Will someone please tell editors at the Washington Post how to cover protests fairly?

Recently I saw that the Washington Post was running a story about drag queens, so I began reading it until I realized it was sheer puffery on behalf of the author and undisguised bigotry against some unnamed religious protestors.

Then I looked up the name of the reporter who’d written this piece and I saw she was the same one who wrote a lyrical ode to a woman who was organizing demonstrations outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavannaugh.

We typically don’t criticize reporters by name here at GetReligion unless the offense is truly bad and there are consistent patterns. We focus on the stilted point of view; the things left unsaid; the side that got ignored. But when the reporter does the same thing over and over again, it’s time to say enough.

I’ve reached that point with Post reporter Ellie Silverman, who covers protests and activism. Both these topics involve conflict; both sides of a conflict have real live people in their midst and these people deserve a hearing, no matter how much the reporter may personally feel about a matter.

Silverman doesn’t appear to get that concept.

We all have covered movements and public events that require us to interview participants with which we disagree. The mark of a professional is be adept enough at covering the matter, neither side knows how you feel about the topic.

This isn’t the case with Silverman’s stories. In her latest, she focuses on drag queens and, obviously, her inability to understand why religious folks have a problem with drag-queen performances for children:

Lily Pastor knew who she was and wanted to celebrate it. So, last month, she joined about 50 other volunteers to turn a Capitol Hill sidewalk into a rainbow-filled dance party outside Crazy Aunt Helen’s, a restaurant that was hosting a story time event with a drag queen.
Anti-trans protesters had gathered across the street and were deriding hormone therapy, a treatment that provided Pastor a way to feel more like herself. But Pastor said standing alongside the people she met — a trans man, a queer teacher, straight allies — was empowering.

Here we go again: Hollywood doesn't 'get' America, so maybe religion is part of that?

Every decade or so, power players in Hollywood discover that there are millions of Americans who do not mind buying tickets to see movies that contain overtly religious symbols, themes and even characters.

I’ve been covering this story since the 1980s. It’s fascinating how new generations of reporters manage to work up a sense of culture shock about this.

For example, consider that much-discussed Atlantic feature back in 2005 that ran with this headline: “Can Jesus Save Hollywood?”

Another five or six years later, the discussion of niche-Christian entertainment was still creating buzz. The conservative interfaith journal First Things ran a provocative piece with this headline: “Is ‘Christian’ the new ‘Gay’?” Sociologist D. Michael Lindsay, at that time the president of Gordon College, responded to a question about that equation:

This comes from a quote that one woman who I interviewed in Hollywood recounted to me a story that she had where the conversation basically was a Hollywood producer telling her that it had become new and interesting for committed Christians to “come out” in Hollywood. And they actually used that language of “coming out” where one publicly identifies in this way. I think what it really reflects is although historically Christianity has been a very powerful force in this country, within the pockets of elite cultural life — in Hollywood, at universities like Harvard and Yale and the rarefied heights of arts and entertainment — being a deeply committed person of faith, whatever that faith tradition may be, is seen as unusual or odd. There’s pressure when you’re in those high positions not to be too public about your faith and certainly not a faith that is evangelistic in approach because that’s seen as overbearing or narrow-minded.

Like I said, this is “old” news. This trend will go on and on — because America is basically a red v. blue puzzle these days and it’s hard to ignore the evidence that “pew gap” statistics play some role in that.

That David French guy — much hated by Trumpian conservatives and lots of illiberal progressives — had a provocative summary of the situation in his must-read book “Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” Here is a summary of that French thesis from a new essay I wrote for the journal Religion & Liberty about the death of the old-school American Model of the Press:

The bottom line: Americans are divided by their choices in news and popular culture, choosing to live in protective silos of digital content. America remains the developing world’s most religious nation, yet its secularized elites occupy one set of zip codes, while most religious believers live in another. These armies share no common standards about "facts," "accuracy" or "fairness."
“It's time for Americans to wake up to a fundamental reality: the continued unity of the United States cannot be guaranteed,” wrote French. At this moment, “there is not a single important cultural, religious, political, or social force that is pulling Americans together more than it is pulling us apart.”

This brings me to a new City Journal piece with this headline: “Can Capitalism Save Hollywood? The gulf between elites and audiences is eroding profits throughout entertainment and news media — but signs of correction are emerging.”