GetReligion
Monday, March 31, 2025

Philadelphia

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Popemania, the sequel: Have we reached overload on coverage of Francis' visit to U.S.?

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Yesterday, we contemplated how much coverage of Pope Francis' first-ever visit to the U.S. is too much.

Paul Glader is a veteran journalist who spent 10 years with The Wall Street Journal and now teaches writing, journalism and business-related courses at The King's College (not to mention serving as director of the McCandlish Phillips Journalism Institute at The King's College in New York City, which now includes GetReligion).

Count Glader among those who believe the coverage has reached the breaking point.

Others, including longtime Oklahoman business reporter (and my good friend) Steve Lackmeyer, say they'd much rather hear about the Pope than the Donald.

But former GetReligionista and current superstar Washington Post religion writer Sarah Pulliam Bailey worries that other breaking news could steal Francis' spotlight.

My friend Sarah now lives inside the Beltway, by the way. Here in the real world of Oklahoma, we had never heard of Boehner. I kid. I kid ...

Meanwhile, Jim Warren, chief media writer for the Poynter Institute, the respected journalism think tank, remains concerned over what he dubs "Fawning Over Francis":


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Popemania: How much coverage of Francis' visit to U.S. is too much?

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I got my first taste of Popemania in 1999.

The Oklahoman put me on an airplane and sent me to cover Pope John Paul II's visit to St. Louis.

In my introductory post with GetReligion, I made this confession about that experience:

After nearly 10 years in the newspaper business, I knew how to chase fire trucks and police cars and burn the midnight oil with city councils and school boards. But my knowledge of the Roman Catholic Church was scant. Honestly, I had no idea what a diocese was. I didn't know the difference between a bishop and a cardinal. I had heard of the pope.
Despite a mild case of fear and trembling, I researched the basics of Catholic faith and prepared to handle the assignment. I wrote three or four Page 1 stories the week of the pope's visit. My favorite focused on a youth event where Catholic teens jammed to the ear-piercing beat of DC Talk's "Jesus Freak" before welcoming to the stage a gray-haired pontiff who walked with a cane.

No doubt, I perfected the unfine art of #PapalGoofs long before hashtags were cool.

My first pope story was a Page 1 Sunday advance on Oklahomans making the trek to see their spiritual leader in person. For The Oklahoman, John Paul's visit was a local story as much as a national and international headline.

All these years later, the same remains true for newspapers across the U.S.

While much of the local and regional coverage focuses on parishioners making the pilgrimage, a reader pointed us to a nuanced profile of Francis in the Dayton Daily News in Ohio:


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Washington Post feature sticks Chaput inside an 'omniscient anonymous' voice box

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When it comes to biblical images of good and evil, you start off with God, as opposed to Satan, and then you have Christ, as opposed to the mysterious end-times tyrant called the Antichrist.

Now with that in mind, it's safe to say that in current news speak, Pope Francis is pretty much the top of the heap when it comes to good-guy status. It really doesn't matter that the edited Francis who appears in most mainstream news coverage ("Who am I to judge?") is not quite the same pope who appears in the full texts of his homilies and writings ("It is not 'progressive' to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life").

Thus, it's safe to say that calling a Catholic archbishop the anti-Francis is not a compliment.

Apparently, there are Catholics who have pinned that label on Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput and they have shared their views with The Washington Post. Readers do not know who these Catholics (and probably some journalists) are, however, because that would require Post editors to ask some of their reporters to attribute crucial information to named sources. That would be old-school journalism. That would be bad, or so it seems.

The new Post profile of Chaput contains some interesting information, including some drawn from pieces of an email interview with the archbishop. It is also positive that Post editors posted the email-interview text online. I wonder if this was a condition attached to the interview, or whether editors realized that it would be awkward if Chaput posted the text, thus allowing readers to see what he actually said. Either way, this was a constructive act.

(At this point I will stress, as I always do, that I met Chaput decades ago when he was a young Capuchin-Franciscan priest and campus minister in urban Denver and I was a newcomer on the local religion beat. We have been talking about issues of faith, mass media and popular culture ever since.)

Let's return to those anonymous Catholic voices. The Post piece opens with an anecdote about Chaput's skill at blunt, quotable remarks, some of which have been known to anger those on the other side of hot-button issues in public life. Then it launches into a classic example of the "omniscient anonymous voice" narrative that has, in recent months, dominated much of this newspaper's coverage of moral, cultural and religious issues.

