media bias

Closing one door: Whither 21st Century religion and our beleaguered news media?

Closing one door: Whither 21st Century religion and our beleaguered news media?

The Religion Guy wishes to underscore increasingly obvious aspects of 21st Century America: 

One: Religion is in crisis.

Two: The media are in crisis.

Three: Media treatment of religion is in crisis.

Therefore, as GetReligion.org disbands this week, something like this website has never been more needed.

Will anyone again provide informed running assessments of this complex and emotion-laden journalistic beat? Please note that my question has also been raised this week by Kenneth Woodward, The Guy’s toe-to-toe competitor for two decades as the Newsweek and Time religion writers during the newsmagazines’ heyday.

Starting February 13, The Guy will be posting new analytical articles at Religion Unplugged, but on the way out the door feels urgency to reflect on the three points above.

The third, how the media handle — and mishandle — religion, has been amply documented most every day on this very website, so we turn to the realities facing the other two. Feel free to explore the 20 years of that work in the GetReligion archive in the future.

On number one, U.S. religion’s Great Depression is apparent anywhere you look, whether survey data on the rising unaffiliated “nones” or church groups’ own yearly counts on Sunday School enrollment, weddings, baptisms and funerals. Fellow religion writers can add many more particulars.

Gallup has invaluable data on cultural mood swings from polls that have posed the same questions across so many years. Since 1973, Gallup has asked Americans whether they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in a wide list of social institutions. Public trust has been tumbling across the board in the 21st Century, so that only the military and small business now command confidence from majorities (and the military numbers are now headed down).


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Farewell from Moscow: This American ran into GetReligion online and never stopped reading

Farewell from Moscow: This American ran into GetReligion online and never stopped reading

To be honest, I still can’t remember how I found GetReligion.

Thanks to Google, I was able to find what I’m guessing what my first GetReligion shout-out — it was a post by Julia Duin some seven years ago about the Southern Baptist megachurch leader Robert Jeffress claiming that God had given the once and potentially future President Donald Trump the authority to kill North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un.

To be honest, Jeffress’ comments were made in 2017, which was an era whose troubles I now view with a kind of nostalgia. Sigh, I used to worry about COVID-19.

The tip I’d submitted to this weblog about that story reveals that I had only begun learning to critically view the media and the world in the way GetReligion taught to me and many other readers and listeners. Back then, I thought it was funny to point out the New York Daily News’ editorial incompetence for having published the sentence “though shalt not kill.” You know, as opposed to “thou shalt not kill.” It’s part of that whole Ten Commandments thing.


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Crossroads: Failing to 'get' religion helped create schism between readers and newsrooms

Crossroads: Failing to 'get' religion helped create schism between readers and newsrooms

Questions. Yes, we have some final (sort of) questions about journalism and religion news.

One one level, this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) focused on all those headlines about the red ink and devastating layoffs in elite newsrooms such as Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. For a quick summary of the drama, see this mini-report at Axios.

The news is staggering for people like me who have spent decades in journalism education — encouraging students to seek careers in traditional and online newsrooms at the local, regional and national level.

Thus, it’s hard to cheer about these disasters in the lives of many professionals. However, millions of millions of Americans — especially in red zip codes — have given up on the mainstream press. What about them? Should they cheer as major news organizations implode?

This week’s podcast is the last one that will be featured here at GetReligion, as we close a week from today, on this weblog’s 20th birthday. However, future episodes of Crossroads will continue to be available through the podcast page at the GetReligion.org archive, at my own Tmatt.net, the Religion Unplugged website, Lutheran Public Radio and the Apple podcasts page.

In this (sort of) finale, it was obvious to ask: Does the current newsroom employment crisis have anything to do with decades of journalism leaders failing to, you know, “get” religion when covering one of the most complex religious cultures in the Western world?

After recording the podcast, I had a flashback to a story that Rod “Live Not By Lies” Dreher shared about his years at the Dallas Morning News. Then, lo and behold, Dreher retold key parts of the story in a new Substack post (“Journalism Continues To Crash, Burn”).

A few of his colleagues were worried about the increasingly liberal — in terms of religion, culture and politics — product that the News was producing for the region it served.

“It aggravated us to no end that our readers were mostly conservatives — they really were; we had the audience research to prove it — but too many in the newsroom were bound and determined to act as if that wasn’t true.”


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If a NFL coaching legend quotes scripture in a press conference, does it make a sound?

If a NFL coaching legend quotes scripture in a press conference, does it make a sound?

One more time.

For years, Bobby Ross, Jr., and I have written lots of posts about religion-shaped holes in mainstream sports coverage. Apparently, very few GetReligion readers were interested in this topic (as opposed to, let’s say, the American audience for a prime NFL game).

But we soldiered on. This brings me — one last time — to a curious case study involving my Baltimore Ravens (who are still in the Super Bowl hunt, at this point).

Recently, a commentator on one of the dozens of NFL commentary shows asked an interesting question: Why don’t we talk more about the ongoing success of John Harbaugh, the Ravens head coach since 2008? No one had a good answer.

But I will ask a related question: After the Raven’s 34-20 playoff victory over the Houston Texans, which video clip was easier to find? The one (a) with Harbaugh showing his dad-style dancing moves in the joyful locker room or the one (b) in which he opened his press conference, with a very serious tone of voice, with a favorite Bible quote?

Click those Google links and you will see that, once again, the role that Christian faith (Catholic, to be specific) plays in the life and work of this future Hall of Fame coach is a “conservative” news story. Period. The viral dancing moves are much more important.

Which element of these two elements of Harbaugh’s personality is the most important in his life and work? The most accurate answer is “BOTH.”

