Los Angeles Times

Podcast: Any religion ghosts in Writers Guild silence on bloody Hamas attack on Israel?

Podcast: Any religion ghosts in Writers Guild silence on bloody Hamas attack on Israel?

If you look up a standard definition of “antisemitism,” and commentaries that apply the term to public life, you will probably find references to mass media.

Consider, for example, this language from the “Working Definition of Antisemitism” commentary from the American Jewish committee. The definition itself: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The case-study material begins with these explanatory notes, the first two in a list of 10:

* Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.

* Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

The phrase “controlling the media” loomed over this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which focused on a Los Angeles Times story with this double-decker headline:

How the Israel-Hamas war is dividing Hollywood

Nerves are fraying. Relationships are being strained to the breaking point. Words are being wielded like weapons.

For decades, claims that Jews “control” the media have included chatter about Jews “controlling” Hollywood.

The key word is “control,” as opposed to decades of writing — often by Jewish scholars — about the strong and unique role Jews have played in Hollywood life, in terms of creative skills and business clout. Consider this classic book by Neal Gabler, “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood.”


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Religious folks played (#surprise) role in take-down of Beverly Hills late-term abortion clinic

Religious folks played (#surprise) role in take-down of Beverly Hills late-term abortion clinic

California never lacks for culture wars of one sort or another.

It’s either Gov. Gavin Newsom threatening to sanction and heavily fine a school district for not embracing elementary school curriculum that mentions gay rights icon Harvey Milk.

Or it’s (Newsom again) closing California churches during the pandemic while allowing the film industry to stay open; an action that led to a Supreme Court decision against him.

Or it’s a clinic in Beverly Hills that was all set to allow third-trimester abortions until a group of activists —whose identity remains rather murky – prevented it from opening. The more I dug into this story, the more I realized this was a major take-down of an abortion clinic by protestors of faith.

First, the setting of it all, or part of the story, from the Los Angeles Times:

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade last summer, Beverly Hills officials protested by lighting up the plaza in front of City Hall in a glow of pink.

Council members had already voted 5 to 0 for a resolution backing abortion rights. “We have stood up and spoken out when we’ve seen human rights taken away,” then-Mayor Lili Bosse stated after the vote. “This is something I wholeheartedly support with all my soul.”

But little more than a year later, the affluent city has become a battleground over reproductive rights.

An abortion provider that planned to open a clinic in Beverly Hills offering procedures beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy is alleging that the city “colluded and conspired” with antiabortion activists to force out the clinic.

What I find a bit disingenuous about such pieces is they don’t say what “beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy” means. Twenty-four weeks is when a child could — a conditional “could,” but a solid chance — live outside the womb. And beyond that, the chances get better with each week.

(The Centers for Disease Control, in its 2020 figures, estimated about 1% of all abortions occurred after 21 weeks; that is still 6,203 babies; if you accept the higher Guttmacher figures for that year, that is 9,301 births that never happened.)

Because the unborn child is fairly good size at this point, he or she must be dismembered piece by piece to aborted. You won’t find a description of this in current articles on abortion access, but it’s the inconvenient truth, to paraphrase Al Gore. Or the child gets an injection of lidocaine into its heart.

Which is why local residents — not to mention the landlord — may have had a slight problem with this happening in their neighborhood.


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Blue states vs. red ones: Does the New York Times team get why the two are parting?

Blue states vs. red ones: Does the New York Times team get why the two are parting?

Recently I was talking with a friend who is homeschooling her daughter in the eastern part of Washington state, which is far more conservative than the Seattle area, where I live. She was agonizing over whether to return her child to public school.

She’s not afraid of Covid; Washington state was one of the most careful states on that score, and masks were mandated longer here than most other places. What she really feared was the state’s liberal sex ed law, passed when Covid was beginning to ravage the local population. Washington state was the first place in the nation to have Covid, but what was our governor, Jay Inslee, doing at the time? Pushing through a graphic sex ed curriculum. The floor debate on it went on until 2 a.m., as I described here.

A recall election to zero out the curriculum failed.

Which is all to say that when the New York Times ran a piece headlined, “New Laws Moves Blue and Red States Further Apart,” it didn’t mention some of the more obvious reasons why people are walking away. Guess what? Many of these reasons are linked to issues are linked to morality, culture and religion.

SACRAMENTO — After the governor of Texas ordered state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children, California lawmakers proposed a law making the state a refuge for transgender youths and their families.

When Idaho proposed a ban on abortions that empowers relatives to sue anyone who helps terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, nearby Oregon approved $15 million to help cover the abortion expenses of patients from out-of-state.

