Falwell, Trump and the Christian college press: Yes, some leaders prefer PR over hard news

Falwell, Trump and the Christian college press: Yes, some leaders prefer PR over hard news

So what, precisely, is the history of that famous -- some would say cynical -- quote about the freedom of the press and who gets to exercise that right and who does not?

I'm referring to something that I ad-libbed into this week's Crossroads podcast. This week's discussion with host Todd Wilken (click here to tune that in) focuses on the mini-media storm about Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr., and his decision to quash a column critical of Donald Trump (his "locker-room" remarks about women, to be precise) in the campus newspaper, The Champion.

You can find several versions of the quote, as demonstrated by this entry at the "Quote Investigator" website:

(1) Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.
(2) Freedom of the press is confined to the people who own one.
(3) Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.
(4) Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

As often happens in live recording sessions, when one is 60-something years old, I could not remember the person who originated this famous quotation, whatever it is. I almost said "H. L. Mencken," which appears to be a common mistake. The folks at Quote Investigator noted:

An exact match to the fourth expression was printed in the “The New Yorker” magazine in 1960. A.J. Liebling wrote an essay titled “The Wayward Press: Do You Belong in Journalism?” that included the following passage. Boldface has been added to excerpts:
"The best thing Congress could do to keep more newspapers going would be to raise the capital-gains tax to the level of the income tax. (Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.) There are irresistible reasons for a businessman either to buy or to sell, and anybody who owns the price of a newspaper nowadays must be a businessman."

Ah, but note that this quote is between parentheses. Was he paraphrasing something he read elsewhere? The QI team noted that there are similar ideas in articles a few decades earlier.

What does this have to do with Falwell, Liberty and the anti-Trump column?


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From Muslim to Christian: The Atlantic offers sensitive look at Berlin community

When you share lentils and rice pilaf with people; when you attend church with them and talk to their pastor; when you pay a follow-up visit weeks later; you naturally convey a more intimate feel for your topic.  This traditional wisdom of journalism is used to great effect in The Atlantic's feature on Muslim converts to Christianity in Germany.

The writer, Laura Kasinof, talks to three Iranian refugees in Berlin. She gets an overview with their pastor, a Lutheran minister, as well as an interchurch leader. She conveys the jubilant mood at a worship service. And she attempts to hint at the size of the trend of conversion, although she doesn't get comprehensive figures.

Kasinof did the story on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Whatever the sum, it was well spent. Her article is sensitive and thoughtful, and vastly superior to a similar piece in the Daily Beast this spring. As my colleague Julia Duin said then, the Beast somehow managed to link the trend to the U.S. presidential elections. Almost like clicking a nation-level selfie.

Astonishingly, the Daily Beast article has no quotes from any actual refugees, except those it borrowed from a newspaper. The Atlantic article doesn't neglect that vital facet:


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Hello? Hello? Mindy Finn is a Jewish vice presidential candidate, so where's the ink?

Evan McMullin, a third-party candidate for president based out of Utah, is a Mormon and he's chosen a very interesting vice presidential candidate: Mindy Finn, a businesswoman and tech entrepreneur living in DC. She's an interesting pick, not the least because she's conservative and Jewish.

But don't expect any decent take-outs about her faith. Even though it's been two weeks since she was announced as McMullin's running mate, there's been very little done about her and especially her beliefs. I can excuse the secular media not getting too worked up over Mindy Finn’s faith as she and her running mate are long shots at making a dent in this election. But Jewish media should be ahead of the game on this one.

Typical of the coverage-lite out there is this piece from the Forward

Independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin announced a Jewish running mate last weekend: Mindy Finn.
 
Finn is a veteran GOP strategist who runs a feminist non-profit. She and McMullin, a former CIA agent, see their independent candidacy as a conservative alternative to Donald Trump.
With their religious makeup — a Mormon and a Jew — and their outspokenness, the McMullin/Finn ticket has been gaining traction lately. Following Donald Trump’s struggles after the release of a tape on which he makes lewd comments about women, they might win Mormon-heavy Utah, where McMullin is now statistically tied with both Trump and Clinton.
Their candidacy is a long shot — they are not even on the ballot in all states — but there technically is a way how it could work. If they manage to win one state and then both Trump and Clinton fail to get the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president, the House gets to decide the election.
More realistically, Finn sees their campaign as the start of a new conservative movement. “We are a glimmer of light in what many have seen as a sea of darkness in this election,” she told Glamour.


