First Amendment

Kenneth Woodward: GetReligion, in so many ways, kept offering on-the-job training

Kenneth Woodward: GetReligion, in so many ways, kept offering on-the-job training

I never went to journalism school or took a journalism course. I learned on the job under a superb editor who never finished college.

Reading Terry Mattingly and his crew of smart contributors at GetReligion over the years was like that on-the-job training.

I especially relished the here’s-what’s-missing pieces pointing out the religion gaps in stories (“ghosts,” in GetReligion-speak), including essential questions that were not asked, core facts that were omitted and perspectives not sought.

Then there were the many can-you-hear-the-axes-grinding stories pointing out where ideology got in the way of basic reporting.

Also, there were the atta-boy pieces, too, that showered measured appreciation on work well done, angles found that no one else had noticed. That was the other side of the equation.

At Newsweek, where I labored for more years than Job had boils, once a story had been written and survived three layers of editors, we writers still had fact-checkers to answer to: Where’d you get that? Who was your source?

GetReligion did some of that too. But gently. More gently than I am inclined to do.

Mattingly and his mates could do all this because they think religion is an important dimension of public life and affairs, especially on matters tied to the First Amendment.

This would make them outliers in most newsrooms. I have the feeling that most of the folks who have written for GetReligion are religiously formed and convicted themselves, in various traditions. Which makes sense: I’ve always thought that those take their own religion seriously are better able than the religiously indifferent to grasp religions not their own.


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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: How long to sing this song? Yes, we have another (M.I.A.) 'equal access' story

Podcast: How long to sing this song? Yes, we have another (M.I.A.) 'equal access' story

How long to sing this song? Audible sigh.

How often, during GetReligion’s nearly 20 years online, have your GetReligionistas critiqued church-state stories about public schools, libraries and other state-funded facilities in which officials were wrestling with “equal access” guidelines — but it was clear that journalists didn’t know (or didn’t care) that they were covering an “equal access” story?

That was the Big Idea that loomed (once again) over this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). Before we jump into this new case study, let’s do a flashback into a few recent “equal access” headlines at GetReligion:

* “Washington Post looks at 'school choice' bills, and (#surprise) omits 'equal access' info.

* “Another SCOTUS win for 'equal access,' whether most journalists realized this or not.”

* “Fellowship of Christian Athletes wins an 'equal access' case, even if LATimes missed that.”

* “Reminder to journalists (again): Private schools — left, right — can defend their core doctrines.”

For starters, what are we talking about here? Let’s flash back to a summary that I have used in posts more than once. Sorry for the echo-chamber effect, but that’s kind of the point of this post:

What we keep seeing is a clash between two different forms of “liberalism,” with that term defined into terms of political science instead of partisan politics.

Some justices defend a concept of church-state separation that leans toward the secularism of French Revolution liberalism. The goal is for zero tax dollars to end up in the checkbooks of citizens who teach or practice traditional forms of religious doctrine (while it’s acceptable to support believers whose approach to controversial issues — think sin and salvation — mirror those of modernity).

Then there are justices who back “equal access” concepts articulated by a broad, left-right coalition that existed in the Bill Clinton era. The big idea: Religious beliefs are not a uniquely dangerous form of speech and action and, thus, should be treated in a manner similar to secular beliefs and actions. If states choose to use tax dollars to support secular beliefs and practices, they should do the same for religious beliefs and practices.

At some point, it would be constructive of journalists spotted these “equal access” concepts and traced them to back to their roots in the Clinton era (and earlier). But maybe I am being overly optimistic.

Once again, the Bill Clinton era wasn't about throwing red meat to the Religious Right. Instead, you had old-school First Amendment liberals trying — more often than not — to find ways to prevent “viewpoint discrimination” in the use of public funds and facilities.


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Finding religion ghosts in the Ivy League wars, with help (sort of) from Andrew Sullivan

Finding religion ghosts in the Ivy League wars, with help (sort of) from Andrew Sullivan

If you have been following the horror shows at Ivy League schools, you know how agonizing this situation has become for old-school First Amendment liberals.

Are the tropes of anti-Semitism still protected forms of speech? Back in the 1970s, ACLU lawyers knew the painful answer to that question when Nazis wanted to legally march through Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago-area community containing many Holocaust survivors.

America has come a long way, since then. Today, the illiberal world considers a stunning amount of free speech to be violence, except in myriad cases in which speech controls are used to prevent “hate speech” and misinformation/disinformation in debates when one side controls the public space in which free debates are supposed to be taking place.

Clearly, death threats, physical intimidation and assaults are out of line. But what about a slogan such as, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”? Is that automatically a call for genocide? The Associated Press has this to say:

Many Palestinian activists say it’s a call for peace and equality after 75 years of Israeli statehood and decades-long, open-ended Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians. Jews hear a clear demand for Israel’s destruction.

Ah, but what does Hamas say? The same AP report notes:

“Palestine is ours from the river to the sea and from the south to the north,” Khaled Mashaal, the group’s former leader, said that year [2012] in a speech in Gaza celebrating the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hamas. “There will be no concession on any inch of the land.”