The Idaho ban is slated to begin April 22, unless some federal judge knocks it down. Abortion clinics in Oregon, particularly Bend, are expecting a deluge, as the central Oregon clinic is the nearest one to Boise that has easy abortion access. (Other nearer cities, like Walla Walla, Wash., have a Planned Parenthood clinic, but that clinic doesn’t do abortions after 10 weeks. And clinics in Salt Lake City require a 72-hour waiting period.)


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Happy birthday (I guess): GetReligion will keep highlighting 'religion ghosts' in the news

Happy birthday (I guess): GetReligion will keep highlighting 'religion ghosts' in the news

Growing old is complicated.

This is especially true during these bizarre COVID-19 days in which one day runs into another and sometimes it’s hard to remember what is what and when is when.

Oh well, whatever, nevermind. I being this up because GetReligion.org launched on Feb. 2, 2004 (even though the first post was written a day earlier). I think that means we just turned 17 and are headed into year No. 18, but my aging mind goes rather numb just thinking about it.

This blog has always had two essential goals.

The first is to highlight what we call “ghosts” in mainstream news coverage, as in essential facts and themes about religion that journalists — on lots of beats — frequently miss when covering news stories, big and small. A side effect of that task has been urging newsroom managers to hire experienced religion-beat reporters to strengthen their newsrooms.

Goal No. 2 is related to that. We have tried, year after year, to defend what is frequently called the American Model of the Press (see this .pdf) — with its emphasis on accurate, fair-minded, even balanced coverage of stories in which there are competing, or even clashing, viewpoints. For a taste of what that sounds like, check out this famous 2003 memo by the late, great, Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll. Here’s a crucial chunk of that, after his critique of a one-sided story:

The reason I'm sending this note to all section editors is that I want everyone to understand how serious I am about purging all political bias from our coverage. We may happen to live in a political atmosphere that is suffused with liberal values (and is unreflective of the nation as a whole), but we are not going to push a liberal agenda in the news pages of the Times.

I'm no expert on abortion, but I know enough to believe that it presents a profound philosophical, religious and scientific question, and I respect people on both sides of the debate. A newspaper that is intelligent and fair-minded will do the same.

In recent years, economic, cultural and political forces have greatly weakened the American Model of the Press (see this recent Celemente Lisi post on that topic). Some people say this model is outdated, in a digital age in which opinion is cheap and information is expensive and the safest business model — producing mouse-clicks and loyal subscribers — is to tell your niche audience what it wants to hear.


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Lies, damned lies, statistics: Shifts in religious voting were crucial for Joe Biden — maybe

In the 2020 election, what happened with the religious vote that was seen as so crucial to President Donald Trump’s upset win four years ago?

Take your pick:

* Not much changed, according to Religion News Service’s Yonat Shimron.

* A small decline in Trump support among White Catholics represented a slight but significant change, NPR’s Tom Gjelten proposed.

* President-elect Joe Biden “swung the religious vote” just enough to defeat Trump, Politico’s Gabby Orr reported.

* White evangelicals “stuck by” Trump and, despite Biden’s win, “still took heart in their strong presence at the polls and the GOP’s success in down-ballot races,” according to The Associated Press’ Elana Schor and David Crary.

* Biden closed the gap among White evangelicals to the tune of “well over four million votes nationally,” Biden supporter Michael Wear proclaimed in a New York Times op-ed.

Wait, what?

“I think there's been a bit of, ‘I'm going to read whichever exit polls make my efforts seem fruitful,’ among a certain group of people in the post-election time period,” said Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S.

The problem, according to Burge, is that exit polling “is very unreliable.” He pointed to a USA Today column by Robert Griffin making the case that more time is needed for reliable analysis.

“The only data that I am trusting right now comes from the CCES. Which is not an exit poll but is the gold standard for political science now,” Burge said, referring to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.


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Jewish businesses in Los Angeles ransacked in riots, but only Israeli and Jewish media care

Not long after the first riots linked to the death of George Floyd had erupted, I realized a fact that hadn’t been emphasized at all in most media: How huge swaths of major cities had been destroyed by rioters.

It took the New York Post’s video on the wreck that was downtown Manhattan — block after block after block of broken glass and boarded-up storefronts — (plywood and board-up companies are making a killing these days) for me to see a side of the protests that most media weren’t showing us.

Out on the Left Coast, the ruin was similar. The Oregonian called riot-plagued Portland “a city of plywood.”

Since then, images have emerged of a darker narrative, with rioters targeting Jewish businesses. Israeli newspapers ran with this angle this past Saturday, but by the end of the day, there was nothing about the Jewish vandalism to be found on the New York Times website. Usually the Times is pretty up on anti-Semitism, but it was easier to find a piece about Anna Wintour than any mentions of vandalized Jews.

