Painting or icon? That big hole in New York Times report on Catholic University controversy

Let’s start here: There is nothing new about artists painting images of Jesus as a Black man.

A few of these images may have been controversial at the time of their creation, in part because of the political motivations of some (repeat “some”) artists. But the vast majority are clearly works of Christian devotion showing reverence for the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. For many Christians, these images are way less problematic than the omnipresent Warner Sallman “Head of Christ” painting from 1940, depicting Jesus with light, wavy hair and very European features.

As an Eastern Orthodox Christian, the image of Jesus that I know best is the ancient Christ Pantocrator icon from St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mt. Sinai. It is a complex icon of Jesus that, well, would be hard to label as one of the “surfer Jesus” images in some contemporary churches.

This brings me to that New York Times story that ran the other day with this dramatic double-decker headline:

A Painting of George Floyd Roils Catholic University
At the Catholic University of America in Washington, conservative students called for a campus ban on further displays of an artwork that depicts Floyd as Jesus.

This story does a pretty good job of describing the timeline of this controversy — which is described as yet another clash over race, art and religion. It’s clear that, for the leaders of private schools, controversies of this kind are especially complex.

The problem, for me, is that the image in question — “Mama,” by Kelly Latimore — is consistently described as a painting based on the famous Pieta statue by Michelangelo.

Thus, what we have here is a “painting,” based on one of the most famous statues in Western Christian art, but is clearly meant to be interpreted as a holy icon in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.

Did you follow that? The journalism question here is whether the Times team did an adequate job of describing why the term “icon” — which does not appear in the story — is so important, if the goal is to understand the thinking of some of the Catholics (the story contains zero input from the Orthodox) who believe that this painting is blasphemous. Here is the overture:

For decades, the Associated Press played a crucial role in the typical news cycle that followed a big event -- from Supreme Court decisions to tornadoes, from big elections (whether presidents or popes) to plane crashes.

Back in the 1970s, when I broke into journalism, you would hear the chimes on the newsroom AP wire machine signalling that something "big" just happened. I'll never forget hearing the four bells marking the first clear sign that President Richard Nixon would resign.

The key: The AP usually wrote the first story on big news, or quickly picked up coverage from local outlets to take a story to the national or international level.

It helps, of course, when people agree on whether an event is news or not.

I put the question this way in my first post on the U.S. Senate appeals-court nomination hearings for Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic mother of seven, who was told that the "dogma lives loudly within you" by Sen. Dianne Feinstein:

... The main question is an old one that your GetReligionistas have asked many times: Can you imagine the mainstream press ignoring this story if the theological and political doctrines in were reversed? Can you imagine liberal senators asking the same questions to a Muslim nominee?

Several readers sent emails taking that idea a step further: Try to imagine the press coverage if conservative senators asked if a nominee was too Muslim, or too Jewish, to serve on a major U.S. court.

Yes, I think the AP would have written a first-day news story in those cases, reports with the basic facts and reactions from voices on both sides. At that point, the AP story would trigger the normal "news cycle" in other newsrooms, in radio, television and print outlets.

Thus, it's crucial whether AP people think an event is news or not.

We finally have an AP story about last week's "loud dogma" hearing. Please read the overture carefully, since this is a follow-up story about an event that didn't deserve an initial report: