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That New York Times headline about Catholics witnessing to Jews? Look again ...

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Trust me, I know that it is hard to write accurate, easy-to-read articles about complicated Vatican theological documents. This is especially true when dealing with materials focusing on very nuanced issues that continue to cause behind-the-scenes debates among Catholics.

It's even harder to write informative, catchy and, yes, accurate headlines for these kinds of stories.

This brings me to a recent New York Times report that ran with this headline: "Vatican Says Catholics Should Not Try to Convert Jews."

The problem with that headline is that it is simplistic to the point of being inaccurate -- that is, if the goal is for readers to understand the document ("The Gifts and the Calling of God are Irrevocable") addressed in this story.

Now here is the ironic part. You can tell that the headline is inaccurate by carefully reading the actual Times story, which means reading past the flawed lede on which the headline is based. Let us attend.

ROME -- Catholics should not try to convert Jews, but should work together with them to fight anti-Semitism, the Vatican said on Thursday in a far-reaching document meant to solidify its increasingly positive relations with Jews.

Then, in the third paragraph, there is this:

Addressing an issue that has been a sore point between the two faiths for centuries, the commission wrote that the church was “obliged to view evangelization to Jews, who believe in the one God, in a different manner from that to people of other religions and world views.” It specified that “the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews.”

Did you catch the subtle, but very important, difference between the lede and the actual quote from the document? 


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How much longer might British headlines exclaim, 'God save the Queen'?

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How much longer might British headlines exclaim, 'God save the Queen'?

The Telegraph, a United Kingdom center-right broadsheet, recently ran this headline: "Britain is no longer a Christian country and should stop acting as if it is, says judge."

It topped a story about the findings of a two-year study on the place of religion in official British life in today's multicultural milieu. The judge referred to is an ex-judge, who's also a baroness, who chaired the study conducted by the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life, a non-government body.

Good piece of work, I thought the first time I read the head (an abbreviation cherished by newspaper copy editors in a universe fading, alas, into the far, far past). Then I read the story. And I concluded that, as with so many headlines that try to compress a complicated story line into a few words, it actually mislead.

Journalism truism: Headline writing is much more difficult than it looks.

OK, enough with the Journalism 101 stuff. Let's get to the meat of the story.

Yes, British churches have witnessed a steep decline in attendance. Nearly 60 percent of the British population still calls itself Christian, but only 25 percent say they are religious, according to a 2011 national census report.

Church of England attendance decline has been particularly steep. Sunday attendance was reported in 2012 to be about half of what it was 45 years earlier.

But where the aforementioned headline failed is in its conflating traditional Christian belief and practice with the more nebulous, and harder to measure -- but still critically important -- touchstone of cultural Christianity. Cultural Christianity may fall short in the minds of church officials and traditional believers, but it's still the ground of self-identity for the majority of Brits.


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Denver Post paints local religious scene with too broad a brush

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This is that time of year when under-researched or over-generalized articles about religion sprout up around the country.

Usually, an editor has realized that Christmas is around the corner and someone needs to throw together a piece about religion. It helps if the story as good color art. Content and a strong news hook? Maybe. Maybe not.

This seems to be the case in a recent piece that ran in the Denver Post. It certainly has one of those broad, sweeping trend-story headlines: "Here's what's bringing millennials back to churches."

The newspaper's former religion writer seems to have moved to the health beat and there being no specialist currently on the beat, the assigning editor nabbed a writer who is the Post's travel and fitness editor. Her street cred is that she has collaborated with a Catholic priest on a book, which may be why she took on the story excerpted below: 

Five friends cluster for conversation among hundreds pouring out of a Sunday service at Flatirons Community Church in Lafayette. The five are in their 20s and 30s. And at this church, they don't stand out for their age or their attire -- it's easy to come to church dressed casually when the pastor gives the sermon in jeans and a hoodie.


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Hey media, in the name of journalism, can we please stop the 'Islamophobia' bias?

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There's that word again — this time on the front page of the New York Times.