So now we’re avoiding news about anti-Semitism in these riots urging diversity? American Jewish media have been on this for some weeks. The Forward ran this on June 1:

(Local businessman Jonathan) Friedman said he believes Jewish businesses were targeted specifically. “All Jewish businesses and temples in the area were either broken into or had graffiti tagged on their walls. I understand the demonstrators’ frustration, but we have nothing to do with what happened to George Floyd.”

Do read that story, as it’s heartrending, especially the part about the Iranian Jewish immigrant whose jewelry store was completely ransacked. Insurance won’t cover much of the loss, so he’s ruined.

Arutz Sheva, an Israeli TV network, covered the riots with this video.

Now, where’s the mainstream press on this obvious religious targeting? I haven’t seen a thing about this in the Los Angeles Times, not to mention other media. Have you?


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(Final) Friday Five: 2019 top posts, Galli vs. Trump, 'Olive, come out,' casino priest, holy crop duster

Every week in Friday Five (and if you missed the news, this is the last one), we’ve highlighted GetReligion’s most-clicked post of the previous seven days. We’ll do that again this time.

But since it’s the end of the year, I thought readers also might be interested in knowing about some of our most popular posts of the entire year.

Our No. 1 most popular post of the year — and it wasn’t close — was Clemente Lisi’s viral April 15 commentary titled “If churches keep getting vandalized in France, should American news outlets cover the story?”

At No. 2: Julia Duin’s May 10 analysis headlined “Catholic student gunned down in Colorado; few reporters ask crucial questions about shooters.”

Among other contributors, Editor Terry Mattingly’s top post was his May 21 reflection that “Tim Conway was a kind soul, with a gentle sense of humor. Maybe his faith played a role in that?” Richard Ostling got his most clicks with his April 20 explainer “Regarding Israel and the End Times, what is Dispensationalism? What is the rapture?” My top post was my May 29 piece “When it comes to Alex Trebek's 'mind-boggling' cancer recovery, have prayers really helped?”

Now, let’s dive into the (final) Friday Five:


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Year in review: Ten religion stories that stuck with me in 2019, including one of my own

Did Santa bring everything you wanted for Christmas?

I hope so.

As we head toward a new year, I wanted to pull a few items out of my gift bag.

Here, in no particular order, are 10 of the most memorable religion stories that I read (and one I even wrote) in 2019:

1. As his daughter lay in a pool of blood in an El Paso Walmart, a pastor held fast to his faith, Los Angeles Times

In an Aug. 8 post, I praised Times national correspondent David Montero’s front-page feature on the parents of an El Paso, Texas, shooting victim. I described it as “emotional, heart-wrenching and maybe the best religion story you'll read all year.” I stand by that statement.

Here (in no particular order) are 10 of the most memorable religion stories that I read (and one I even wrote) in 2019:

2. “Slavery and Religion: 400 years,” Religion News Service.
RNS national correspondent Adelle M. Banks’ compelling series focused on slavery and religion as Americans commemorated the 400th anniversary of the forced arrival of enslaved Africans in Virginia. Datelines included New York City, Montgomery, Ala., and Jamestown, Va.


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Los Angeles Times vs. Fuller Seminary: Is fair, accurate coverage even possible these days?

The Los Angeles Times hasn’t had a religion reporter in years and the newspaper’s lapses in religion coverage get embarrassing after awhile.

Such was their Nov. 21 story about a lesbian student at Fuller Seminary who is suing the school because they expelled her after they learned she was married to a woman. As I read it, certain parts sounded quite familiar until I realized I’d commented on a similar story by Religion News Service last July.

Once again, I have to remind folks that doctrinal covenants, creeds and behavior codes are something students agree to, and often sign a document attesting their compliance to, when they enroll. They are choosing to join a voluntary association defined by a set of doctrines, some about moral theology.

So here we go, again.

Joanna Maxon, a 53-year-old Christian mother of two, was searching for ways to advance in her career as a supervisor and began looking into graduate schools.

She decided on Fuller Theological Seminary, a religious graduate school based in Pasadena, because it combined things she valued: her faith and her studies.

We know the middle of this story — they kicked her out.

Now, Maxon, who lives with her wife Tonya Minton in Fort Worth, is suing Fuller, alleging the college violated Title IX rules that forbid educational institutions from discriminating against students on the basis of sex.

Paul Southwick, Maxon’s attorney, alleges the school also violated the Unruh Civil Rights Act and is seeking compensation of at least $500,000 to cover attorney fees and Maxon’s federally funded student loans, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in a U.S. District Court in Central California.

Southwick said that because Fuller accepted federal aid and had not received a religious exemption, it must adhere to federal laws, including Title IX.

OK, did anyone bother to look at the sexual standards page on Fuller’s web site?


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