Jay Rosen

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Concerning 'good' faith and the Christian/pagan priest who believes Google AI is sentient

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Concerning 'good' faith and the Christian/pagan priest who believes Google AI is sentient

Let’s start with some basics as we look at a recent New York Post story that ran with this headline: “Google engineer says Christianity helped him understand AI is ‘sentient’.”

For decades, I have been arguing with people, mostly cultural conservatives, who say things like: “Journalists hate religion.”

This is simplistic. In my experience — first, while working in newsrooms, and second, while reading and writing about media-bias issues — many journalists don’t care enough about religion to work up a good batch of hate. They tend to be indifferent or apathetic, unless certain types of religious folks start interfering in politics, which is the true religion of many or most news professionals.

No, it’s crucial to understand that many reporters love certain types of religion and oppose others. Always remember the following passage in that Jay Rosen PressThink essay, "Journalism Is Itself a Religion.” Yes, this involves interaction with one of my “On Religion” columns, but I can’t help that, nor can I help that this is quite long. So, what is the religion of the press?

A particularly telling example began with this passage from a 1999 New York Times Magazine article about anti-abortion extremism: “It is a shared if unspoken premise of the world that most of us inhabit that absolutes do not exist and that people who claim to have found them are crazy,” wrote David Samuels.

This struck some people as dogma very close to religious dogma, and they spoke up about it. One was Terry Mattingly, a syndicated columnist of religion: “This remarkable credo was more than a statement of one journalist’s convictions, said William Proctor, a Harvard Law School graduate and former legal affairs reporter for the New York Daily News. Surely, the ‘world that most of us inhabit’ cited by Samuels is, in fact, the culture of the New York Times and the faithful who draw inspiration from its sacred pages.”

Yet here is the part that intrigued me: “But critics are wrong if they claim that the New York Times is a bastion of secularism, he stressed. In its own way, the newspaper is crusading to reform society and even to convert wayward ‘fundamentalists.’ Thus, when listing the ‘deadly sins’ that are opposed by the Times, he deliberately did not claim that it rejects religious faith. Instead, he said the world’s most influential newspaper condemns ‘the sin of religious certainty.’ “


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This week's podcast: Bari Weiss and the influence of woke orthodoxy at the New York Times

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When I read the Bari Weiss resignation letter, I knew (#DUH) that it represented an important development at The New York Times and, thus, in American journalism.

I thought that for legal reasons linked to the omnipresent newsroom reality called Slack — the software program that businesses use for in-house discussions, memos and chatter.

Please read the following comments from Weiss — in a letter to the publisher of the Times — and pretend that you are a lawyer who specializes in civil lawsuits claiming workplace discrimination and verbal violence.

My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public.

If Weiss sues the Times, will her legal team — during the discovery process — be able to access those Slack files? How many posts did she save to back her case? Could Times leaders claim a right to privacy there, after years of doing coverage based on internal communications in other offices?

Big questions, but are they linked to religion — other than the Weiss claims that some of her colleagues kept asking why she was “writing about the Jews again”? Was there material here for a “Crossroads” podcast?

As it turned out, there was lots to talk about (click here to tune that in). The key word in the discussion? That would be “orthodoxy.”


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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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Concerning truth and lies, fake news and 'snake news,' Pope Francis and St. John Paul II and more

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Concerning truth and lies, fake news and 'snake news,' Pope Francis and St. John Paul II and more

A long, long time ago -- as in 2004, GetReligion's first year -- I wrote a piece linked to one of the most interesting articles I have ever read about journalism and, in a unique way, religion. I am referring to the PressThink essay "Journalism Is Itself a Religion," by Jay Rosen of the journalism faculty at New York University.

I would like to urge GetReligion readers (I have done this many times) to read this Rosen piece. I do so again for reasons linked to this week's "Crossroads" discussion (click here to tune that in) about the much discussed document from Pope Francis about fake news, "snake news," journalism and the twisted state of public discourse in our world today.

The pope, you see, traces "fake news" back to the Garden of Eden, stressing that it's impossible to communicate when the process is built on lies. This document was the subject of my column this week for the Universal syndicate and a previous post here at GetReligion.