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It's time to add the Saudi-Iranian proxy war in Yemen to the journalistic shopping list

It's time to add the Saudi-Iranian proxy war in Yemen to the journalistic shopping list

There's very little that unites Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran these days, but here's one thing that does. Both Muslim nations mix austere religion with political repression to the detriment of individual freedoms.

But you knew that, right? So why bring it up again? Because of the worsening situation in Yemen that started as a civil war but has morphed into an increasingly bloody proxy war between the two Middle East powerhouses.

There's much more to say about Yemen, and we'll do so below. But first here's a couple of examples of how far-reaching the heavy theocratic hands extend in Riyadh and Teheran.

I present them as examples of how misdirected the priorities of the two governments are.

The first example is this recent Washington Post story about a Saudi teen who became love struck online. Click here for the details of how he was arrested for flirting online -- "goofy" flirting, according to the Post -- with a California woman barely out of her teens that he asked to marry.

Abu Sin (the teen's nickname that in Arabic means "the toothless one"; referring to his misaligned teeth) was arrested for "violating decency and religious values," says the Post piece. It added:


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My response to the election, the news media and my alleged 'blanket defense of journalists'

Nineteen days until the election, it's getting testy out there, huh?

(This aside is for my editor Terry Mattingly because I'm about to embed a bunch of tweets, and he worries in these cases that readers won't realize I'm eventually going to make a real point. So, yes, keep scrolling down, and I promise to say something by the end that will rock your world. Or not. But either way, I won't charge you.)

On Twitter, I follow a wide array of journalists, ministers and other folks highly active in the two worlds in which I spend so much time — news and religion.

On the one hand, my journalist friends are frustrated with critics lumping them all together as the evil news media. A few of those friends retweeted this tweet, which made me smile.

My friend Steve Lackmeyer, a longtime reporter for The Oklahoman, joked in response to that tweet.

On the other hand, some of the stereotypes that many apply to the news media have roots in legitimate concerns, the kind we often address here at GetReligion:


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When is mortal sin not that big a deal? The National Post debates 'medically assisted death'

News stories about issues in medical ethics -- take physician-assisted suicide, for example -- tend to be rather complicated affairs.

Add in ultimate questions about Catholic theology and things get even more complicated. Changing the name of the procedure in question to "medically assisted death" doesn't erase the moral and doctrinal questions involved in all of this.

Thus, editors at The National Post had to know they were headed into tricky territory when working on a recent story that ran with this headline: "Catholics hoping for a funeral after assisted death face different answers from different churches." Read the following carefully -- Catholic readers, especially -- and see if you can spot any problems that start right at the top of this story.

VANCOUVER -- A proper funeral is far more than an end-of-life celebration for practising Catholics, who believe last rites cleanse the soul of sin in preparation for eternal life in heaven.
But for the faithful questioning whether those final sacraments are available to a loved one who has chosen a medically assisted death, the answer may depend on whom in the church they ask.

See the problem? Have the journalists who worked on this story confused Catholic teachings about funerals with teachings about what are commonly known as the "Last Rites," in which a priest -- whenever possible -- hears a dying person's final Confession and offers absolution? The crucial Catechism reference states:

In addition to the Anointing of the Sick, the Church offers those who are about to leave this life the Eucharist as viaticum. Communion in the body and blood of Christ, received at this moment of "passing over" to the Father, has a particular significance and importance. It is the seed of eternal life and the power of resurrection. ... The sacrament of Christ once dead and now risen, the Eucharist is here the sacrament of passing over from death to life, from this world to the Father.

A funeral service may be "final" rites for the deceased, but they are not the Last Rites, in the traditional sense. So, does the funeral service itself "cleanse the soul of sin in preparation for eternal life in heaven"?


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Seriously: Is the Bible so 'dangerous' it should be banned? What about burned?

Seriously: Is the Bible so 'dangerous' it should be banned? What about burned?