However, I suspect that Harbaugh would say that his faith is more important. This brings me to the point that Ross and I have tried to make about the faith-shaped hole in most sports news coverage (and Clemente Lisi has noted this in global soccer coverage, as well). We are not stating that it is automatically news when sports personalities talk about their faith. It is new when they consistently cite their faith as a crucial factor how and why they do what they do in their career and life.

In this case, Fox News (naturally) went with the basic facts: “Ravens head coach John Harbaugh recites Bible verse to open press conference after playoff win.”


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Flashback to 1997: Times legend A.M. Rosenthal on press ignoring religious persecution

Flashback to 1997: Times legend A.M. Rosenthal on press ignoring religious persecution

The U.S. State Department churns out many newsworthy reports, a few of which make news while the rest vanish into circular files.

In July [1997], the state department finally released its first report on religious persecution in 78 nations. A spokesperson reminded reporters that it was Congress that mandated the 56- page document's emphasis on the persecution of Christians. The state department, stressed John Shattuck, doesn't view this "as more important than other topics involving religious freedom."

On Capitol Hill, critics noted that the report was six months overdue and came weeks after pivotal congressional votes on Most Favored Nation status for China. It created a few media ripples, then vanished. The Religion Newswriters Association did name the state department report as its eighth most important news story of 1997.

On Nov. 16, there was another newsworthy event – a global day of prayer on behalf of the persecuted church. About 8 million Americans in 50,000 Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations took part, pledging themselves to keep praying and to seek changes that would help persecuted believers.

This event received even less news coverage than the state department report. The end-of-the-year ballot mailed to religion-news specialists didn't even mention it.

"That's astonishing. It's quite depressing, actually," said retired New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal. "That state department report was nothing – it was a non-story. It was patched together out of old information and then they delayed it as long as possible to minimize its impact. The only reason that report even existed was because of the movement against religious persecution and all of the pressure it has been putting on Congress. That's the story."

The day of prayer was even perfectly timed to justify major news coverage.


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Podcast: A.M. Rosenthal kept calling for accurate coverage of religion and persecution

Podcast: A.M. Rosenthal kept calling for accurate coverage of religion and persecution

Does anyone remember fax machines?

This week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on a sad, but very old reality in mainstream news coverage — the lack of mainstream news coverage of the massacres that take place year after year in Nigeria at Christmas.

To put this trend in context, I backed up to an “On Religion” column that I wrote in 1996 that opened like this, focusing on a tragedy that was unfolding in Sudan:

It's possible to buy a Christian slave in southern Sudan for as little as $15.

Last year's going rate for parents who want to buy back their own kidnapped child was five head of cattle – about $400. A boy might cost 10 head. An exiled leader in Sudan's Catholic Bishops Conference reports that 30,000 children have been sold into slavery in the Nuba mountains. In six years, more than 1.3 million Christian and other non-Muslim people have been killed in Sudan – more than Bosnia, Chechnya and Haiti combined.

A Jewish activist, Michael J. Horowitz of the Hudson Center, faxed my column to the legendary A. M. Rosenthal, the retired editor of the New York Times and a former foreign correspondent who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting. This led to many “On My Mind” columns at the Times, including one in which Rosenthal noted that Horowitz “screamed me awake” on the undercovered reality that is religious persecution.

That fax contact led to some conversations — via email and telephone — in which Rosenthal and I talked about the journalism realities behind a global story that was shamefully undercovered then and that remains the case to this day.

When Rosenthal died in 2006, I wrote a column (“Rosenthal refused to remain silent”) that noted:

Some human-rights activists are convinced that one of the reasons he lost his column and was forced to leave the Times was because he wouldn't stop writing about the persecution of religious minorities around the world.

Rosenthal couldn't understand why so many journalists just didn't "get" that story.


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

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: Once again, why is religion a 'green frog' topic in many mainstream newsrooms?

Podcast: Once again, why is religion a 'green frog' topic in many mainstream newsrooms?

The news editor at the Champaign-Urbana News Gazette — my first real newsroom gig — had an interesting name for for a certain kind of over-the-top reader who would call to complain about the news.

It didn’t really matter if the reader’s criticism was right or wrong. It was all about tone and, especially, whether or not the reader was complaining about a subject that editors took seriously.

My editor referred to these callers as “green frogs.”

You see, many of these adamant readers were complaining about issues linked to religion, morality and politics. (At that time, the born-again Jimmy Carter was in the White House and the Religious Right was just starting to organize.)

As the complaining went on and on, the news editor’s eyes would glaze and he would put the caller on hold. That’s when I would hear the following, since everyone knew that I wanted to become a religion-beat pro: “Mattingly, there’s a green frog on the phone! You talk to them.”

This brings us to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), in which host Todd Wilken asked a question that, in various forms, I have heard a thousand times over the past 40+ years.

Yes, that would be: Why don’t journalists “get” religion?

However, there are many variations. Why don’t editors hire trained religion-beat reporters? Why do newsrooms mess up the basic facts in some many religion stories? Why do many, not all, journalists IGNORE essential religion issues and themes in important news and events? Why do religious issues show up so often in studies probing media bias? Long ago, back when journalists in major newsrooms dared to fill out surveys about their work, why did half of pros in elite newsrooms write the word “none” in the space describing their religious faith?

I could go on and on. My chosen wording is this: Why don’t newsroom managers handle religion news with the same old-school journalism methodology — hire reporters who have training and experience on this beat and let them do their work — that they apply to subjects that they respect (such as politics, sports, law, arts, business, etc.)?


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

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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