The minute you start talking about lies, that means you're discussing the conviction that it's possible to say that some statements are true and others are false. Your are discussing the belief that there is such a thing as absolute truth and that flawed, imperfect human beings (journalists, for example) can, to the best of their abilities, seek and articulate truth, as opposed to lies.

Yes, this makes me think of one of the greatest works of St. Pope John Paul II -- Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth). But that is a topic for another day.

Now, here is passage in Rosen's piece that I wrote about back in the early days of this blog. This is long, but there really isn't any way around the details:

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. A particularly telling example began with this passage from a 1999 New York Times Magazine article about anti-abortion extremism: “It is a shared if unspoken premise of the world that most of us inhabit that absolutes do not exist and that people who claim to have found them are crazy,” wrote David Samuels.
This struck some people as dogma very close to religious dogma, and they spoke up about it. One was Terry Mattingly, a syndicated columnist of religion:


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Not sure what to think piece: If news is our 'New Religion,' what's the impact of this faith?

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For years now, I have been pointing GetReligion readers toward a classic 2004 PressThink essay entitled "Journalism Is Itself a Religion," by Prof. Jay Rosen of New York University.

This is not an essay about the state of religion-news coverage, at least that is not the primary topic that Rosen takes on. He is talking about the ways that journalism wrestles with concepts of truth, which often results in journalists assuming an authoritative role in public discourse that can evolve into a semi-religious state of mind.

You can, of course, hear echoes of this in our current discussions of politics in a "post-truth" age (in which the old standards of journalism have been splintered by the Internet, among other things). Who is supposed to be in charge of determining what is "true" news and what is, well, "fake news?"

That would be the journalistic establishment, of course.

So, more than a decade ago, Rosen tossed around some ideas for a proposed course at NYU or Columbia University. The title would be "The Religion of the Press.” A key issue would be the nature of the "priesthood" in modern news. Something like this:

Understanding the Priesthood of the Press. This course will examine the priesthood of the journalism profession in the United States, especially those at top news organizations in New York and Washington. Among the questions we’ll be asking this term: How does this elite group create and maintain its authority over what counts as serious journalism? What sense of duty goes along with being one of the high priests? What are the god terms and faith objects in journalism, and how are they derived? ... 
You get the idea.


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Meltdown update: Does the New York Times want to cover America's heart and soul?

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The leaders of the New York Times have, for more than a decade, known that many of their critics -- loving critics and otherwise -- believe that the world's most powerful newsroom lacks intellectual, cultural and religious diversity.

After all, that was one of the main conclusions in the visionary "Preserving Our Readers' Trust" document (.pdf here) released in 2005 after a sweeping self-study of ethics issues in the newsroom (to state things mildly).

Anyone who wants to understand the back story to the current Times meltdown over Donald Trump and the lives of many Americans who voted for him must read that document. Yes, that document also meshes nicely with the latest pro-journalism sermon ("Want to Know What America’s Thinking? Try Asking") from Liz Spayd, the public editor at the Times. Hold that thought.

After the release of the 2005 self study, then editor Bill Keller released his formal response, "Assuring Our Credibility (.pdf here)." Like the self study, this document was haunted by issues linked to coverage of religious and cultural issues. One more time, let's look at Keller's conclusion:

First and foremost we hire the best reporters, editors, photographers and artists in the business. But we will make an extra effort to focus on diversity of religious upbringing and military experience, of region and class.
Of course, diversifying the range of viewpoints reported -- and understood -- in our pages is not mainly a matter of hiring a more diverse work force. It calls for a concerted effort by all of us to stretch beyond our predominantly urban, culturally liberal orientation, to cover the full range of our national conversation.

See the connections to the current debates? #DUH

And finally:

I also endorse the committee's recommendation that we cover religion more extensively, but I think the key to that is not to add more reporters who will write about religion as a beat. I think the key is to be more alert to the role religion plays in many stories we cover, stories of politics and policy, national and local, stories of social trends and family life, stories of how we live. This is important to us not because we want to appease believers or pander to conservatives, but because good journalism entails understanding more than just the neighborhood you grew up in.

