Fresh Air

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Washington Post seeks brave, skilled reporter to venture into mysterious heart of Jesusland

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Washington Post seeks brave, skilled reporter to venture into mysterious heart of Jesusland

Is there anyone out there who remembers fax machines?

There was a time when sending faxes played a crucial role in the news process and, from time to time, journalists even received crucial story tips and sort-of-anonymous tips via fax.

If you know your religion-beat history, for example, you may remember this quotation from a job notice posted in the newsroom at the Washington Post back in 1994, when editors were seeking a reporter to fill the religion-news desk. Someone in the newsroom faxed it to other scribes.

Here’s a note about that, via Julia Duin (who has written on this topic many times) and, well, a book quote from moi. Duin’s whole post (with lots of URLs) is here: “Here we go again: The New York Times can't admit it needs theologically astute writers.”

The Post’s job announcement said in part, “The ideal candidate is not necessarily religious nor an expert in religion.” … It was a Washington Times columnist, John McCaslin, who broke the story about that Post job announcement and a lot of protest followed.

As our own tmatt put it in the 2008 book, “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion” phrased the problem in this way:

“Post editors are correct are correct in that the ‘ideal candidate’ is ‘not necessarily religious.’ What is controversial is the statement that the ‘ideal candidate’ is not necessarily ‘an expert in religion.’ They were, in effect, arguing that a lack of expertise and experience can be a plus — a virtue — when covering religion news.”

Why do I bring this up? Well, there is a long history of newspaper managers trying to find fresh, new, innocent reporters to send into dangerous, foreboding parts of America — think religious sanctuaries full of believers — in which news stories Just. Keep. Happening. The result, frequently, reads like those in-depth National Geographic features about strange cultures on the other side of the world.

This brings us, in a roundabout way, to a headline that ran the other day atop a short David Harsanyi item at National Review. The headline: “Washington Post Seeks Seasoned Anthropologist to Observe the Indigenous Tribes of Waco.”

Maybe religion plays a role in this hiring drama? What do you think?


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One-sided story about Pence needing to find his conscience is true enough -- for today's journalism

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A snippet from Mike Pence’s life as vice president has appeared twice in recent major-media writing about him, both times at the end of a piece and both times as though this information offers keen insight into an empty soul.

As has become too common in journalism today — especially when The New York Times discusses Donald Trump’s White House — journalists need to look carefully at the origins and attribution of one person’s subjective experience.

This story seems the most damning in the version passed along by Peter Baker of the Times, reviewing reporter Tom Lobianco’s book “Piety and Power: Mike Pence and the Taking of the White House”:

When an evangelical pastor who once prayed with Pence in his congressional office ran into him at a ceremony last year, he told him: “You know, Mr. Vice President, more than anything, we need you to find your conscience, the country desperately needs you to find your conscience.”

“It’s always easier said than done,” Pence replied cryptically, and then walked away.

The mind reels. Who was this unnamed evangelical pastor who once prayed with Pence? Franklin Graham? Pat Robertson? Fellow Catholic-turned-evangelical Larry Tomczac? Did this language about Pence finding his conscience have a context? Was it focused on a specific moral issue? Would readers like to know if this pastor is a conservative or progressive evangelical?

Maureen Groppe, describing the same book 20 days earlier for USA Today, named the pastor and grounded the confrontation in a specific event:

Robert Schenck, who had prayed with Pence in his congressional office years before, watched his old friend administer the oath of office in 2018 to Sam Brownback, Trump’s new ambassador for religious freedom. 


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New York Times editor: We just don't get (a) religion, (b) the alt-right or (c) whatever

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You know what, your GetReligionistas did hear something about an interesting quote from New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet during yesterday's Fresh Air program on National Public Radio. We have also seen the blitz of Twitter reactions to his words.

It was something about elite journalists struggling to "get religion," right?

The headline for this interview was highly relevant, in light of the ongoing mainstream media meltdown in the wake of the White House win by Donald Trump. That would be: " 'New York Times' Executive Editor On The New Terrain Of Covering Trump." (That link includes the transcript and a link to the audio file.)

The interview includes all kinds of interesting material, including Baquet's take on the "fake news" phenomenon and life with a president-elect who is overly fond of Twitter. 

The Times editor also explains why he believes that it's a recent phenomenon for journalists to feel obligated to cover both sides of heated public debates, especially when journalists believe they already know the key facts. Thus, they should just print what they believe is true and that's that. Is Baquet advocating a return to the candid advocacy (often called the European Model of the Press) that dominated American journalism until late in the 19th Century?

But we are, of course, primarily interested in the quote that launched waves of emails and tweets in this direction. That would be the section in which Baquet addresses a particular news beat that has given his newspaper problems:

I think that the New York-based and Washington-based too probably, media powerhouses don't quite get religion. We have a fabulous religion writer, but she's all alone. We don't get religion. We don't get the role of religion in people's lives.

You can see how some folks would think that we'd be interested in that. However, I think it's crucial to see the wider context of where that quote appeared in this interview.

Baquet and host Terry Gross are talking about Trump and his link to truly dangerous elements in American life, over on the fringes with racists and nationalists. That, for Baquet, links directly to anger in the American heartland and that links directly to, yes, religion.


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