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Oh my God, NBC News needs to print correction about story on U2's return to Paris

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Picky, picky, picky.

Guilty as charged, especially when it comes to the details of life on the religion beat. Anyone who knows about the day-to-day work done by journalists know that when it comes to writing, editing and the Associated Press Stylebook, we think that God is in the details. You could also say that the gods are in the details, if you wish to do so.

Yes, it's that time again. Time for another look at that journalism trend that your picky GetReligionistas have discussed quite a bit (click here for a classic Bobby Ross, Jr., post) in recent years -- the strange tendency for some journalists to ignore AP style when it comes to references to God.

So let's head right over to the journalism bible (lower-case "b") where we find this:

gods and goddesses
Capitalize God in references to the deity of all monotheistic religions. Capitalize all noun references to the deity: God the Father, Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, Allah, etc. Lowercase personal pronouns: he, him, thee, thou.
Lowercase gods and goddesses in references to the deities of polytheistic religions. Lowercase god, gods and goddesses in references to false gods: He made money his god.

So with that in mind, let's look at a strange passing reference in an NBC News report about the return of U2 to Paris, for concerts that were cancelled amid safety concerns after the recent massacre there.


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Does The New York Times worry about terrorists, or just folks who worry about terrorists?

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"Chaotic," "apocalyptic," "aggression," "angrily demanded," "seethed with disgust" -- these loaded terms are all in a New York Times editorial about Republicans.

Unfortunately, in this case we are not talking about something called an editorial. The Times team called it news coverage.

"After San Bernardino Attack, Republican Candidates Talk 'War'," proclaimed the headline summarizing the GOP reaction after the recent shootings in San Bernardino, Calif. And when was the last time you read "bellicosity" in an news article, outside of a direct quote?

The rising tide of bellicosity gripped the Republican presidential field, as the initial restraint and calls for prayers that followed the shootings gave way to revelations that the massacre may have been inspired by the Islamic State.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas seethed with disgust for Democrats, declaring, “This nation needs a wartime president.”
“Whether or not the current administration realizes it, or is willing to acknowledge it,” he added, “our enemies are at war with us.”
Their language was almost apocalyptic. Jeb Bush described the looming threat of “Islamic terrorism that wants to destroy our way of life, wants to attack our freedom.”
He gravely added: “They have declared war on us. And we need to declare war on them.”

We read more slant in the obligatory talking-head observers.


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Social drinking, Wednesday night youth sports and Southern churches' waning influence

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Not everybody drives a truck. Not everybody drinks sweet tea. Not everybody owns a gun, wears a ball cap, boots and jeans. Not everybody goes to church or watches every NASCAR race. — "Southern Comfort Zone," song by Brad Paisley

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I'm not sure what to make of a just-published Associated Press story making the case that the once-dominant influence of churches in the South is waning.

On the one hand: Duh.

I mean, haven't we all read enough about the "Rise of the Nones" to know that a societal shift has occurred?

On the other hand: I'm not certain that the small town of Sylacauga, Ala., allowing Ruby Tuesday's or O'Charley's to sell beer on Sunday afternoon is a sign of the End Times — or the best example of churches losing their dominance.

The top of the AP story:

SYLACAUGA, Ala. (AP) -- Prayers said and the closing hymn sung, tea-drinking churchgoers fill Marble City Grill for Sunday lunch. But hard on their heels comes the afternoon crowd: craft beer-drinking, NFL-watching football fans.
Such a scene would have been impossible just months ago because Sunday alcohol sales were long illegal in Sylacauga, hometown of both the actor who played TV's Gomer Pyle and the white marble used to construct the U.S. Supreme Court building. While the central Alabama city of 12,700 has only one hospital, four public schools and 21 red lights, the chamber of commerce directory lists 78 churches.
Yet few were surprised when residents voted overwhelmingly in September to legalize Sunday alcohol sales. Churches lacked either the heart or influence to stop it.
That shift is part of a broad pattern across the South: Churches are losing their grip on a region where they could long set community standards with a pulpit-pounding sermon or, more subtly, a sideward glance toward someone walking into a liquor store.


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Christmas wars come to University of Tennessee: Hey! Check these crucial facts!

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What we have here is a collision between several different kinds of stories that are all hot, right now, in the mainstream press. It's also important to know that this crash is taking place in one of the most intensely religious parts of the United States -- right here in my own stomping grounds of East Tennessee.

