First things first: Readers need to know that Marvin Olasky has been a friend of mine for yearly three decades. If I was dangling off a cliff, I’d trust Olasky to hold the rope.
Through the years, Marvin and I have disagreed on many journalism issues and had some stimulating debates. For example: He was dead right when, in the first years of Internet life, he predicted that life in the digital world — think social media in particular — would undercut old-school standards of balance and objectivity in journalism. In GetReligion terms, think “Kellerism” and much of today’s New York Times.
Back to the present, and a pretty solid Times piece that is lighting up Twitter. Here’s the double-decker headline:
His Reasons for Opposing Trump Were Biblical. Now a Top Christian Editor Is Out.
A clash over culture and politics comes to World, a groundbreaking journalistic institution that covers evangelical Christians.
There is, of course, no way to leave Donald Trump out of this story, with Olasky submitting his resignation (he was planning to retire next summer) after a coup in the World board after several years of tensions. Among the hot-button issues, readers learn, were COVID-19 masks and voter fraud (#DUH).
As I said, the story is pretty good, with Olasky — rare, this — portrayed in the elite press as a good guy. However, there is one statement that I need to challenge right up front:
At one level, Mr. Olasky’s departure is just another example of the American news media sinking deeper into polarization, as one more conservative news outlet, which had almost miraculously retained its independence, is conquered by Mr. Trump.
Has the newsroom at World been “conquered by Trump”?
I would say that we do not know that, yet. It’s clear that the World board signed off on the creation of an ambitious World-branded commentary website — without Olasky’s approval as editor. But do we know that the news team will not bravely carry on with its work?
We do not know that, do we? We will see if promises are kept.
The key to all of this is that World — by which I mean Olasky — has never hidden the fact that the magazine has an openly-stated religious and cultural worldview that shapes its content. Olasky has written whole books on the topic of “biblical objectivity” and how his approach clashes with the objectivity and balance standards in the now-besieged American Model of the Press.
In a 2014 “Beliefs” feature on Olasky’s approach to journalism (“A Muckraking Magazine Creates a Stir Among Evangelical Christians”), I told the Times that Olasky has a biblical motive for the edgy brand of reporting seen at World:
“Marvin believes that sometimes you have to tear the scab off for healing to happen,” Terry Mattingly, the founder of the blog GetReligion.org, which tracks representations of religion in the secular media, said of Mr. Olasky. “He is running Rolling Stone for cultural conservative evangelicals. It’s just that Rolling Stone isn’t going to tell you what their Bible is — maybe it’s the Kinsey Report?” he said. “Marvin will hand you one of his.”
In my journalism professor days, mostly in Christian liberal arts colleges and while leading the Washington Journalism Center, I taught a faith-integration class addressing some of the Big Questions that students needed to ask about working in the mainstream press. Two of the key lectures addressed what I saw as the four most common “models” of journalism seen in Christian culture (click here for a .pdf summary).
One of the “four models” was Olasky’s “directed reporting. I had students read Olasky’s work for themselves. Here is a piece of that condensed version of these lectures:
In “Telling the Truth,” written in 1995, Olasky stated: “Liberal theory emphasizes the balancing of subjectivities: Specific detail A, which points a reader in one direction, should be balanced by specific detail B, which points the reader in another. A pro-something statement by Person X is followed by an anti-something statement from person Y. In practice, this objectivity has limitations: Reporters have never felt the need to balance anticancer statements with pro-cancer statements. In recent practice, secular-liberal reporters have seen pro-life concerns or ‘homophobia’ as cancerous, with other Christian beliefs as similarly harmful. But you should be aware that many reporters still publicly maintain their so-called objectivity.”
This leads to an Olasky quotation that is frequently used in features about his work: “Christian reporters should give equal space to a variety of perspectives only when the Bible is unclear. Editors who see leftist evangelicals as misled should still give them a chance to respond to questions — but a solidly Christian news publication should not be balanced. Its goal should be provocative and evocative, colorful and gripping, Bible- based news analysis.”
Again, that was written more than a quarter of a century ago.
The World board has stated that Olasky’s approach to the news will continue. The question is whether that approach will continue to be applied to, well, certain types of religious and political leaders. Take, for example, the magazine’s trailblazing work of sexual abuse in churches and other institutions.
That has ruffled feathers, for sure — especially when the moral standards Olasky once applied to Bill Clinton were applied to Donald Trump.
What does the new Times media-beat feature have to say? Here is the overture:
When Marvin Olasky gets angry emails from readers — more often than not about an exposé of wrongdoing at an evangelical church, or about a story that reflects poorly on Donald Trump — he has a stock reply.
“We think this is useful to the Church,” he tells disgruntled readers, “because we are also sinners.”
As the longtime editor of World, a Christian news organization that has a website, a biweekly magazine and a set of podcasts, Mr. Olasky has delivered a mix of hard news and watchdog articles about the evangelical realm under a journalistic philosophy he calls “biblical objectivity.”
It involves taking strong stands where the Bible is clear, which has led World to oppose abortion rights and support refugees, he says, and to follow reportable facts where the Bible doesn’t provide clear guidance.
Actually, World has done far more than cover the “evangelical realm.” With that in mind, here is one of the key statements in this piece. It’s safe to say that this is the thesis:
At a time when hot takes get the clicks, these articles offered something old-fashioned and hard for any community to take: accountability reporting.
OK, I’ll ask. Has the Gray Lady, in recent years, been willing to prod and even offend core Times readers to the degree that Olasky was willing to challenge his magazine’s choir? I would say “no.”
In terms of background, the Times noted that there was a time when Olasky had clout in GOP circles, with candidate and then President George W. Bush pushing Olasky’s calls for “compassionate conservatism.” It would have been nice if the Times had mentioned the historian’s bestseller on that subject: “Compassionate Conservatism: What It Is, What It Does, and How It Can Transform America.”
Olasky criticized Bush, as well as praising him. That raised eyebrows. The Times then noted:
The wave of troubles at World started four presidential campaigns later, when World at first seemed to reflect white evangelical leaders’ skepticism about Mr. Trump’s personal morality, and World’s polls of Christian leaders were widely cited as supporting the idea that Mr. Trump would have a problem with Christian voters.
By the general election, it was clear that, whatever leaders thought, Mr. Trump was popular in the pews. And so when World’s editors, in October 2016, declared Mr. Trump “unfit for power” on its cover because of his remarks about grabbing women, and demanded that he step aside, Mr. Olasky received about 2,000 emails, he said, about 80 percent of them disagreeing. (In a column two days later, Mr. Olasky also suggested that Hillary Clinton step aside for her “lies” and policy errors.)
And so forth and so on. This is must reading, especially for news consumers interested in the tensions inside niche-worldview publications on right and left.
Frankly, I cannot picture Olasky — a robust 71 — shutting down as a writer. He is a ridiculously productive man (I once watched him edit and write two or three World pieces on spotty airport WiFi during an hour waiting for a flight out of Istanbul). His sources will not vanish. This man knows things.
So, as one aging journalist to another, let me say to my friend — carry on.
FIRST IMAGE: A Pinterest image, featured at The Thrifty Couple website.