Bari Weiss

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GetReligion will close on February 2, the 20th anniversary of this blog's birth

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GetReligion will close on February 2, the 20th anniversary of this blog's birth

Doug LeBlanc clicked “publish” on the original GetReligion website on February 2, 2004, and the GetReligion team has published at least one piece of new content every day ever since.

That streak will end in just over a month, on our 20th anniversary. The website will close, although some of our features will live on — to one degree or another — on other websites. We will share more details before we close, so hold that thought.

The plan is to keep GetReligion.org online as a massive archive of Godbeat life over a stunningly complex 20 years in the news business, as the realities of the digital age have rocked the landscape of hard-news journalism. The goal is to find a reference-materials home with an academic institution that values the study of religion, mass culture and the First Amendment.

We want to keep this archive online as a way of stressing the three goals that led to the creation of GetReligion.org in the first place. We have tried to:

(1) Promote religion-news reporting in the mainstream press, arguing that journalists on this beat deserve the respect given to those covering other complex topics in the public square. If newsroom managers want to improve religion-beat coverage, they can use ordinary journalism logic — hiring experienced (maybe even award-winning) religion-beat reporters and then letting them do their work.

(2) Note that far too many journalists (especially those at political desks) tend to miss obvious religion angles in important stories, often mangling basic facts and history in the process. The result is news coverage “haunted” by what we call “religion ghosts.” Why does this happen? As the liberal journalism icon Bill Moyers once told me, many journalists are "tone deaf" to the music of faith in public life.

(3) Defend the traditional “American Model of the Press,” with its emphasis on professional standards that stress accuracy, fairness and even balance. Many journalists seem to believe that these old-school standards do not apply to coverage of hot-button subjects linked to religion, morality and culture. After all, politics is real. Religion? Not so much.

Why close GetReligion now? I will admit that I have, in recent years, struggling to accept the many ways in which the digital age has changed the business model for the mainstream press. What we have here is a classic example of the mass-media doctrine that “technology shapes content.”


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Podcast: This Gaza matrix is, for journalists, a digital-tech sword with two razor edges

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Podcast: This Gaza matrix is, for journalists, a digital-tech sword with two razor edges

I don’t think that the “Crossroads” team has ever focused on the same topic during radio programs-podcasts that are only two weeks apart.

But these are strange times and it seems that everything is moving way too fast. Ask the editors at The New York Times about that.

Thus, consider this week’s podcast an updated and expanded version our previous offering that ran with this headline: “Seeking some Gaza facts, maybe even truth, in today's niche-media matrix.” Now, to tune in this week’s 2.0 take on some of those subjects (and more), CLICK HERE. I kept the same “Matrix” graphics out front for a very simple reason — I still feel like I am living in a bizarre news environment in which it is difficult to tell what is real and what is digital illusion. How about you?

Thus, we are still dealing with the New York Times headline that helped launch a thousand arguments-protests-riots-pogroms in tense urban areas (and campuses of higher learning) around the world.

That news-shaping headline again: “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.” That is a headline in which hard evidence later emerged that every single world in that equation could be scratched out (think red ink) with convincing tech evidence, according to the kinds of sources that journalists usually consider authoritative.

But the whole controversy would have been different — still inaccurate, but much more honest — if the first draft had simply said this: “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, according to Hamas.” Yes, it would have helped if the times had not strategically located, under that headline, a photo of a blasted building in Gaza that was not the hospital (but we will set that aside for now).

The key is that the Times editors have finally deemed it necessary to address this issue, in this rather amazing item: “Editors’ Note: Gaza Hospital Coverage.” I doubt that this wall soothe any nerves in, oh, Istanbul, but it is worth reading.


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After 303 Creative: Can readers find Twitter voices (hello David French) that help us think?

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After 303 Creative: Can readers find Twitter voices (hello David French) that help us think?

