Kellerism

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Elite press skips doctrine at World Youth Day in favor of (#surprise) scandal and politics

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Elite press skips doctrine at World Youth Day in favor of (#surprise) scandal and politics

This summer has been a very busy one for Pope Francis and the church. Adding to all this news was World Youth Day held in Lisbon, Portugal. Last held in 2019, the event — often nicknamed the “Catholic Woodstock” — was initiated by Saint Pope John Paul II in 1985.

The concept of World Youth Day has been influenced by the Light-Life Movement that has existed in Poland since the 1960s, where Catholic teens celebrated a “day of community” during youth camp retreats. This has morphed into the five-day event that ended yesterday.

The journalists in the mainstream press have never known what to do with this event. This is, after all, a positive gathering that brings together millions of people, mostly young Catholics. This is not an everyday thing. It shows young Catholics happy to embrace the church, while celebrating its teachings — a stark contrast to the secular world and the messages of hopelessness and sin we get each day.

As a result, the mainstream press covers World Youth Day and the pope’s appearances through a lens of scandal and (#ShockedShocked) politics.

Doctrine, as is often the case, is simply swept aside. Anything positive that can be gleaned from the gathering of so many young people is tossed aside. World Youth Day is a snapshot of the church’s future — but you wouldn’t know it from much of the coverage of the last week. For example, going to confession (with the pope helping out) is a major part of the World Youth Day experience. Valid story?

For great — and complete — World Youth Day coverage, the Catholic press did its job, once again. Places such as Crux, The Pillar on Substack and Catholic News Agency created pages where all their stories could be found. In other words, a one-stop-shop for all things World Youth Day.

How did the mainstream media do?

Take a guess.

I understand there are different audiences to satisfy, but ignoring what’s in front of their eyes — large masses of young Catholics excited about their faith — in favor of what I saw as negative coverage isn’t a snapshot of reality. It is, instead, a focus on what editors and journalists think their own loyal niche audiences want to read about the modern church.


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Catholic press, and Ross Douthat, remain must-reads during a busy Vatican summer

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Catholic press, and Ross Douthat, remain must-reads during a busy Vatican summer

It should come to no surprise to any reader that we live in a polarized nation. We are separated along political partisan lines and in our own media universes.

There are those who watch and/or read Fox News on the web and consume copious amounts of information regarding President Joe Biden and his son’s alleged ties to corruption.

On the other side, the Hunter Biden is ignored. Instead, we get investigative journalism from The New York Times looking into the dealings and relationships of conservatives such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

This is why tmatt keeps quoting, here at GetReligion and in his national column, the opening lines of the David French book "Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.”

"It's time for Americans to wake up to a fundamental reality: the continued unity of the United States cannot be guaranteed," wrote French. Right now, "there is not a single important cultural, religious, political, or social force that is pulling Americans together more than it is pulling us apart."

Confession: I have found it healthy and important to watch both Fox News and read The New York Times. Both are highly influential in their respective partisan bubbles. Both impact the world around us, for better or worse, and that’s of great importance in a world were journalistic objectivity is a relic of a pre-internet world.

I also like to read columnists. I like a few. Longtime Vatican observer John L. Allen, Jr., is one. J.D. Flynn over at The Pillar is another.

Yet another must-read is New York Times columnist, blogger and author Ross Douthat.

Douthat is a convert to Catholicism and often writes about the church. He is openly pro-Catholic Catechism. Thus, it is often refreshing to read Douthat because he tackles issues his own newspaper often fails to cover. I don’t know Douthat’s reading habits but I have to think he reads guys like the aforementioned Allen and Flynn.

Douthat was the target of recent criticism in the Jesuit magazine America.


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Death of old-school journalism may be why Catholic church vandalism isn't a big story

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Death of old-school journalism may be why Catholic church vandalism isn't a big story

The start of 2023 has brought with it renewed discussion about the role of journalism in society and, more importantly, how it should be practiced and for whom.

At the same time, more Catholic churches and crisis-pregnancy centers have been the target of vandalism.

You may not have noticed this trend — because it is receiving little elite-news coverage.

I can’t help but think these two things are linked. Here’s how.  

