Terry Mattingly

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Final nod to confusing themes in Christmas coverage: Time says 'Joy to the World' is about Santa?

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A final Merry Christmas to any readers out there who are on the Western calendar and preparing for services tonight or tomorrow for Epiphany (or Theophany among the Orthodox and Eastern Catholics). The 12 days of Christmas are past, unless you are in an old-calendar Orthodox parish that celebrates Christmas on Jan. 7th. We can expect a few news reports on that tradition in the next few days, as always.

Still, we are at the end of Christmas for readers who follow Christian traditions, as opposed to the calendar of the dominant mall culture. With that in mind, let me give a shout out to those of you who sent me email about a truly interesting, if bizarre, little item from the Time online site. I'll slip this one in, right at the last minute.

The goal in this piece was to try to draw a line between the secular and sacred, when it comes to Christmas music. The headline: "TIME crunches the merry numbers behind the most popular Christmas songs of the modern era." The goal, through the study of commercial recordings since 1978, was said to be separating the sacred ("songs about the birth of Christ") from the commercial or secular (songs "about Santa and snow").

You can see the confusion that's ahead for readers, right? Time was defining secular and sacred according to function, not content.


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Jeopardy does religion: Name a small, but historically prominent Protestant denomination in American life

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The accident in which a car driven by Episcopal Bishop Heather Elizabeth Cook of the Diocese of Maryland hit and fatally injured a cyclist has continued to receive coverage in the back pages of some major newspapers. As I mentioned the other day, much of the discussion has focused on her previous DUI arrest. The big question now: Was she using a smartphone at the time of the accident, perhaps one owned by the diocese?

Meanwhile, the following passage in a Washington Post follow-up story raised eyebrows among religion-beat professionals for reasons that transcended the facts surrounding Cook's election, the importance of the fatal (some insist hit-and-run) accident and the ongoing investigative work being done by police:

Several people who were part of the bigger convention that voted for Cook this spring said they were not told about the arrest.
Cook was initially charged with driving under the influence, reckless driving and possession of marijuana, among other charges, but received “probation before judgment” and completed her probation.
The diocese’s statement Tuesday said Cook disclosed the 2010 case to those considering electing her a bishop in the Episcopal Church, a small but historically prominent American Protestant denomination.

Say what? Have we really reached the point where journalists need to offer readers explanatory material about the existence of the Episcopal Church?


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End-of-2014 odds and ends: Including John L. Allen, Jr., on Pope Francis and the press

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Fire and brimstone? Wait for it.

I have a few odds and ends for you, on this strange Friday in between New Year's and the weekend that comes before, for many people, the Monday (Boo!) that marks the start of the new working year. Is there anyone out there near a computer?

As always, there have been many end of the religion-news year pieces to read. I thought two deserved a bit of attention here because they offered some interesting comments -- implied or direct -- on mainstream press coverage of this topic.

For example, the omnipresent John L. Allen, Jr., turned his usual "Vatican stories that were overlooked" theme on its head this year, for the simple reason that very few things get overlooked in the age of Pope Francis (other than his statements against, oh, abortion and in favor of religious freedom). More on that Crux list in a moment.

The simple fact of the matter, Allen noted, is that this pope's relationship to the press has become a force field that changes almost everything, including the public perception of this statements. Consider, for example, that "fake sugar coating" speech about Christmas and materialism, his annual address to the Curia and his Urbi et Orbi message on Christmas Day. Allen summarizes what happened in this manner:


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Maryland drama: An Episcopal bishop, her DUI record, a dead cyclist and the 'above reproach' debates

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Let's call it the "shoe on the other political foot" argument.

How many times have you heard media critics argue that a particular media outlet -- The New York Times is the villain of choice for the right and Fox News for the left -- might have covered a story or have covered said story more intensely if the sin or crime in question had been committed by a leader on the opposing side?

It's a popular argument, quite frankly, because it is often a valid argument. Why did so many newsroom feminists cut President Bill Clinton so much slack? Why do some conservatives still think Rush Limbaugh belongs in the choir of cultural conservatives?

The same thing happens with ecclesiastical shoes on the feet of powerful sinners. But this syndrome is not taking place, at the moment, in mainstream coverage of the tragic auto accident in which Episcopal Bishop Heather Elizabeth Cook of Maryland hit and killed 41-year-old cyclist Thomas Palermo, a father of two. Driven by powerful early coverage in The Baltimore Sun and follow-up work at The Washington Post, this story is now being pushed past the ugly details and into larger questions, both legal and theological.

The key questions: Was this a hit-and-run accident? What caused the bishop to hit a bike in such an open piece of road, with excellent sight lines? Should an earlier DUI -- involving alcohol and marijuana -- have prevented her selection as a bishop? Here is the gripping top section of the major Sun report:


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Must-read think piece: German activist and scribe visits Islamic State, with his eyes open

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Journalists have been known to do crazy things, dangerous things and sometimes both at the same time. For example, how is the outside world going to know what makes the Islamic State tick without on site, independently reported information?