This long summary passage – the story's thesis – frames the contents of the entire piece. Try to find some clearly identified sources.


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#RNA2015: Yes, Peter Smith wins again as Religion Newswriters Association honors best of the Godbeat

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We don't play favorites here at GetReligion.

OK, sometimes we do — such as where Pittsburgh Post-Gazette religion writer Peter Smith is concerned.

When it comes to quality journalism on the religion beat, a Peter Smith byline generally is a slam dunk.

So we weren't surprised over the weekend when Smith won the Religion Newswriters Association's first-place award for religion reporting at metropolitan newspapers.

Again.

The Pittsburgh writer was just one of a number of Godbeat all-stars who received recognition at the RNA's annual awards banquet in Philadelphia (see the full list of winners).

You can find links to all the winning stories on RNA's website.

Smith's first-place entry included his in-depth project on immigrant religion — the subject of a 5Q+1 interview last November.


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Associated Press editors seem to be saying, 'Who are we to report on Catholic teachings?'

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Just the other day, I praised The New York Times – mildly – for making a smidgen of a journalistic attempt to frame the infamous "Who am I to judge?" ad lib by Pope Francis with information that hinted at what he was talking about. Today, I want to note that Associated Press editors appear, in one distressing case, to have lost all interest in journalism about a related Catholic case.

Once again, for those inclined to sweat the details, here is the YouTube link for that famous encounter between the pontiff and the press. It's crucial to remember that he is addressing the case of a specific priest and the issue of a "gay lobby" in the church. The problem, the pope states, is when people rally around the gay issue, thus forming a "lobby." Here is some of that context:

... If a person, lay or priest or Sister, has committed a sin and then has converted, the Lord forgives, and when the Lord forgives, the Lord forgets and this is important for our life. When we go to confession and truly say: “I have sinned in this,” the Lord forgets and we don’t have the right not to forget, because we run the risk that the Lord won’t forget our [sins]. That’s a danger. This is important: a theology of sin. I think so many times of Saint Peter: he committed one of the worst sins, which is to deny Christ, and with this sin he was made Pope. We must give it much thought.
But, returning to your more concrete question: in this case, I’ve done the investigatio previa and we found nothing. This is the first question. Then you spoke of the gay lobby. Goodness knows! So much is written of the gay lobby. I still have not met one who will give me the identity card with “gay." They say that they exist. I think that when one meets a person like this, one must distinguish the fact of being a gay person from the fact of doing a lobby, because not all lobbies are good. That’s bad. If a person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge him?

Now there is another quote in there which the pope underlined, the one that says, "This is important: A theology of sin." How often have you seen t-shirts with Pope Francis saying that as part of his ongoing emphasis on the need for Confession?

But I digress.


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Philly Inquirer stories on fired gay Catholic educator lack some basic questions and answers

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It’s the same story we've been reading a lot about this year: A Catholic school fires a loyal, some would say "faithful," but gay worker.

The school in question this time is a community on the Philadelphia Main Line extending west out of town. The director of religious education was outed by two parents; one of whom went to the archdiocese of Philadelphia to complain. Consequently, the DRE found herself out of a job.

And to heighten the media drama, of course, Pope Francis is visiting the area in September. The Philadelphia Inquirer story on it all starts thus:

The e-mail left many parents at the private Catholic school upset and confused. The well-respected director of religious education had just been fired.
Nell Stetser, principal of Waldron Mercy Academy, an elementary school in Merion, sent the e-mail Friday to say that Margie Winters was out of a job after eight years…Winters married her wife in Boston in 2007, seven years before a federal judge struck down as unconstitutional Pennsylvania's 18-year-old law banning gay marriage…
Winters said she and her wife "kept a really low profile" about their relationship at the school.
"I actually had a conversation with the principal a few weeks after I was hired to say, how should I handle this," said Winters, adding that she was advised that she could be open about her life with the faculty but to avoid discussing it with students' parents.

So the plot thickens.


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The high cost of waiting for the action in Rome

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Friends, Romans and other anxious news consumers, some of you may not have seen the following update from Poynter.org about the current status of one of America’s most skilled scribes on all things inside-Catholic:


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