First of all, there is the whole "war on Christmas" element of this story, since it centers on a clash between acceptable "holiday parties" and unacceptable "Christmas parties."

Then you have another episode in the current national wave of "trigger warning" controversies on public-university campuses, with the assumption that some forms of speech and symbolism -- take Santa Claus, for example -- are automatically offensive and should be strictly controlled.

However, at the heart of the story is a serious church-state issue linked to the idea of religious believers having "equal access" to space in the tax-dollar-supported public square. Hold that thought.

Oh, right, this story also comes on the heels of a controversy about the University of Tennessee embracing gender-neutral pronouns. Just about the only thing missing from this drama is some hook linked to NASCAR or UT Volunteers football.

So here is where things started off, with a post on the website of the campus Office for Diversity and Inclusion called “Best Practices for Inclusive Holiday Celebrations in the Workplace." It didn't take long -- hello Fox News -- for this to grow into Republican calls for the resignation of UT Chancellor Jimmy Cheeks.

Pretty soon, folks on both sides are calling each other "extremist" and "ridiculous." Here's a sample from the memo that includes the key points:

* Holiday parties and celebrations should celebrate and build upon workplace relationships and team morale with no emphasis on religion or culture. Ensure your holiday party is not a Christmas party in disguise. ...


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Your weekend think piece: Scribe lets God respond to The New York Daily News

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So what kinds of thoughts pop into your mind when you are watching a newscast, after some kind of tragedy, and the anchor-person ends a report by saying, "All of our thoughts are with the families involved in this event," or words to that effect.

The key buzz word, of course, is "thoughts." In some parts of America, anchor-people still dare to say "thoughts and prayers."

Either way, here is what I usually think when I hear that: "Really?"

Cynical? You betcha. This brings me, of course, to this week's media storm about The New York Daily News cover -- in the wake of the San Bernardino massacre -- with the infamous "God Isn't Fixing This" banner headline. Click here for Julia Duin's post on the "prayer shaming" debate that followed that piece.

The key, of course, was whether one took the headline as a shot a God, a shot at Republicans who issued statements about praying for the victims (as opposed to calls for gun-control legislation) or as both.

Lots of folks, this week, asked why I thought the Daily News ran that headline. I immediately thought about the numbers in the Pew Forum report that put the "nones" -- the growing number of religiously unaffiliated Americans -- in the news. You may recall that one implication of that survey was that a coalition of secularists, "nones" and our nation's small cohort of religious liberals was now the largest constituency group in today's Democratic Party.

Clearly, Democrats -- with the media that service them -- need to please that base, from time to time (just as Republicans have to worry about the concerns of the very religious). Might the Daily News leaders (who desperately need someone to fund their newspaper) have been courting that audience?


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What questions must reporters ask, when faith and violence are twisted together?

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What questions must reporters ask, when faith and violence are twisted together?

This may seem like a bit of a reach, but does anyone out there remember the story about the mad, misogynic gunman at the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs? Does the name Robert L. Deal, Jr., ring any horrible bells? How about Pastor Garrett Swasey?

Yes, at the time Issues Etc. host Todd Wilken and I were recording this week's "Crossroads" podcast (click here to tune that in), the Colorado Springs story was still being discussed -- a lot. We spent much of our time discussing the religious angles of that event and, in particular, what kinds of questions mainstream reporters needed to be asking if their goal was to find facts that would or would not link Deal to any particular religious group or tradition, let alone the mainstream pro-life movement.

While we were recording, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik were on the run after attacking Farook's co-workers at a holiday party at the San Bernardino County Health Department.

You will not hear about that in this podcast. However, you will hear us discussing PRECISELY the kinds of questions that reporters are now asking about the forces that may or may not have shaped the lives and worldviews of Farook and Malik.

What kinds of questions could possibly apply to both Deal and to this terrorist couple in San Bernardino? Well, questions like these.

How did they spent their time and money?


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This just in from Oxford Press: Turning the intellectual tables on 'New Atheists'

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This just in from Oxford Press: Turning the intellectual tables on 'New Atheists'

The atheist liberation movement of recent years has featured efforts to explain away the global prevalence of religion as totally the result of social forces that perhaps got imprinted into humanity’s evolutionary biology.

