summary from the Times-Picayune, the New Orleans newspaper where Jackson worked as a staff photographer for 33 years and won a Pulitzer Prize:

A New Orleans football legend reached the pinnacle of the sport.
Then everything came crashing down.
This is the story of his downfall, redemption — and disappearance.


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