The phrase also has roots in the Hamas charter.

The key is that Hamas opposes a two-state solution allowing Israel to continue as a Jewish homeland. How is Israel eliminated without the eliminating, to one degree or another, millions of Jews?

This brings us back to the Ivy League. At this point, I think that it’s time for someone to ask if other minorities on Ivy League campuses have — in recent decades — experienced severe limitations on their free speech and freedom of association. To what degree are other minorities “ghosts” on these campuses? Do they barely exist? Has the rush to “diversity” eliminated many religious and cultural points of view?

Ah, but the Ivy League giants are private schools. They have rights of their own.


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Podcast: CNN offers an old opposition-research file on Speaker Mike 'theocrat' Johnson

Podcast: CNN offers an old opposition-research file on Speaker Mike 'theocrat' Johnson

Before we return to the never-ending saga of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and his efforts to create a totalitarian theocracy that destroys democracy in America, let’s pause for a Journalism 101 case study.

Don’t worry, this is directly related to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in).

Now, gentle readers, are any of you old enough to remember Marabel Morgan, the evangelical superstar who wrote “The Total Woman,” which sold something like 10 million copies? Morgan was an anti-feminist crusader clothed in pink (as opposed to something else) who had a knack for infuriating blue-zipcode elites. Here is a quick flashback, via the Faith Profiles website:

An editor at Time magazine once confided in Marabel Morgan that he came away from a cocktail party with high-heel marks all over his chest at the mere mention of her name.

And what heinous crime did Morgan commit that could provoke such a sharp reaction? Morgan wrote a book in the early 1970s that sold more than 5 million copies about how she salvaged her marriage. The widespread belief was that she proposed that women rekindle their marriages by such innovations as greeting their husbands at the door dressed in Saran Wrap or having sex under the dining room table.

Whee!

During my early 1980s religion-beat work at The Charlotte News, I ventured out to a suburban megachurch where Morgan spoke to several thousand fans. I left that meeting absolutely furious, my mind packed with outrageous punchline quotes from her (I had to admit entertaining) speech.

Driving back to the newsroom on deadline, I started figuring out what would be in the crucial first two or three paragraphs of the story. Then I realized that, if I followed my own prejudices, I was going to frontload this story with stuff that would fire up my editors and others who detested Morgan and her tribe.

Thus, I decided to attempt a story that opened with material that included (a) what Morgan said that I knew would appeal to her critics and (b) what she said that drew cheers and applause from her supporters.


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Surprise! Speaker of the House is pro religious liberty, which means he's ultra-conservative

Surprise! Speaker of the House is pro religious liberty, which means he's ultra-conservative

Before diving into the valid religion-angle hooks in the life and career of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, please allow me to address that “election denier” thing, since I am a pedigreed (nod to Religion News Service editors) #NeverTrump, #NeverClintonBiden voter.

Yes, I have closely followed election-denial issues from 2016, when the deniers were elite Democrats haunted by Russia ghosts. Ditto for 2020, when the deniers were Republicans, who kept losing court cases — even when the judges were selected by Donald Trump. I do think Big Tech efforts to cancel hot news stories affected the election (but maybe not, since the nation seems frozen 50-50 in red/blue concrete).

Truth is, I am more interested in Johnson’s First Amendment activism than I am in Trump stuff. “First Amendment,” of course, means religious liberty, free speech and freedom of association. Is Johnson concerned about religious liberty for all or for some? His legal career should include on-paper info on that.

Meanwhile, the mainstream coverage of his surprise election stressed his “anti-gay” work and related religious convictions. On X, I tweeted a question: “Does anti-gay rights mean pro-First Amendment?”

Everything you need to know on press views of that can be found in this double-decker headline at the New York Times, serving as a kind of editorial memo to the news industry as a whole:

For Mike Johnson, Religion Is at the Forefront of Politics and Policy

The new House speaker has put his faith at the center of his political career, and aligned himself with a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that some describe as Christian nationalism.

Obviously, “Christian nationalism” is currently one of the hot terms in journalism. Also, it’s clear that many journalists are concerned about the success that Alliance Defending Freedom lawyers are having at the U.S. Supreme Court and elsewhere. Again, there is a crucial question there: Is this First Amendment group winning victories for a variety of religious minorities?

The Times editors simply went with this, stating that Johnson spent time as a “lawyer and spokesman for the anti-abortion and anti-gay rights group Alliance Defense Fund.” Of course, that puts him in interesting company — with Times columnist David French (whose First Amendment work I have admired for two decades).

It’s important to know that Johnson declined a Times interview request. I think that he should have done that interview, with an agreement that he could post a transcript online. Would the Times have agreed? The speaker should test that.


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Podcast: What would happen if GetReligion provided 'hot' GOP debate questions?

Podcast: What would happen if GetReligion provided 'hot' GOP debate questions?