NORMAN’S QUESTION:

The Bible is the most-purchased and least-read book of any. What can we do to discourage the reading of this dangerous book? The medieval church kept it wisely in Latin. The damned Protestant Reformers wanted everyone to read it and look what evil that has accomplished!

Shall we burn it? Shall we prevent it being sold? I am serious.

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The Religion Guy would have ignored this one except for the last three words above that require us to take this seriously. Norman’s prior postings to “Religion Q and A” indicate he’s quite knowledgeable about intellectuals’ attacks against biblical Jewish and Christian tradition. With a tiny faction such thinking turns to hatred or intolerance toward Scripture (at a time when devotion to Islam’s Quran expands in secularized western natiuons).

If Norman is “serious” the answer here is easy. No, “we” won’t be doing any such thing, even if “we” are not Bible fans, certainly in the U.S. given the Constitution’s freedoms of publishing and speech. (However, upholding, defining, and applying the freedom of religion guarantee is hotly contested.) The right to publish and read the Bible in common languages was a hard-fought freedom centuries ago. Access fostered widespread literacy and is normally regarded as a boon to civilization.

The theme is timely in this 200th anniversary year of the American Bible Society, which has distributed 6 billion copies, and next year’s 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Yes, both the Reformers and the society “wanted everyone to read it.”

Reverence or at least respect toward the Bible remains strong.


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Devil's advocate: Religion News Service reports on Satanist pitch

The Satanic Temple has gotten lots of coverage from the Religion News Service. But its most recent story digs deeper into the group and its founder, Lucien Greaves. Which is not to say that the article doesn't have a laundry list of flaws. 

Most of the 1,600-word article is drawn from an interview with Greaves. Some of it is pasted from previous coverage. It makes some shaky claims about the causes of the Satanist movement. And it allows Greaves to attack Christianity again and again, without seeking out the other side.

This update does seem less servile than, say, the summertime feature in the Washington Post. It does more explaining, less campaigning. RNS seems to use a double peg. One is Greave's meeting with the Kansas City Atheist Coalition, seeking allies and kindred minds.  And Missouri is the home of the Child Evangelism Fellowship, which sponsors the Good News Clubs.

Hence the playful lede:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (RNS) Lucien Greaves is the Good News Club’s worst nightmare.
Greaves is co-founder of the Satanic Temple, a group dedicated to church-state separation. And his organization’s latest campaign in launching after-school clubs for children, Greaves told RNS before a recent talk in Kansas City, is not so much about indoctrinating children into Satanism — he doesn’t actually believe in the devil as a real being, much less one to be worshipped.
Rather, the After School Satan clubs, as they are called, are about making a statement against the government providing facilities exclusively for Christian after-school programs such as the Good News Club.
A side benefit is that the publicity surrounding the After School Satan clubs is likely to bring far more attention — and maybe public understanding — to the Satanic Temple than anything else the group could do.

So we have a good summary of Greaves' grievance: not so much a defense of his faith, but attacking activities of another faith. And we have the story's first flaw: calling The Satanic Temple the "worst nightmare" of the Good News Club. That may sound cheeky, but RNS doesn't interview anyone connected with Good News.


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Lack of compassion or something else? Why Canada's Catholic hospitals won't help patients die

We live in interesting times, eh.

In a story in The Globe and Mail, a Toronto-based Canadian national newspaper, a physician upset that a Catholic hospital won't participate in assisted suicide (although that term isn't used) gets heroic coverage.

The lede:

A Vancouver Island doctor is resigning from the ethics committee at a local Catholic hospital because it refuses to offer assisted dying on site, a stand that he says is unnecessarily causing critically ill patients more suffering as they are transferred to facilities dozens of kilometres away.
Jonathan Reggler, a general physician who makes daily patient visits to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Comox, said he knew the facility, like other faith-based hospitals across the country, had developed a “strict” policy of transferring patients asking for assisted deaths.
But it wasn’t until recently, he says, that such patients began streaming into St. Joseph’s – and transferring out – after a federal law came into force June 17 that legalized medically assisted dying for patients whose suffering is intolerable and whose deaths are reasonably foreseeable.
“We’re talking about very sick patients having to be transferred – people who are close to death – and it’s wrong,” Dr. Reggler said.

Later, the newspaper introduces the question of Catholic hospitals' continued funding:


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