One of the snarkiest things an editor can say to a reporter — after reading a story that has been turned in for editing — is this: You really need to read your own newspaper.
Most of the time, this means that a reporter has produced a story about a topic the newspaper has already covered, yet the new story failed to engage with some of the previously reported information. Maybe the new material even clashes with an earlier story. That may be good, but the earlier reporting still needs to be acknowledged.
I thought about this while reading a New York Times piece that ran with this double-decker headline:
Why Mississippi Has Few Takers for 73,000 Covid Shots
The good news: There are more shots available. The challenge is getting people to take them.
Now, what I am about to say may sound strange, in light of what I argued in last week’s “Crossroads” podcast, the one linked to the post with this headline: “New podcast: Familiar splits among white 'evangelicals,' only now they're about vaccines.”
That post/podcast focused, in large part, on a recent Times piece that claimed believers inside the dreaded white-evangelical monolith were America’s biggest pandemic problem, in terms of flyover-country people who are refusing to get their COVID-19 vaccine shots. A quotation linked to that thesis said:
“If we can’t get a significant number of white evangelicals to come around on this, the pandemic is going to last much longer than it needs to,” said Jamie Aten, founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, an evangelical institution in Illinois.
The story cited a poll indicating that 45% of white evangelicals planned to refuse their shots, while 55% planned to cooperate with anti-pandemic programs. I noted that these numbers were solid evidence of a DIVISION inside white evangelicalism, not a sign of unity in opposition to vaccines.
What is the big problem in Mississippi, where there are lots of empty slots on the lists where people sign up for appointments to get shots? Here’s a key chunk of the new story:
When it comes to rates of vaccination, Mississippi still has a way to go, with just a quarter of all residents having received at least one dose compared to the nationwide average of 33 percent, according to state data. Other southern states, among them Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia, have similarly low rates of vaccination.
A closer look at Mississippi’s demographics explains why hesitancy may be especially pronounced.The state reliably votes Republican, a group that remains highly skeptical of the coronavirus vaccine. Nearly half of all Republican men and 40 percent of Republicans over all have said they do not plan to get vaccinated, according to several recent surveys. Those figures have barely budged in the months since vaccines first became available. …
Another factor in the state’s low vaccination rate may be Mississippi’s large Black community, which comprises 38 percent of the state’s population but accounts for 31 percent of the doses administered, according to state data. Vaccine hesitancy remains somewhat high among African-Americans, though the doubts and distrust — tied to longstanding neglect by the health care system and past government malfeasance like the notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiments — have markedly declined in recent months.
All of that makes total sense to me and it fits into some other poll numbers on this topic.
But wait, the last time I checked, the state of Mississippi contained lots and lots of white evangelicals (and African-American evangelicals, as well). That’s also true in Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama and Georgia.
Oh, and didn’t the Times just run a big, big story arguing that white evangelicals were, well, the big problem here? That would still be important information to acknowledge, even if the point this time (the crucial point, from my point of view) was to note the painful division among evangelicals on this subject.
What happened to the hot-button religion angle in this story? Did it just vanish?
Now, I realize that there are different ways to view very similar sets of statistics. For example, large numbers of white male Republicans are also white male evangelicals or white males who attend charismatic-Pentecostal churches.
Consider this chunk of material from a National Review essay on this topic: “America’s Vaccine-Hesitant Demographics.”
There are two key demographics of Americans who are particularly hesitant or reluctant to get vaccinated against COVID-19: White Republican men and African Americans. … Different polls will give you slightly different results, but the trend is generally consistent; some polls sort out respondents by political party but not by race, and vice versa.
Now take a look at the states that rank at the bottom in the nation in terms of percentage of the population that has received one shot: Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Indiana, Idaho, Wyoming, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas.
What are those states full of? White Republican men and African Americans.
This is a complicated subject and I know that. Religion is in the mix, but it’s not the whole story. We are also seeing — in coverage of Black churches, as well — that many or even most mainstream religious leaders have been strong advocates of the vaccines. The most obvious divisions seem to be in the pews, where some people are listening to conspiracy theory evangelists, as well as their pastors.
Late in the new Times story, there is a gentle nod in that direction.
Until now, Mississippi health officials have been focusing much of their vaccine hesitancy efforts on African-American and Hispanic residents through partnerships with churches and health clinics. Governor Reeves, a Republican, has so far declined to single out skepticism among white conservatives in the state, but health officials said they were planning to address the problem through Facebook and Zoom meetings with local organizations.
Public health experts say what’s needed are well-crafted messages delivered by doctors, religious leaders and other figures who are trusted in a particular community.
What’s the point here?
Religion is part of the vaccine-fears story. But there is faith on both sides of the arguments and journalists need to note that.
So be careful out there. And read your own newspapers.