Thus, German peace activist and "Why Do You Kill, Zaid?" author Jurgen Todenhofer, headed into the heart of ISIS -- guaranteed that he would be harmed. His family thought he was crazy. In an online think piece entitled "ISLAMIC STATE -- Seven Impressions Of A Difficult Journey" -- he notes:

The guarantee turned out to be genuine, and the ISIS stuck to their agreement during our visits to Mosul and Raqqa. Though, we were under surveillance by the secret service for most of the time and had to hand over our mobile phones and laptops. Also, all of our pictures and photos were inspected at the end of the journey. ...
On several occasions, ISIS and I ran into heated disagreements about details of the journey. Let me tell you that arguing with heavily armed ISIS fighters isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do. I was close to abandoning the journey twice during that time. In view of the acute danger that all of the involved were dealing with daily, they often were short tempered. Yet, overall, I was treated correctly.

As the title states, Todenhofer offers seven observations about what he saw. This is not neutral, "American model of the press" material. However, I thought that journalists and those who care about religion news would want to see this.


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Los Angeles Times strives, strives, strives to ignore religion angles in Rafael Ramos funeral

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Did you know that almost all funeral services held inside churches are actually services of Christian worship?

I just thought I would bring that up -- again -- after the Bobby Ross Jr. post that covered some of the early coverage for the funeral of slain New York City police officer Rafael Ramos. That post noted that some reports -- CNN and The New York Times, to be specific -- gave readers a glimpse of the officer's life in a true evangelical megachurch, Christ Tabernacle -- a multi-site New York congregation.

However, the stories left Bobby wanting more details about the church and the work Ramos did there, especially since he died right as be was set to launch into his work as a police chaplain. He offered praise, but want to know more.

Well now, contrast that with the story that moved later from The Los Angeles Times. This story, basically, missed every single religion angle in this moving story. The fact that Ramos was poised to become a chaplain, after years of involvement with this megachurch, as been known for days. How was that handled? Basically, we're talking crickets.

How about the church itself, which is an example of a evangelical and charismatic explosion in New York City that has received a little bit of media attention, but not much? Next to zippo, in this story.

Want a taste of what did make it into this report?


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Pod people: Looking at Top 10 religion-beat stories, through the eyes of the late George W. Cornell

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Anyone who knows their religion-beat history knows this byline -- George W. Cornell of the Associated Press.

When he died in 1994, the national obituaries called him the "dean of American religion writers" and that was precisely the role that he played for decades, especially for those of us who broke into the religion-news business back in the 1970s and '80s.

However, when I did a series of interviews with him in 1981, for my graduate project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ("The Religion Beat: Out of the ghetto, into the mainsheets") he simply described himself as the AP's religion writer for all of planet earth. How would you like to try to handle that job? (The Vatican bureau didn't count, he explained, because editors tended to view that as a political and international-news bureau.)

George had a private tradition in which, every year, he analyzed the Associated Press list of the world's top 10 stories and counted the ones that -- seen through his veteran eyes -- were built on facts and history rooted in religion. He never saw a year with fewer than five of these stories, he told me, and frequently there would be more than that.

Ah, he explained, but were the religion facts and angles in these stories (a) covered accurately, (b) presented in a way that could be understood by the general public or (c) covered AT ALL?


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Some GetReligion Christmas this and a little bit of non-Christmas that (including a think piece for Hanukkah next year)

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Yes, this is a Christmas post and it will serve several functions, including at least one note for journalists to stash away in their calendars for next year's holiday-news season.

Item I: Christmas is one of those cultural steamrollers that demands treatment on A1 even in the most secular of news publications. Most of the time, one wakes up and finds a piece of stand-alone art that screams "Christmas," but with no valid news story attached to it. Christmas is, in other words, colorful and omnipresent but not all that real. So did anyone wake up this morning and find a particularly excellent (or terrible) in the local paper? Please share the URL in the comments pages.

Item II: Your GetReligionistas will, like most folks, be all over the place in the next week or two.

I, for example, will be headed to the mountains of East Tennessee -- Oak Ridge to be specific (Cumberland mountains photo above) -- to spend a few days with family in the house that will become our home this coming summer. That's when I will join The King's College in New York City as Senior Fellow for Media and Religion (teaching in block classes several times a year), while spending a lot more time working on GetReligion.

Other members of the team will be traveling as well.


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Pope Francis writes (cue: news crickets) urgent letter on Islamic State and religious persecution (updated)

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Pope Francis writes (cue: news crickets) urgent letter on Islamic State and religious persecution (updated)

Maybe I am wrong on this, but I was under the impression that media superstar Pope Francis could say just about anything right now (other than affirming Catholic moral teachings, of course) and draw major coverage from the mainstream press.

Apparently I was wrong. Why do I say this?

Well, right now the biggest religion-news story in the world is the rise of the Islamic State and its reign of terror in the Middle East. You can look that up.

At the same time, Pope Francis remains the most important religious voice on the planet, in terms of media coverage. You can look that up, too.

Now, toss in the annual editorial need to find valid Christmas news stories and one would assume that journalists would devote quite a bit of attention if Pope Francis issued a strongly-worded Christmas letter of encouragement to people being massacred by the Islamic State. Am I right about that?

Apparently not.


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