It’s been a scary couple of days for post-liberals in America, with two major Supreme Court decisions (one of them unanimous) defending old-liberal concepts of religious liberty and free speech.

When the 303 Creative LLC decision hit the headlines (click here to read the majority opinion), I did something that’s quite rare in my household — I turned on the television and tried to watch mainstream cable-TV news.

Let’s face it: I struggle to understand why we have journalists who want the state to have the power to compel speech (intellectual content in general) in the work of writers, artists, video professionals, etc. But this post isn’t about the content of the news coverage of these decisions.

No, this is a post that I was requested to write after a recent luncheon with clergy, students, faculty and others at the Overby Center at Ole Miss. We kept coming back to a crucial question for news consumers: How do we find a compelling mix of news and commentary — representing different points of view — in an age in which most newsrooms embrace business models in which they tell paying customers exactly what they want to hear?

Here is another way of stating that: How do we find news and commentary that helps us understand the views of people what we need to respect (or at the very least truly tolerate), even when we disagree with them?

This led me to Twitter. I told folks that, when the 303 Creative decision was released, they needed to read whatever First Amendment specialist David French wrote about it. Why? Because I was convinced that he would find a way to parse the opinions and offer insights that made people on both sides of the decision very uncomfortable.

This is, frankly, why I have followed his work for several decades. This is why he is on a short list of people that I follow on Twitter when digging into major news trends and events. Hold that thought, because I will share my current version of that list at the end of this post.

But back to French and the headline on his New York Times column about this SCOTUS decision: “How Christians and Drag Queens Are Defending the First Amendment.”

Told ya.


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What's missing from that 'conservatives pounce' New York Times sermon on trans fights?

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What's missing from that 'conservatives pounce' New York Times sermon on trans fights?

At this point in journalism history, does anyone expect to read New York Times coverage of events and trends on the Religious Right and find a single sentence that presents interesting, provocative information — drawn from interviews with cultural conservatives — that supports that point of view?

OK, #TriggerWarning. This post assumes that, when dealing with hot-button issues, journalists should present information that accurately represents the views of people on both sides of those debates. Here is another way of stating that: Stories about controversial, divisive issues should contain information that make people on each sides uncomfortable.

This brings us to that recent Times piece with this headline: “How a Campaign Against Transgender Rights Mobilized Conservatives.” This is a classic case of the “conservatives pounce” trend in which news stories are defined in terms of conservative responses to a national trend, with next to zero discussions of the origins and nature of the trend itself.

Before we get to the Times sermon on this topic, let’s back up a bit and consider some background information. Here is a byte from a Reuters report:

In 2021, about 42,000 children and teens across the United States received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, nearly triple the number in 2017, according to data Komodo compiled for Reuters. Gender dysphoria is defined as the distress caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and the one assigned to them at birth.

Overall, the analysis found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria from 2017 through 2021.

Here’s another look at the general trend, which includes a few hints at the wider debates:

The number of young people who identify as transgender has nearly doubled in recent years, according to a new report that captures a stark generational shift and emerging societal embrace of a diversity of gender identities.

The analysis, relying on government health surveys conducted from 2017 to 2020, estimated that 1.4 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds and 1.3 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds were transgender, compared with about 0.5 percent of all adults. Those figures illustrated a significant rise since the researchers’ previous report in 2017, though the analyses used different methods.


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Thinking about Bari Weiss, Twitter, evangelicals and New York Times op-ed doctrines

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Thinking about Bari Weiss, Twitter, evangelicals and New York Times op-ed doctrines

Here’s a question for you: When it comes to defining the doctrines of blue-zip-America, which is more important — the news pages of The New York Times or the newspaper of record’s op-ed pages?

In the old days, I would have said the op-ed pages.

But that was back when most of the Times news desks were, to one degree or another, still part of (to one degree or another) the American Model of the Press (background in this .pdf file). That was certainly the case in the era of the late, great A.M. Rosenthal.

