Damon Linker

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Thinking about 'bothsidesism' and sad changes in American politics and journalism

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Thinking about 'bothsidesism' and sad changes in American politics and journalism

This is Holy Week for those of us in the ancient churches of the East. Thus, I am spending lots of time at my local parish as we march through many hours of ancient prayers, scriptures and liturgy. Yes, we are hearing more than a few prayers for peace in Ukraine and for the victims of that hellish fratricidal conflict. Will there, at the very least, be a ceasefire for Pascha (Easter)?

At the same time, my “Crossroads” partner — Todd Wilken of Lutheran Public Radio — was on the road to attend a funeral, so we didn’t record the podcast at our usual time. That should go live here at GetReligion tomorrow (mid-day Saturday).

Thus, I would like to point readers to a “think piece” that I have had in the hopper for some time now. It’s an opinion essay by Damon Linker that ran at The Week with this headline: “The noble and needful philosophical tradition of bothsidesism (no, really) — A call for equanimity in a polarized time.”

The term in question — “bothsideism” — is closely linked with another hot-button word that is frequently used as a semi-curse in social media. That would be “whataboutism.” Click here to read Merriam-Webster on that.

My interest in “bothsideism” is rooted in journalism theory, as opposed to pure political science.

During my days leading the Washington Journalism Center, two of the key lectures focused on four models of the press that dominate journalism debates in religious circles. For some people these days, discussions of balance, fairness and even accuracy — think the “American model of the press” — are one jump away from “bothsideism.” Here is a bite of an essay based on those lectures (.pdf here):

The American Model fit well with other American values — promoting a lively public square in which citizens could believe that their views would be treated with respect. It was possible, reading coverage over a period of time, to see which newsrooms were striving to be accurate and fair-minded. This approach meshed with a liberal approach to the First Amendment, as well.

Yes, this is a challenge for journalists as they do their work. I’ll be blunt. I think the most important skill in journalism is the ability to accurately report the views of a person with whom you disagree. Journalists are supposed to strive to show respect to people on both sides of hot- button debates.

This brings us to Linker.


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Thinking with Ryan Burge and Damon Linker: Blessed be the ties that used to bind America?

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A friend of mine who was a data journalist long before that was normal — Anthony DeBarros — used to tell my Washington Journalism Center students the following: A good reporter can look at almost any solid set of survey statistics and see potential news stories.

So here we go again. When the Pew Research Center released its epic “Nones on the Rise” study in 2012, all kinds of reporters studied the details and saw all kinds of stories. The updates on those numbers keep producing headlines, with good cause.

But if was veteran scholar John C. Green — yes, I quote him a lot — who saw, even before the public release of those numbers (click here and then here for GetReligion reminders), a very important politics-and-religion story. Here is the crucial info, as he stated it on the record in 2012:

The unaffiliated overwhelmingly reject ancient doctrines on sexuality with 73 percent backing same-sex marriage and 72 percent saying abortion should be legal in all, or most, cases. Thus, the “Nones” skew heavily Democratic as voters — with 75 percent supporting Barack Obama in 2008. The unaffiliated are now a stronger presence in the Democratic Party than African-American Protestants, white mainline Protestants or white Catholics.

“It may very well be that in the future the unaffiliated vote will be as important to the Democrats as the traditionally religious are to the Republican Party,” said Green, addressing the religion reporters. “If these trends continue, we are likely to see even sharper divisions between the political parties.”

Of course, the modern Democratic Party also includes one of America’s most fervently religious camps, as well — African-American churchgoers.

Many have predicted the obvious: At some point, there will be tensions there. Woke Democrats are, for example, on the rise and grabbing lots of headlines. But who saved Joe Biden’s political neck in the South Carolina primary? How does he please the woke choir and the black church?

With that in mind, let’s look at two must-file charts that political scientist Ryan Burge circulated the other day via his must-follow Twitter account. And keep in mind that we are building toward a new Damon Linker essay with this blunt headline: “Could America split up?”


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Thinking about journalism as religion: Damon Linker on 'woke' press shunning old liberalism

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Long ago, when GetReligion was born, another website set out to offer its own view of religion and the news.

From the start, GetReligion wanted to defend the old-school approach to journalism that historians call the American Model of the Press.

The other site — The Revealer — basically approached religion as a great global mystery that journalists feared handling. Since it was all a mystery, it should be covered that way — with a magazine feature approach that offered all kinds of room for analysis, opinion and strange details. It’s kind of an online magazine about religion that you can tell is rooted in college and academic culture.

At the time of that site’s birth, New York University journalist professor Jay Rosen wrote a piece entitled “Journalism Is Itself a Religion.” The epic subtitle said, in part: “The newsroom is a nest of believers if we include believers in journalism itself. There is a religion of the press. There is also a priesthood.”

Rosen described some of the doctrines of this de facto newsroom religion, as he saw it from his desk in New York. I bring this up as a way of introducing a think piece — another Damon Linker essay at The Week about the civil war inside the newsroom at The New York Times: “The woke revolution in American journalism has begun.” This war is, you see, a clash between competing doctrinal approaches to journalism.

But before we go there, let’s go back to a key chunk of the Rosen piece — which focuses one of the key problems that shape the religion of journalism. You will immediately see the link to GetReligion. This is long, but essential:

Ninety percent of the commentary on this subject takes in another kind of question entirely: What results from the “relative godlessness of mainstream journalists?” Or, in a more practical vein: How are editors and reporters striving to improve or beef up their religion coverage?

Here and there in the discussion of religion “in” the news, there arises a trickier matter, which is the religion of the newsroom, and of the priesthood in the press.


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Weekend thinking about this complex reality: More and more Americans hate each other

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It’s impossible, at the moment, to follow political and religious threads on social media without running into lots and lots of hate. This is not something that started in the past two weeks or even during the 2016 race for the White House.

With that sobering thought in mind, I offer a Damon Linker essay at The Week as our weekend think piece. The headline: “Don't willfully ignore the complexity of what's happening in America right now.”

However, before we go there, let me share some sobering observations from an “On Religion” column I wrote in 2004 about the work of political scientists Gerald De Maio, a Catholic, and Louis Bolce, an Episcopalian, who teach at Baruch College in the City University of New York. The headline: “Stalking the anti-fundamentalist voter.”

This was one of the first times when I realized that “hate” was becoming a strong factor in public life — especially when driven by a loaded religious term like “fundamentalist.”

First we need some background. Bolce and De Maio:

… have focused much of their work on the "thermometer scale" used in the 2000 American National Election Study and those that preceded it. Low temperatures indicate distrust or hatred while high numbers show trust and respect. Thus, "anti-fundamentalist voters" are those who gave fundamentalists a rating of 25 degrees or colder. By contrast, the rating that "strong liberals" gave to "strong conservatives" was a moderate 47 degrees.

Yet 89 percent of white delegates to the 1992 Democratic National Convention qualified as "anti-fundamentalist voters," along with 57 percent of Jewish voters, 51 percent of "moral liberals," 48 percent of school-prayer opponents, 44 percent of secularists and 31 percent of "pro-choice" voters. In 1992, 53 percent of those white Democratic delegates gave Christian fundamentalists a thermometer rating of zero.

"Anti-fundamentalist voter" patterns are not seen among black voters, noted De Maio. Researchers are now paying closer attention to trends among Hispanics.

What about the prejudices of the fundamentalists? Their average thermometer rating toward Catholics was a friendly 62 degrees, toward blacks 66 degrees and Jews 68 degrees.

This brings us to a complex set of remarks by Linker. Here is the overture:


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