Cicely Tyson

Podcast: ProPublica probes for-profit hospice horrors, but ignores faith-based networks

Podcast: ProPublica probes for-profit hospice horrors, but ignores faith-based networks

Every now and then, your GetReligionistas run into a story that puts us in a real bind, in terms of the basic media-criticism work that we do here.

The nonprofit journalism group ProPublica, in this case working with The New Yorker, recently published a great example of this kind of report. We are talking about a deeply researched piece that is a must-read story — period. Reporter Ava Kofman’s work is painful, even agonizing, to read, for all the right reasons.

At the same time, the story is seriously lacking when it comes to exploring religious facts and beliefs that are essential to its subject, which is hospice care.

The feature does include a nod to the Christian history of hospice care, but avoids any meaningful discussion of the differences between the work done in faith-based hospice networks — which are massive — and what happens with some (maybe many) for-profit hospices, such as those at the hellish heart of this report. The headline: “Endgame: How the Visionary Hospice Movement Became a For-Profit Hustle.”

This must-read report was the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) and I will stress that this subject was deeply personal for host Todd Wilken and for me. Wilken is a Missouri-Synod Lutheran pastor and has years of experience assisting with end-of-life issues and questions. My father was a Southern Baptist pastor who spent the last decade of his ministry working in Houston’s hospital complex, include the Texas Children’s Hospital.

This story does a great job of the “follow the money” components of scandals linked to for-profit hospice care. Here is the anecdotal lede:

Over the years, Marsha Farmer had learned what to look for. As she drove the back roads of rural Alabama, she kept an eye out for dilapidated homes and trailers with wheelchair ramps. Some days, she’d ride the one-car ferry across the river to Lower Peach Tree and other secluded hamlets where a few houses lacked running water and bare soil was visible beneath the floorboards. Other times, she’d scan church prayer lists for the names of families with ailing members.


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It was hard to edit God out of Cicely Tyson's epic story, but some journalists gave it a try

It was hard to edit God out of Cicely Tyson's epic story, but some journalists gave it a try

It was hard to listen to Cicely Tyson talk about her life without recognizing the strong undercurrent of Christian faith in her words, deeds and also in her art. While remaining a proud, private, dignified woman, her faith was not something that she tried to hide.

The question here at GetReligion, of course, was whether any of that imagery and information would make it into the news coverage surrounding her death at the age of 96.

The answer was, of course, “yes” and “no.” Many of the obituaries mentioned her Tony-winning return to Broadway in 2013, at the age of 88, to play the unstoppable matriarch in Horton Foote’s classic, faith-driven play, “The Trip to Bountiful.” The show-stopping moment, night after night, was when Tyson would sing — joined by many in the audience — the classic hymn “Blessed Assurance.” It’s hard to avoid the content of lyrics such as these:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine; Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God; Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Savior all the day long.

If you were looking for the faith-free version of Tyson’s life, the natural place to turn was The New York Times.

This story did a great job of capturing her impact on American culture, especially in terms of the sacrifices she made to portray African-American life with style, power and dignity. Here are two crucial summary paragraphs on that essential theme:

In a remarkable career of seven decades, Ms. Tyson broke ground for serious Black actors by refusing to take parts that demeaned Black people. She urged Black colleagues to do the same, and often went without work. She was critical of films and television programs that cast Black characters as criminal, servile or immoral, and insisted that African-Americans, even if poor or downtrodden, should be portrayed with dignity.

Her chiseled face and willowy frame, striking even in her 90s, became familiar to millions in more than 100 film, television and stage roles, including some that had traditionally been given only to white actors. She won three Emmys and many awards from civil rights and women’s groups, and at 88 became the oldest person to win a Tony, for her 2013 Broadway role in a revival of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful.”

But the only reference to her Christian faith — negative, of course — came in this bite of biography:


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A Broadway revival that includes the classic hymn 'Blessed Assurance'

The other day, I wrote a post about the fact that many journalists struggle to understand, to be perfectly honest about it, the role that Christian faith plays in the African-American church. There is a tendency to see the black church as a political institution, and that’s that.


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