At this moment in time, there are signs of actual diversity — even tension — in the op-ed pages and maybe, just maybe, signs of a few glowing embers of editorial independence in the news papers.

But let’s still assume — as I argued in my Religion & Liberty essay, “The Evolving Religion of Journalism” — that the Times news operation is still operating as a niche-news, advocacy journalism publication anxious to please the new liberal, maybe illiberal, readers who pay cash for its content.

Let’s assume that the July, 2020, resignation letter posted by Bari “The Free Press” Weiss remains a must-read “think piece” for all news consumers. For those who need a refresh, as part of this “think piece” doubleheader, here are two key passages from that shot over the bow of the Gray Lady’s principalities and powers:

… [A] new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

Here is another essential passage from this “read it all” classic. This comes after Weiss — a gay, Jewish, old-school First Amendment liberal — describes the in-house digital bullying that made her hit the exit door:


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Who are America's most influential women in religion? Why do they get so little ink?

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Who are America's most influential women in religion? Why do they get so little ink?

International Women’s Day last week led to — naturally — a lot of news features about the female half of the human race.

The Washington Post did a piece on women in Afghanistan (as did the New York Times); Agence France Presse wrote on women who work for the Roman Curia; the Jewish Telegraph Agency covered Orthodox women who get around their religion’s prohibition against women chanting Hebrew scriptures to mixed audiences.

I would have liked to have something more diverse and wider-ranging, such as a list of top women who exert influence not only within their own religions, but who have spoken to needs or issues in the general culture. In effect, they have transcended their faith groups.

In short, who are the most influential women in American religion?

Time magazine asked a similar question about evangelicals and the magazine’s list of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals is still referred to 18 years later. Most of those named were men; if there were women, they were paired with their husbands. The only two women who made the list on their own merits were televangelist Joyce Meyer and the late Diane Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

I have spent much of my professional career profiling women in religion. The first time I put together such a list was in 2014 when I was so frustrated at how so many gifted evangelical women didn’t get near the top billing in the media that men do. In a post titled “Great Women Who Will Never Be Famous,” I wrote about Miriam Adeney, Nancy Pearcey, Robin Mazyck, Susan Wise Bauer, Sarah Zacharias Davis and Dale Hanson Bourke.

I’ve now updated that list to include other religions. I avoided women who got where they are because of their husbands. I am not denigrating their accomplishments, but simply focusing elsewhere.

I do realize that women in many traditions aren’t allowed into formal religious positions, which is why my list includes activists, bloggers and others who work outside regular boundaries.

It’s a sticky wicket, this list. Should one stick with women who have the largest numbers of books written, most news coverage or most impressive social media standings? How about lesser-known women who represent important constituencies?

For instance, many of you may not know Nailah Dean, 30, a black/Latina California lawyer and Muslim feminist who speaks out on what she calls the “Muslim marriage crisis.”


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Podcast: It's just good business? The growing debate about America's news-silo culture

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Podcast: It's just good business? The growing debate about America's news-silo culture

Yes, this is another post about my new essay at the Religion & Liberty journal published by the Acton Institute. The headline: “The Evolving Religion of Journalism.”

Part of me wants to apologize for yet another GetReligion look at this topic. But I’m not going to do that, for at least three reasons.

(1) For me, it’s most important thing I’ve written about journalism since my 1983 essay for The Quill — “The religion beat: Out of the ghetto, into the mainsheets,” which helped spark a national debate about religion-news coverage, including a Los Angeles Times series by the late, great media-beat specialist David Shaw.

(2) It demonstrates (think “technology shapes content”) that Internet culture and commerce have either killed the American Model of the Press or are poised to do so. That’s hard for me to say, since I have spent my career defending old-school American journalism from enemies on the right and, now, the illiberal left.

(3) The Acton piece (there’s no way we could have planned this) came out just as several other important articles raised similar issues about journalism’s future and the role of niche/advocacy journalism in splintering American public discourse.