The tables are turned in a new book, “The Evolution of Atheism: The Politics of a Modern Movement” (Oxford University Press). Journalists: It’s heady stuff to be a hook for news treatment, but worth the effort.

The book analyzes atheistic causes in North America over the past century, including its internal schisms and contradictions. The work is based on Canadian author Stephen LeDrew’s doctoral dissertation at York University in Ontario and post-doctoral study in Sweden at Uppsala University’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society.

Religion newswriters are well aware that those aggressive “New Atheists” sometimes suggest faith is not just stupid but morally evil or a sort of mental illness, such that parents should be forbidden to infect their own children with it. Journalists may be surprised to learn that for LeDrew and others, this sort of anti-religion thinking is outdated and “utterly out of sync with contemporary social science.”

Social scientists long embraced the “secularization thesis,” according to which religion will inevitably decline as modern science advances. But now, says LeDrew, many acknowledge that scenario was “a product of ideology” rather than empirical fact. Thus, the New Atheism could be seen as a promotional effort to defend against “a perceived failure of secularism in practice in late modern society.”


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Glimpses inside lives of Farook and Malik: Stunning details on the road to ISIS

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Law enforcement officials and reporters continue to plug new information into the still mysterious timeline of the lives of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, but now the emerging picture has been framed by one stunning, but not surprising, piece of information.

The bottom line: Deadly violence linked to ISIS has come to the United States, either through online poison or through contacts during visits to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The answer, of course, could be "both-and." Were two people -- alone -- really gong to use all of those pipe bombs and thousands of round of ammunition, while taking care of a 6-month-old baby?

Early on, reporters (and law officials, one can assume) were surprised to find little online evidence that Farook and Malik existed. Now it's clear -- in another sign of premeditation and planning -- that they had attempted to wipe their cyber slates clean.

But that's almost impossible, which led to today's big revelation. Here is the CNN link:

Authorities are officially investigating the San Bernardino, California, massacre as "an act of terrorism," FBI official David Bowdich said Friday.
Bowdich said a number of pieces of evidence pushed authorities to launch a terrorism investigation. He noted some phone conversations between at least one of the San Bernardino shooters and others are being investigated by federal officials. ...
Investigators think that as the San Bernardino, California, massacre was happening, female shooter Tashfeen Malik posted a pledge of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Facebook, three U.S. officials familiar with the investigation told CNN. Malik's post was made on an account with a different name, one U.S. official said.

Several major newsrooms have now published long features built on emerging information about Farook and the still very mysterious figure that is Malik, his wife. In addition to CNN, that includes The New York Times, The Washington Post and an unusually straightforward news piece at The Daily Beast.

Compared with earlier coverage, it is striking how much of the new information that is emerging is linked to religion and, in particular, the degree to which Farook was known as a devout, practicing Muslim -- while also leaving clues that he may have believed that he was now practicing the faith on another level and might need to leave America.


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'Muslim Killers,' declares New York Post as followers of Islam again voice 'backlash' fears

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"God isn't fixing this," blared the New York Daily News in the wake of the San Bernardino bloodbath. 

While that Big Apple tabloid fixated on gun control, the New York Post went a different — albeit equally inflammatory — direction, casting blame for the mass murder of 14 people on "Muslim Killers."

So it's no surprise that once again — as happened after the Paris attacks — the media have rushed to report on Muslim fears of a "backlash."

This storyline is, of course, sadly familiar by now. 

This was the headline for a story I wrote on Sept. 11, 2001, when I served as religion editor for The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City's major daily:

City's Muslims fear backlash of blame

The lede on that story:

A distraught Muslim woman called the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City on Tuesday morning as terrorist attacks rocked the nation.
"She's completely terrified," said Suhaib Webb, imam of the society's mosque. "She's a single woman. She's like, 'What if someone tries to kill me?'
"She's worried that society is going to blame her for this killing."
American Muslim groups rushed Tuesday to condemn the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They cautioned other Americans not to blame followers of Islam until investigators determine who was responsible.
As Oklahoma's roughly 20,000 Muslims dealt with the shock experienced by most Americans, they grappled with another emotion as well: fear. Fear that people would blame them for the tragedies. Fear that 10 years of work to change Oklahomans' perspectives of their religion had been shattered.

More than 14 years later, this is the headline on a Washington Post story today:

After Paris and California attacks, U.S. Muslims feel intense backlash


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