There he goes again.
Yes, the GetReligionistas noticed the online hubbub caused by that Chuck Todd remark the other day on Meet the Press, when he read part of a letter to the editor sent to The Lexington Herald-Leader that took a shot at, well, a certain type of Bible reader that went to the polls in 2016.
The problem, you see, is not a matter of politics — strictly speaking.
The problem is with that these knuckle-draggers have the wrong religious views, when it comes to the Bible. Here’s the key language, as it ran in Newsweek:
"[Why] do good people support Trump? It's because people have been trained from childhood to believe in fairy tales," the letter read. "This set their minds up to accept things that make them feel good. ... The more fairy tales and lies he tells the better they feel. …
“Show me a person who believes in Noah's ark and I will show you a Trump voter."
Well now, that was certainly a quote worth discussing in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in).
I argued that this Meet the Press exchange was, in a way, a modern version of the classic shot at Richard Nixon voters that was reported in the classic Joe McGinnis book, “The Selling of the President.” Old folks like me will remember that quote, which said Nixon was “the president of every place in this country which does not have a bookstore.”
In other words, there are smart people and dumb people and people whose biblical views do not match those of NBC News are in the second camp.
As I have been saying for years, religious conservatives are wrong if they think that many elite journalists are anti-religion. That’s a simplistic thing to say. Many journalists believe that there are good religious people and bad religious people and that one of the duties of the press is to advocate for the views of the good religious people. Journalists get to tell us which doctrines are true and which ones are false. Who needs debates where people on both sides are treated with respect?
For me, the key part of this Meet the Press episode was not the slam on Noah and the Bible. I was more interested in the latest material from New York Times Editor Dean Baquet on his newspaper’s struggles to cover half of America — the more religious half, to be specific.
You may recall that this topic came up during a 2016 interview on NPR, which I addressed in a post with this headline: “New York Times editor: We just don't get (a) religion, (b) the alt-right or (c) whatever.” At that time, Baquet addressed some of the most dangerous and angry elements of American society, including alt-right activists who were backing Trump. How were journalists supposed to be “objective” when covering these kinds of people?
What I found interesting was that this discussion led directly to talking about — religious people and religion news. Here’s the leader of the world’s most powerful newspaper:
I want to make sure that we are much more creative about beats out in the country so that we understand that anger and disconnectedness that people feel. And I think I use religion as an example because I was raised Catholic in New Orleans. I think that the New York-based and Washington-based too probably, media powerhouses don't quite get religion. We have a fabulous religion writer, but she's all alone. We don't get religion. We don't get the role of religion in people's lives. And I think we can do much, much better. And I think there are things that we can be more creative about to understand the country.
That's how I look at it. I now have two big jobs. Big job one is to cover the most compelling and unusual president we have had in my lifetime. Big job two is to really understand and explain the forces in America that led to Americans wanting a change so much that they were willing to select such a different figure for the White House.
So what were the “forces” that led angry people to vote for someone like Trump?
That brings us back to Todd, Noah and the world symbolized by The New York Times. Has Baquet changed his mind at all? This Meet the Press transcript passage is long, but essential.
CHUCK TODD: You know, Dean, this is something, frankly, my late father was one of those folks. "Those New Yorkers, they think they're better than us. They -- " He was, he would say that every once in a while. Do you feel that, at the New York Times, because a lot of people don't listen to the New York Times reporting, simply because they say, "Well, you don't understand my life. So why should I believe what you report?" Do you think you have to culturally get the New York Times as in touch with Manhattan and Brooklyn as they are with Rolla, Missouri?
DEAN BAQUET: I will have to say, it's always odd for me to be called a member of the elite. I grew up in a poor neighborhood in New Orleans, Louisiana, and had never been outside of Louisiana or Mississippi until I was about 17 years old. So it’s -- whenever I go home, and my family teases me that I'm now considered one of the great leaders of the elite. I do think, however, that we have to do a much better job … understanding some of the forces that drive people in parts of America that maybe are not as powerful in New York or Los Angeles. We have to do a better job covering religion. We have to do a better job understanding why some people support Donald Trump. … We can't dismiss everybody who supports Donald Trump. I think we have to get out in America much more than we do and talk to people and sort of figure out ways, other than the traditional diner story, where people just --
CHUCK TODD: Yes. … No more diner stories.
DEAN BAQUET: No more diners. … I, I often talk about religion. Because I grew up in a religious, a very religious family. And I think, look, people in New York and Los Angeles, the places I've lived in, not everybody, but, but people in the worlds we travel don't always see religion as the powerful force that it is. And I think we have to do a better job understanding that. I think we, I think we cannot dismiss everybody who supported Donald Trump. And everybody -- And we just cannot dismiss them. First off, that's not journalistically moral. It's journalistically moral to reach out, understand the world and to be read. That's our job.
But this brings us back to a familiar question, one raised — several times — in the famous 2005 New York Times self study entitled “Preserving Our Readers’ Trust.” This document remains must reading for anyone who truly cares about the future of the mainstream press in America.
The key question: What will Times editors do — in terms of hiring — to address this question? Are they willing to seek cultural, intellectual and even religious diversity in the newsroom?