I’m not a fan of the cable-television festivals called “presidential debates,” because they rarely feature any substantial debates and the candidates don’t act presidential.

Maybe this is more evidence that I am what I am, a journalist who is a registered third-party person who doesn’t fit in America’s Republican-Democrat binary vise (rather like Megyn Kelly’s take here).

However, the producers at Lutheran Public Radio had an interesting idea for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). They asked me to prepare questions — thinking religion-beat, GetReligion-oriented stuff — that I would ask if (#ducking) I was the moderator at last night’s GOP presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Library.

I came up with 10 or so questions and I’ll share some of those shortly. However, I knew that the subjects that most interest me — as an old-school First Amendment liberal — would not be on this debate’s menu.

First, let’s deal with the orange elephant in the room. The New York Post, in it’s “exclusive drinking game for the second Republican presidential debate,” reminded viewers to:

Take a sip of WATER …

… every time Donald Trump is mentioned. This will keep you hydrated.

Later, the Post team offered these style points:

Take a sip of your drink …

… every time a candidate says “woke”

… when a candidate calls another candidate by an unflattering nickname

… when someone references the Biden Crime Family

… when a candidate uses a 3-letter acronym (think FBI, IRS, DEI, CDC)

… when a candidate tries to deflect when asked if they think the election was rigged

… when a candidate says they support Trump’s movement (but think they’re the one to finish the job)


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Podcast: Journalists need to ask if Colorado has 'good' and 'bad' religious preschools

Podcast: Journalists need to ask if Colorado has 'good' and 'bad' religious preschools

I was never a Ronald Reagan fan, but — let’s face it — he would have to rank No. 1 among American politicians when it comes to having the “gift of gab.”

Thus, with a tip of the hat to the Gipper, let me make this observation: You know that there are church-state experts — on the new illiberal side (cheering) and on the old-liberal side (groaning) — who are watching recent events in Colorado and saying, “There you go again.”

This brings us to this long, long, wordy headline from The Denver Post that served as the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in). Read this one carefully:

Denver Archdiocese sues Colorado over right to exclude LGBTQ people from universal preschool

State’s non-discrimination requirements “directly conflict with St. Mary’s, St. Bernadette’s, and the Archdiocese’s religious beliefs,” the lawsuit says.

The Post team has, naturally, framed this case in precisely the manner chosen by Colorado officials, while paying as little attention as possible to recent decisions made by the (#triggerwarning) U.S. Supreme Court.

In particular, journalists may want to look at that recent decision —  Carson v. Makin. The key: The high court addressed the state of Maine’s attempts to give public funds to parents who sent their children to secular or religiously progressive PRIVATE schools, but not to parents who picked private schools that support centuries of Christian doctrines on marriage and sex (and other hot-button topics, such as salvation, heaven and hell).

Now, back to the Denver Post:

The Denver Catholic Archdiocese along with two of its parishes is suing the state alleging their First Amendment rights are violated because their desire to exclude LGBTQ parents, staff and kids from Archdiocesan preschools keeps them from participating in Colorado’s new universal preschool program.

The program is intended to provide every child 15 hours per week of state-funded preschool in the year before they are eligible for kindergarten. To be eligible, though, schools must meet the state’s non-discrimination requirements.


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Catholic archbishop offers some candid thoughts to a conservative Lutheran crowd

Catholic archbishop offers some candid thoughts to a conservative Lutheran crowd

Serious fasting is hard, even for a Catholic archbishop, especially when the aroma of spaghetti sauce is wafting through a church during an Italian community dinner.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone learned that lesson during California's bitter battles over the meaning of "marriage," "family" and other common terms that had become controversial. But he had promised to join in 100 days of prayer, and 40 days of fasting, as part of an ecumenical coalition's efforts to defend centuries of teachings on sexuality.

It was evangelical Protestants who proposed the fast, even though traditional Catholics have practiced that discipline for centuries.

"They meant serious fasting — like not eating, or eating very little, just one meal a day. So, not just giving up dessert, you know?", said Cordileone, during this summer's "Issues, Etc." conference at Concordia University in Chicago, sponsored by Lutheran Public Radio. (This independent online network also produces my GetReligion.org podcast.)

The inside joke about Catholics "giving up dessert" hit home, even though he was speaking to Missouri Synod Lutherans.

There was a time when Lutherans would not have invited a Catholic archbishop to this kind of event, said Cordileone. There was a time when it was rare for Catholics to cooperate with evangelicals and other believers seeking common ground on moral and social issues.

"To tell you the truth, I actually long for the good old days when we used to have the luxury to fight with each other over doctrinal issues," said Cordileone, drawing laughter. "But right now, the ship is going down. … The crew cannot afford to stand on the bridge and discuss the best kind of navigation equipment to use — when the ship is going down."

The "ship," he stressed, is not the church — "It's our civilization." If clergy cannot work together to defend ancient doctrines on marriage and family, while also striving to convince their own flocks to live by them, then "our civilization is … hanging by a thread."


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