Amen. However, note that Keller -- for some reason -- feared that hiring more professionals with training or experience in religion-news coverage might be seen as appeasing "believers" or pandering to "conservatives." That's one way to read that paragraph.

Let's move on.


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So are most journalists truly secular? No, many seem to practice their own one true religion

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So are most journalists truly secular? No, many seem to practice their own one true religion

It happens almost every time I write a GetReligion post about former New York Times editor Bill Keller and how the great Gray Lady -- the world's most influential newspaper -- handles coverage of controversial events and trends tied to religion, culture and morality.

Someone, either in email, online comments or even in face-to-face chatter, will say that Times people struggle with these topics because (a) elite journalists know that religious people are stupid and deserve to have their beliefs mangled or because (b) the Times newsroom is full of people who, truth be told, hate religion.

Obviously, belief (a) tends to show up among liberal readers (and critics of this here weblog) and belief (b) is popular on the cultural and religious right. Truth be told, both of these beliefs are wrong and fail to explain the patterns seen day after day in the hallowed pages of the Times.

I bring this up because of the recent post that ran with the headline, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends: 'Why Readers See The Times As Liberal'." That post was also the hook for this week's "Crossroads" podcast. Click here to tune that in.

During my chat with host Todd Wilken, I mentioned a famous article that is highly relevant to this topic, a PressThink essay by journalism professor Jay Rosen of New York University entitled "Journalism Is Itself a Religion."

Wilken asked me to take a shot at explaining what that headline means. Actually, it's easier to let Rosen do that.

So let's look at two parts of his essay. First, there is a discussion of "The Journalist's Creed," which references an oath written by Walter Williams, dean of the University of Missouri School of Journalism from 1908-1935. Basically, Rosen argues, we are dealing with a very idealistic form of secular faith. This first statement is, he noted, rather "tame" and points toward some brand of civil religion.

Let us attend.


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Once again: Do journalists believe there is good religion and then bad religion?

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Once again: Do journalists believe there is good religion and then bad religion?

This week's "Crossroads" podcast (click here to tune that in) focused on one of those nasty Godbeat topics that I have been wrestling with since, oh, 1980 or so. The question: Does the press hate religion and/or religious people?

This subject, of course, came up in a post here at GetReligion recently, in which I reacted to a classic M.Z. Hemingway piece at The Federalist that ran under a flaming headline: "Dumb, Uneducated, And Eager To Deceive: Media Coverage Of Religious Liberty In A Nutshell."

In her piece, M.Z. made a reference to the "modern media’s deep hostility toward the religious, their religions, and religious liberty in general." While affirming the rest of her piece, I stressed that I remain convinced that the majority of elite American journalists believe that there are good religious groups and bad religious groups and that the goods tend to be led by clergy and intellectuals "whose moral theology fits naturally with Woodstock and the editorial pages of The New York Times."

As William Proctor -- a Harvard Law graduate and former legal affairs reporter for The New York Daily News -- put it in his book "The Gospel According to The New York Times," the world's most influential newsroom doesn't reject all forms of religion, but does reject what he called the "sin of religious certainty." They reject claims by Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc., who claim that their faiths affirm eternal, transcendent, revealed truth.

Now, is this a debate that has something to do with core journalism discussions of accuracy, objectivity, truth telling, etc.?


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M.Z. Hemingway unloads on news coverage of 'religious liberty,' while tmatt debates one detail

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What we have here, gentle readers, is a take-no-prisoner headline, care of GetReligion emeritus M. Z. Hemingway at The Federalist.

You were expecting someone else?

Dumb, Uneducated, And Eager To Deceive: Media Coverage Of Religious Liberty In A Nutshell

Oh my, and if that isn't enough, there is this rather blunt -- some would say "brutal" -- subtitle to finish the job:

Most Reporters Are Simply Too Ignorant To Handle The Job

Now, if you have not read this long and very detailed piece yet, then head right over there and do so. But as you read it I want you to look for the one very important point in this article with which I want to voice my disagreement. No. It's not the George Orwell quote. That one was on the target, methinks.

Read it? Now, let's proceed.


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