What word?:

Islamophobia

What does it mean? The Times doesn't say. But the newspaper reports that there's been a "surge" in it:

Hebh Jamal does not remember the Sept. 11 attacks. She was 1. Growing up in the Bronx, she was unaware of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and was mostly insulated from the surge in suspicion that engulfed Muslims in the United States, the programs of police surveillance and the rise in bias attacks.
But in the past year, especially in the past several months, as her emergence from childhood into young womanhood has coincided with the violent spread of the Islamic State and a surge in Islamophobia, she has had to confront some harsh challenges of being a young Muslim in America.

Similarly, as GetReligion noted yesterday, the Los Angeles Times used the I-phobia word in a recent story on Muslims women saying headscarves have made them a target for harassment:

The Washington-based nonprofit Council on American–Islamic Relations has documented dozens of Islamophobic incidents nationwide since last month, including many against women wearing headscarves.

Dictionary.com defines "Islamophobia" as "hatred or fear of Muslims or their politics or culture."

So what's my problem with journalists sprinkling their stories with that term? 


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I know this may be hard: But let's take the Jedi faith folks seriously for a moment

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Can't you feel the excitement building as the holy day draws near?

No, not Christmas. A am referring to the media build-up during this advent period before the arrival of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens."

I am old enough to remember the early conversations in newsrooms about whether, under the doctrines of the Associated Press Stylebook, stories about the Star Wars franchise should refer to "the force" or "the Force." Just about everyone on the religion beat back in those days wrote features about whether parents should tell their children that the Force was or was not another name for God.

If you follow discussions of Star Wars as a pop-culture religion, you surely know that fans on the other side of the pond took this discussion to a higher level about 15 years ago. Here is the background section of a new story in The Telegraph about the impact of the new film on the leaders of the Church of Jediism.

Jediism started as a joke, ahead of the 2001 census, in which respondents were asked to declare their religion for the first time. At the time, 390,000 people declared that they were Jedis, a number that fell by more than half, to 177,000, at the following census, in 2011.
Now the organisation, described by its members as “a set of philosophies based on focusing, learning and becoming one with the Force”, claims to have more than 250,000 followers. Patrick Day-Childs, a member of the church’s five-strong UK ruling council, said that more than a thousand people a day are signing up for the religion. He said: “It’s gone up substantially in the past couple of days. The real test will be in a couple of weeks when the film hype has died off. “
Daniel Jones, who founded the religion and who goes by the Jedi name Morda Hehol, said: “We’ve been rushed off our feet. People want to know more about it. It’s great for us.”

Now, the "leading figures in the Church of Jediism," as the Telegraph team identifies them, are saying that they are gaining about 1,000 new members a day as the holy release day nears for the new film.


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Anti-terrorism services: Stories log good intentions but don't help us understand

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If anyone invents a time machine, it won't work better than mainstream media these days. With the latest wave of jihadi violence, such as the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, we're getting retreads of stories on how Muslims have much in common with the rest of us -- with little explanation of what that means.

It's like 2001 all over again, when stories like this one in the Sun Sentinel, where I used to work, covered interfaith services and open houses at mosques in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. Except that back then, we consulted our archives to see what had been already done.

Some in the current crop, of course, are better than others. WWSB, the ABC affiliate in Sarasota, Fla., puts up a local politician as the loyal opposition:

Multiple terrorist attacks have ignited strong dialogue, including GOP front runner Donald Trump's recent call to ban on all Muslims coming into this country.
Florida campaign manager and local Republican Party chairman Joe Gruters defended the controversial claim earlier this week.
"Certainly there's terrorist hotbeds in various countries, and we should be making sure the people we're letting into this country are vetted properly," said Gruters. "For that reason I think Donald Trump is taking a courageous stand."

Mind you, I'm not approving or disapproving Gruters' position. I personally don’t consider it courageous to hold an entire population responsible for the actions of a tiny knot of nuts. But that's not my call as a reporter, and it's not WWSB's call.

The station adeptly takes a local cultural event as a time peg. Station reporters found members of the Islamic Society of Sarasota and Bradenton taking part, using the International Food and Crafts Festival to mix with neighbors and introduce them to Islam. The station gets comments from two members of the local mosque and, of course, from a leader in the Florida chapter of CAIR. (However, the report doesn't say that it's a Muslim organization or even what the acronym stands for.) And it quotes a non-Muslim attendee who voices surprise that American Muslims "look like you and I, not just the stereotypes."


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Got those bad headline blues again: Did Falwell take a shot at all Muslims or not?