Such as? Click here for a recent GetReligion podcast-post that includes discussion of “Newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust,” by former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Jr. Also, see this new Bret Stephens op-ed in the New York Times: “How to Destroy (What’s Left of) the Mainstream Media’s Credibility.”

As a result, GetReligion readers will not be surprised that this week’s “Crossroads” podcast focused on these themes (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

The key: My essay is not another hot-take on media bias and religion-news coverage.


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Adding a few sources for those post-midterms thumbsuckers on the religion beat

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Adding a few sources for those post-midterms thumbsuckers on the religion beat

When the dust has (thankfully) settled following Election Day, writers on politics, and on religion, and on religion-and-politics, will be analyzing what it all means for the future direction of U.S. culture.

Some matters on the agenda:

* Are the results a fluke, or a trend? What do they signal about 2024? Is the “religious right” a growing or receding force? How will the expected Trump 2024 campaign affect evangelicalism? What will Trumpism be post-Trump? Did the abortion issue hurt Republicans? Did religious liberty issues hurt Democrats? How do moral concerns shape inflation? Immigration? Crime? Ukraine?

* Then factions. What’s going on with the pivotal white Catholics? And Hispanic Catholics? Can Republicans ever make inroads among Black Protestants? Did religiously interesting new figures emerge among the Republicans’ record number of minority candidates?

* Here is a growing niche that should get its own sidebar: How crucial are non-religious voters for Democrats’ prospects?

* Oh, and how should journalists define “Christian nationalism” and how influential is that crowd anyway?

* And whatever else develops.

Specialists will be familiar with ReligionLink, a valuable service of the Religion News Association that, among other features, posts periodic memos on a specific topic in the news, providing detailed background, links to articles and proposed sources. Subscribe for free here.

Its October 18 posting laid out he midterm elections, listing no less than 76 background items from varied media and 25 expert sources. This material will remain just as useful for those post-election analyses next week and beyond.


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The New York Times fails to ask a key 'parental rights' question linked to Texas trans wars

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The New York Times fails to ask a key 'parental rights' question linked to Texas trans wars

No one in his or her right (or left) mind would expect the college of journalism cardinals at The New York Times to write a balanced story about one of the latest battles in Texas over core doctrines of the Sexual Revolution.

In this case, I am not referring to Gray Lady coverage of the state’s efforts to ban most abortions after unborn children have detectable heartbeats, which is about six weeks into pregnancies.

No, I am referring to a massive new story about Gov. Greg Abbott call for child-abuse investigations of parents who back appeals by their children and teens to begin medical efforts to transition to another gender. The double-decker headline is rather restrained, when one considers the level of outrage among the vast majority of Times-persons.

Texas Investigates Parents Over Care for Transgender Youth, Suit Says

The investigations by the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services started last week with an employee of the agency, according to the suit, after Gov. Greg Abbott called for such inquiries.

As I said, no one would expect the Times to do a balanced story on this kind of subject, one that is so close to the newspaper’s doctrinal heart.

I was, however, surprised that this story didn’t include (a) some kind of reference to the newspaper’s involvement in an important discussion of a related topic by two of America’s leading trans activists and medical professionals and (b) some input from religious conservatives — major players in Texas life — discussing whether Abbott’s actions limit parental rights in decisions affecting their children. Religious conservatives have been very concerned, in the past, about government efforts (see this ongoing Canada case) to punish parents who oppose transition efforts by their children (usually backed by a former spouse).

Back to the Times report. Here is some crucial material:

The investigations by the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services, which have not been previously reported, were started in response to an order from Mr. Abbott to the agency, the lawsuit says. The order followed a nonbinding opinion by the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, that parents who provide their transgender teenagers with puberty-suppressing drugs or other medically accepted treatments — which doctors describe as gender-affirming care — could be investigated for child abuse.


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