Journalism

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After Kennedy retirement, you'll find thousands of the nation's happiest people in ... Wichita, Kan.

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After Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement announcement Thursday, CNN political analyst Jeffrey Toobin tweeted that abortion will be illegal in 20 states in 18 months.

The Twitter post, expressing the worst fears of abortion-rights supporters, quickly went viral.

But if there is weeping and gnashing of teeth — on the pro-choice side — over the future of Roe v. Wade, the mood is something entirely different among thousands of pro-life advocates gathering in Wichita, Kan., this weekend.

Coincidentally, the National Right to Life committee's three-day national convention started this morning — the day after the Kennedy news shook the nation's political and legal landscape.

This post mainly serves as a public service announcement that regional newspapers — including the Kansas City Star and the Wichita Eagle — are following the convention and have produced some excellent coverage already. 

Today's in-depth preview of the convention by the Star mixes crucial details and relevant context both on the National Right to Life Committee and red-state Kansas itself:

For the first time in its 50-year history, the nation’s largest anti-abortion organization is holding its annual convention in Kansas, a state seen by many in the movement as a model for passing tough abortion restrictions.

The National Right to Life Committee, which has affiliates in every state and more than 3,000 chapters across the country, will open its convention Thursday morning at the Sheraton Overland Park with 90 minutes of speeches by Gov. Jeff Colyer and others.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm and optimism in the pro-life base right now,” said National Right to Life President Carol Tobias. “We are seeing a lot of young people getting involved. We have a president who is issuing great pro-life orders and actions. And he’s appointing judges to the courts that we believe will strictly interpret the Constitution and not make it up as they go along.”

And yes, the Star notes the significance of Kennedy's retirement:


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Re-Up on #MuslimBan post: What did religious liberty have to do with SCOTUS decision?

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What a train wreck.

Please be patient with me here, because I'm trying to do something with a post that I have not done before.

I thought the online slang for this act was "re-up," but the urban dictionaries say that has turned into a drug-culture term. I was looking for the term online writers use when they put one of their old posts back up again, since they really don't want to add anything to an earlier comment that they made about a controversial topic.

It's kind of like #WhatHeSaid, only you're doing it for yourself (if that makes any sense). It's something like this "re-up" definition at Merriam-Webster:

2 : to officially agree or persuade someone to officially agree that an existing arrangement will continue for an additional period of time

In this case, the main thing that I am trying to say is (a) I am depressed about public discourse in the Donald Trump age, (b) I am depressed about news coverage of events in the Trump era and (c) I am depressed about the impact of Trump and news coverage of Trump on American culture.

The end result is sort of like this, care of a tweet by bipartisan political activist Bruce Mehlman:

AMAZING. Dems assume 44% of Republicans earn $250k or more (it's really only 2%). Republicans assume 38% of Dems are LGBTQ (it's really 6%).

Why are these (and other stats in this chart) so skewed? It hard to avoid the conclusion that it's linked to the advocacy media that Republicans and Democrats are consuming. And that's what depresses me the most, when we are talking about issues like the so-called #MuslimBan.

This brings me to my re-up of a January 30, 2017, post that I wrote with this headline: "A weekend of #MuslimBan: Did it help for press to ignore key contents of executive order?"

I offer this as a sad response to the post earlier today by colleague Bobby Ross about the mainstream coverage of the Supreme Court's rather reluctant decision that Trump's "Muslim Ban" executive order. Click here to see Bobby's post.


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Double standard? Religious animus? Five links to help dissect SCOTUS ruling on Trump's travel ban

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How does the much-discussed Masterpiece Cakeshop case relate to this week's long-awaited U.S. Supreme Court ruling on President Trump's ban on travel from five Muslim-majority countries?

Astute journalists — including Godbeat pros — immediately tackled that key question after the court's 5-4 decision Tuesday. 

Two key words in the best coverage: religious liberty.

More on that in a moment. But first, a little background: Speaking at the Religious Freedom Annual Review at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, last week, law professor Thomas Berg drew a connection between the two recent cases.

These days, many support some people's religious freedom — be it that of conservative Christians or Muslim immigrants — but the same folks tend not to have sympathy for the other side, said Berg, who teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

He added on Twitter:


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Failure of foresight? New York Times looks at globalization and the immigration backlash

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Funny thing about us humans. We persist in believing that we can have our cake and eat it, too -- notwithstanding the proof positive of an empty plate.

In its own complicated way, this also holds true for immigration, of course. (Have I mentioned previously that everything is connected to everything else and that this reality often involves religion? Repeatedly, actually.)

We delight in globalization’s immediate benefits -- cheaper foreign-made garments, instant international communications, exotic vacations that a generation ago middle-class travelers could only dream about, the transfer of capital across international borders to a degree previously impossible and more.