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At this point, I really, really wish that I didn't have to address the whole "who is to blame for bad headlines" thing again. I mean, your GetReligionistas have written so many posts about this issue in the past.

Let me make this comment again: (click here please).

Now, what's up? I have received several questions about the recent Washington Post "Acts of Faith" story about the remarks by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Jr., in which -- in the aftermath of the San Bernardino massacre -- he urged qualified Liberty University to get legal permits to carry concealed weapons.

The problem is that it appears there were radically different headlines used on different versions of this story. In my opinion, what appears to have been the early headline is journalistically problematic, to say the least. Hold that thought.

But first, let me stress once again:

... It's important for readers to understand that reporters rarely write the headlines that accompany their stories. Editors and specialists at copy desks write the headlines. It's tough work, and I say that as someone who did that job for several years early in my career.
A good headline can really help a story. A bad one can warp the framework in which the reader encounters the ideas and fact in the text. Alas, that's just the way the business works.

Now, with that in mind, please listen to the full context of this very controversial Falwell quote -- using the YouTube file from CNN that is featured at the top of this post. Here is the quote as published in the Post:


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Hijabs and harassment: Media cover a post-San Bernardino debate by Muslim women

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Bob Smietana, a board member and immediate past president of the Religion Newswriters Association, pointed out this story by Associated Press religion writer Rachel Zoll.

Smietana, the former Godbeat pro for Nashville's Tennessean newspaper who now serves as senior editor for Christianity Today magazine, commented:

I really like the Rachel Zoll piece today. Great look at the nitty gritty details of lived faith. With a good news hook.

The story concerns Muslim women in the U.S. debating the safety of wearing hijabs amid fears of a backlash after attacks carried out by Islamic extremists in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif..

The lede:

NEW YORK (AP) — On the night of the California shootings, Asifa Quraishi-Landes sat on her couch, her face in her hands, and thought about what was ahead for her and other Muslim women who wear a scarf or veil in public.
The covering, or hijab, often draws unwanted attention even in the best of times. But after the one-two punch of the Paris and San Bernardino attacks by Islamic militants, and amid an anti-Muslim furor stoked by comments of Donald Trump, Quraishi-Landes, an Islamic law specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wanted to send a message.
"To all my Muslim sisters who wear hijab," she wrote on her Facebook page. "If you feel your life or safety is threatened in any way because of your dress, you have an Islamic allowance (darura/necessity) to adjust your clothing accordingly. Your life is more important than your dress."
Amid a reported spike in harassment, threats and vandalism directed at American Muslims and at mosques, Muslim women are intensely debating the duty and risks related to wearing their head-coverings as usual.


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Their blood still cries out: Crux opens series investigating global presecution of Christians

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If you follow religion news carefully, and you have been on Twitter over the weekend, you are probably aware that John L. Allen, Jr., and the team at Crux -- a Catholic-oriented news site operated by The Boston Globe -- have published the first in what will be a series of occasional stories about the persecution of Christians around the world.

This is not surprising, in light of the fact that Allen (surely one of the most productive reporters working on the religion-beat these days) has produced a book entitled "The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution."

It is also significant that a recent Pew Research Center study found, as Allen noted in his opening report in this series, that Christians were harassed either by the government or social groups (think militias or mobs) in 102 of 198 countries -- more than any other religious group. Under normal circumstances, Pew surveys on this kind of news topic tend to lead to bumps in mainstream coverage.

However, talking about the persecution of Christians is not your normal subject, for a variety of reasons. There are people on the cultural left who simply cannot see Christians as anything other than oppressors. For two decades, powerful forces in Washington, D.C., have fought attempts to promote religious liberty at the global level.

Meanwhile, there are also people on the cultural right who -- when looking at the Middle East in particular -- struggle to identify with the groups being persecuted and slaughtered because these ancient flocks are not the right kinds of Christians. (For more information on that topic, see this "On Religion" column that I wrote nearly two decades ago.) Focusing on human rights can also be bad for business, you know.

In light of this deep and diverse skepticism, it's crucial that Allen's main story -- The New Christian Martyrs: Globally, religious persecution is Christian persecution -- includes the following:

Christians are, of course, hardly the only community facing savagery and oppression.


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