Journalists and news organizations are increasingly abandoning old-school objectivity — think basic standards of accuracy, balance, fairness, etc. — in favor of an ever-changing worldview linked to whatever is fashionable politically or culturally, especially stances that are popular with paying customers. These news organizations are increasingly focused on how to influence the now and future rather than report on basic facts surrounding events.

Journalism, however, is not solely about predicting the future — see, for example, the heavy coverage towards polls trying to predict the outcome of elections — but observing the present and the on-the-record facts that surround us at the moment on a particular topic or issue.  

This growing activism among journalists has led reporters to lose most of their curiosity, a crucial element in news coverage.

Instead of asking questions, many already think they have the answers on an array of issues. In the process, this sense of activism among this new journalist class (and their Gen X editors who suddenly think that journalists have been doing things all wrong for decades) has led it to loss its curiosity. Debates? Who needs debates? Tropes based in secular society’s current values, for example, automatically trump thousands of years worth of Judeo-Christian tradition.

This brings us to the continuing trend that has seen many churches vandalized over the past few years. It’s a story that has received very little news coverage in the national press. Why?


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Catholic voters and the midterm elections: Mainstream news blitz ignores major voter bloc

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Catholic voters and the midterm elections: Mainstream news blitz ignores major voter bloc

We are in the middle of another election season and in full mud-slinging mode.

Elections are an annual occurrence, to one degree or another, but the vote that will dominate this Nov. 8 are known as the midterms. It’s when a majority of seats in both the House and Senate are up for grabs, allowing for the party in the minority (in this case the Republicans in both chambers) to potentially becoming the majority. Midterm elections are also traditionally viewed as referendums on presidents.

This takes us to the Catholic vote and its impact on the outcome. This is a topic that is receiving little or no mainstream press coverage. As we say here at GetReligion: “Hold that thought.”

While inflation and crime will certainly be on the minds of most as they cast ballots, “culture war” issues are very much alive and well. Abortion, especially after this June’s Supreme Court decision that once again made it a state issue after Roe v. Wade was rolled back, will certainly be an issue.

There have been many, many news stories about how the abortion issue will motivate those on the political left to come out and vote following the Dobbs decision. The Washington Post, on Oct. 8, reported on the issue in a news feature that appeared under the headline, “Women powered Democrats in the 2018 midterms. Will they again in 2022?”

After opening with two Colorado women, Robin Kupernik and Elizabeta Stacishin, who had joined forces in 2016 to combat Donald Trump, who was elected to the presidency that year. This is the feature’s thesis:

In the 2018 midterm elections, women like Kupernik and Stacishin were part of a women-led army that changed politics. Women who had never been particularly active politically worked phone banks, wrote postcards and sent text messages to voters. They were repulsed by Trump and determined to do something about it.

They met in small groups, marched in the streets and went door-to-door to encourage people to vote for Democrats. Their passions were palpable. Many of the congressional candidates they were supporting flipped Republican-held seats, all part of a political tide strong enough to flush the GOP from control of the House, dealing Trump a major defeat. The Pew Research Center has estimated that 62 percent of White women with college degrees backed Democrats for the House four years ago.

That has become the major press-coverage storyline of the midterms.


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Tip for reporters: Don't assume what Catholics believe based on politics or Internet memes

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Tip for reporters: Don't assume what Catholics believe based on politics or Internet memes

There are moments in journalism that stand out more than others. One of those moments is when a certain piece — whether it’s a news story, analysis or opinion — gets a lot of attention by a large group of people for good and/or for bad reasons.

For a set of bad reasons, The Atlantic piece on the weaponization of the rosary was that piece for many Catholics and those who keep a watchful eye on media coverage of matters pertaining to the largest Christian denomination in the United States.

The piece — not necessarily a news story, but it was not labeled as commentary or even analysis — became a viral conversation topic among many family and friends over the last week. While the issue of Christian nationalism is important to understand, the bigger discussion — and questions I had to field — was more like this: What’s wrong with journalism these days?

That’s the central preoccupation of many — especially those of us who have been doing this for decades. (For more on that, please check out tmatt’s post and podcast from this past Friday. This view of what was going on in this piece may shock you.)