Yet we persist in ignoring that globalization is also a lure for those in the world’s poorest and most violent nations to seek a better life in the world’s wealthier and safer nations. They also want the good life that our globalized news and entertainment media have dangled before them.

We forget, or simply ignore, all this because as a specie we tend to prefer short-term material gains; quite frankly, the glitter blinds us. That is, until the day comes when we belatedly wake up and notice -- and then default into push-back mode -- that these globalized immigrants have different religious, social and political outlooks; that they speak foreign languages and have different skin colors, all of which are the stuff of massive demographic change.

This brings me to a recent New York Times business section piece that combined extensive graphics with solid reporting, a fast-growing online journalism trend.

The piece sought to explain the spreading trans-Atlantic backlash against the massive global movement of people over the last decades.

Here’s how The Times’  lede put the problem. This is long, but essential:

Immigration is reshaping societies around the globe. Barriers erected by wealthier nations have been unable to keep out those from the global South -- typically poor, and often desperate -- who come searching for work and a better life.


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Trump-loving evangelicals at it again, showing affection for 'self-styled top U.S. pimp' — but really?

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Is it clickbait?

Or is it quality journalism?

I'm talking about Reuters' viral story — surely it came across your social media feed — with the tantalizing headline "In age of Trump, evangelicals back self-styled top U.S. pimp."

Wait, all evangelicals support the pimp!? Well, maybe not all of them. But the international wire service reports as fact that "many conservative Christian voters" do:

PAHRUMP, Nev. (Reuters) — He styles himself as America’s best-known pimp, a strip-club owner who runs multiple brothels and looks set to win a seat as a Republican in the Nevada legislature with the blessing of many conservative Christian voters.

Meet Dennis Hof, whose political rise reflects fundamental changes in electoral norms that have roiled the Republican Party and upended American politics during the era of President Donald Trump.

“This really is the Trump movement,” Hof, 71, told Reuters in an interview at Moonlite BunnyRanch, his brothel near Carson City in northern Nevada that was featured on the HBO reality television series “Cathouse.”

“People will set aside for a moment their moral beliefs, their religious beliefs, to get somebody that is honest in office,” he said. “Trump is the trailblazer, he is the Christopher Columbus of honest politics.”

What evidence — besides the quotes from Hof himself — does Reuters offer that "many conservative Christian voters" back the pimp?

The news organization quotes one pastor who voted for Hof:

When news broke that Hof had won the nominating contest for a state Assembly seat on June 12, evangelical pastor Victor Fuentes said he closed his eyes and prayed.

He did not ask God to deliver Nevada and the Republican Party from Hof, the thrice-divorced author of “The Art of the Pimp” who campaigned as the “Trump of Pahrump.” Although Christian groups have long rallied against the state’s legal brothel industry, Fuentes was willing to overlook Hof’s history as a champion of the flesh trade and gave thanks for his victory.

“People want to know how an evangelical can support a self-proclaimed pimp,” Fuentes said in an interview at his home in Pahrump, an unincorporated town of 36,000 people that is the largest community in the sprawling, rural district where Hof is favored to win in November’s general election.

He said the reason was simple. “We have politicians, they might speak good words, not sleep with prostitutes, be a good neighbor. But by their decisions, they have evil in their heart. Dennis Hof is not like that.”

The pastor said he felt Hof would protect religious rights, among other things.

Besides Fuentes, Reuters names two other evangelicals — a married couple — identified as willing to overlook Hof's profession.


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Did Cardinal Theodore McCarrick hide behind old wall of anti-Catholic media bias?

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If you have not had a chance to do so, check out the waves of reader comments that we have received in response to GetReligionista Julia Duin's epic post at the end of last week entitled "The scandal of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and why no major media outed him."

As you can see from the headline, a major theme in this post is directly linked to life on the religion-news beat. On a technical level, in terms of journalism craft and ethics, why was it so hard for veteran reporters -- like Julia -- to nail down the final details of hard-news reports about McCarrick and the years and years of rumors and allegations about his sexual abuse of seminarians (among others)?

Part of it, of course, was getting people to go on the record. In some cases, people even had documentation to help support their horror stories. But, but, but ... They just could not go on the record.

As Duin noted, another reporter from that era has also been writing, day after day, about his own attempts to cover this story. That would be Rod "Benedict Option" Dreher. In typical Dreher fashion he has -- even while overseas on a speaking tour -- poured out 10,000 words or so worth of posts on this topic.

You really need to dig into that, if this topic is important to you. However, as this weekend's think piece, let me point you to Dreher's piece entitled "Uncle Ted & The Grand Inquisitor" -- in part because it offers yet another journalism twist in this sordid drama.

Why was it so hard for journalists to nail down this story? Well, it was easy for Catholics leaders to point at years and years of biased media coverage of the Catholic church and then say, "Well, here we go again." And then there was another twist, on top of that reality.

Hang on, this gets complex. Thus, Dreher writes:

I ... want to mention that some pretty nasty characters -- including Cardinal McCarrick -- benefit from the media’s biases too. Ordinary Catholics (and others) have a hard time understanding this, because they have this fixed idea that the media hates the Catholic Church, and will go after it on any pretext whatsoever. That’s not entirely true.


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Friday Five: BYU conference, border separation, McCarrick scandal, Chris Pratt on MTV and more

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I'm filing this edition of Friday Five from Provo, Utah, where I've spent the week attending — and speaking on a few panels — at Brigham Young University's Religious Freedom Annual Review.

In case you missed it Thursday (and based on our analytics, most of you did), GetReligion editor Terry Mattingly and I were part of a diverse group of journalists and attorneys who spoke on "Getting It Right, Media Coverage of Religion Freedom."

Check out my post to watch a video of that presentation, which includes The Atlantic religion journalism superstar Emma Green and other experts. As a bonus, you can see my Twitter thread that includes tmatt's "Seven Deadly Sins of the Religion Beat."

Now, let's dive into the Friday Five:

1. Religion story of the week: The controversy over the separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border is the easy choice this week. 

Tennessee religion writer Holly Meyer, writing for The Commercial Appeal of Memphis, produced a compelling piece on ministry leaders who say the Bible compels their immigration work.

For more links and analysis, see our earlier posts headlined "Horror on the border: Some journalists starting to spot old cracks in Trump's support" and "Seven can't-miss takes on use of Romans 13 to defend policy on separating immigrant families."


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Despite risks in a time of audience skepticism, anonymous sources can be invaluable 

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We live in an ethical epoch when editors at BuzzFeed and Politico have no scruples when a reporter sleeps with a prime source on her beat, after which she lands a prized New York Times job, at the very top of the journalism food chain.

Not that flexible conflict-of-interest standards are anything new. Ben Bradlee, as lauded as any journalist of his era, exploited a close friendship with President John F. Kennedy when he was Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief, giving fits to his competitors at Time. Bradlee was covering events that, one could argue, that he had helped shape in his conversations with Kennedy.

In 2018, such stuff matters more than ever, given the low esteem of “mainstream media” performance. The latest evidence comes in a survey reported June 11 by the American Press Institute, The Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago.

We learn that 35 percent of Americans have a negative view of news organizations, and 42 percent think news coverage veers too far into commentary, while 63 percent want to get mostly facts alongside limited analysis. Importantly, 42 percent don’t understand how the use of anonymous sources works and 68 percent say the media should offer more information about story sources.

President Donald Trump’s frequently fake “fake news” attacks on reporters, of course, continually involve complaints about unnamed sources. For sure, the Washington press corps, which makes such lavish use of anonymous sources in coverage critical of the Trump administration, must do everything possible to maintain accuracy and fairness.

Once upon a time -- in 2005 -- the staff Credibility Group formed in the wake of the horrid Jayson Blair scandal advised New York Times colleagues in a report titled “Preserving Our Readers’ Trust [.pdf here].” It warned that the daily should “keep unidentified attribution to a minimum” and “energetically” enforce limits across the board -- in hard news, features, magazine sections, and with copy from the growing number of freelance contributors.


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At a religious freedom conference in Utah, a diverse panel explores how to get news media coverage right

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Whew!

A diverse panel of journalists and attorneys — including GetReligion editor Terry Mattingly and myself — just wrapped up a panel discussion on "Getting It Right, Media Coverage of Religion Freedom."

The 90-minute exchange occurred at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, as part of the Religious Freedom Annual Review. BYU's International Center for Law and Religion Studies hosts the event each year. 

You can watch the entire discussion via this Facebook Live feed.

Hannah Clayson Smith, senior fellow at BYU's International Center for Law and Religion Studies, moderated the panel. 

Besides tmatt and me, other panelists included:

• Sahar Aziz, professor of law and Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar at the Center for Security, Race at Rights at Rutgers University Law School.

• Emma Green, staff writer covering politics, policy and religion at The Atlantic.

• Holly Hollman, general counsel and associate executive director for the Baptist Joint Committee.

Earlier today, Green gave an excellent keynote address on the legal and political landscape of religious liberty. I don't see that talk online yet, but if I come across it, I'll add a link.

On a lighter note, I loved Green's response when asked about the polarization caused by social media:


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