There were many lines from the Atlantic piece that stood out, but one that did most was this one:

The theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as a “Catholic cyber-militia” that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church. These rad-trad rosary-as-weapon memes represent a social-media diffusion of such messaging, and they work to integrate ultraconservative Catholicism with other aspects of online far-right culture. The phenomenon might be tempting to dismiss as mere trolling or merchandising, and ironical provocations based on traditionalist Catholic symbols do exist, but the far right’s constellations of violent, racist, and homophobic online milieus are well documented for providing a pathway to radicalization and real-world terrorist attacks.

There’s the thesis of the piece, the connect-the-dots language linking strange behavior to current tensions in Catholic life in America.

There’s plenty to unpack here, but the reality is that citing a few political websites claiming to represent Catholic thought and then adding a smattering of social media memes is no way to gauge for what anyone really thinks and believes.


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Angry about Roe, many journalists focus on crisis pregnancy centers as villains behind it all

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Angry about Roe, many journalists focus on crisis pregnancy centers as villains behind it all

Before the overturning of Roe v. Wade a little more than a week ago, crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) were considered by mainstream media to be the dregs of the pro-life movement, one of the last stories that anyone wanted to cover.

Now that abortion access is heading toward the deep-blue coastal regions with a few blue islands in the middle, a villain must be found. And voilà; the once despised CPCs are to blame for it all. Now, CPCs are worse than a non-story.

Apparently these places are pretty effective, judging from the editorial hate being poured down on them. They’re the bricks and mortar of the pro-life movement. Instead of reporting about how these CPCs — and the churches that tend to support them — have been defaced, set on fire or otherwise attacked, we have hit pieces like this Associated Press article about a “so-called” crisis pregnancy center in Charleston, WV.

The piece is so front-loaded with trash quotes from its opponents — with no rejoinder allowed from leaders or volunteers at the CPC itself — that you almost miss the story about the woman who visited the center back in 2014 planning to abort her child. She was (very reluctantly) dissuaded from doing so and now is “very happily” raising her 7-year-old son.

So, what’s the moral of this story? That this particular mother should have decided that this kid should be dead? The two reporters who did this disaster of a story don't want to go there.

Considering the invective tossed at these CPCs by places like Planned Parenthood, why aren’t reporters treating this more like a business story?

Like, the CPCs have outwitted the abortion clinics when it comes to figuring out what many pregnant women really want and it’s clear the abortion facilities have suffered financial losses as a result. How about asking people at the latter hard questions about the clients they’ve lost to the CPCs and whose bad marketing decision that was?

Hint: It might have to do with the free ultrasounds offered by the CPCs. Offering this service was a trend that began a decade or more ago and it really cried out for coverage.


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Fallout from Supreme Court abortion decision: When reporters parrot partisan talking points

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Fallout from Supreme Court abortion decision: When reporters parrot partisan talking points

With emotions running high, the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade marked a cataclysmic shift in the ongoing culture wars. What it means for the upcoming midterm elections and beyond has been the topic of much speculation since the ruling was handed down.

The decision was marked by joy on one side and anger on the other, with may reporters wearing their emotions on their faces and under their bylines. However, many people I know reacted with mixed emotions. Even conservatives were uneasy about the decision, mostly because they feared the violence that could be a part of the fallout. Indeed, the National Catholic Reporter’s news account put it best in its headline: “As Court overturns Roe v. Wade, Catholics react with joy, anger, trepidation.”

We do live in a time when political decisions often inspire violence.

Lose an election? Storm the Capitol Building.

Unhappy with police misconduct? Burn down stores.

Both sides are guilty of this, although the mainstream press — which has grown ever-partisan in the Internet age — hasn’t always been good about calling out both sides for such intimidation.

The fallout from the Dobbs decision? It’s only been a few days, but there was violence in some parts of the country from Rhode Island to Iowa to Arizona. The rhetoric was vile on Twitter, quickly aimed at Christians, and that was soon on display in the streets in a variety of forms.

Again, national legacy media have not always been good about giving proper background and context to the events of the recent past, especially in terms of coverage of violence against churches and crisis-pregnancy centers.

The fissures in American public life are real. So are the distorted realities partisan news organizations like to perpetuate these days.

Just two weeks ago, Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper chain, argued that opinion pages are alienating readers and becoming obsolete. They doubled down by warning their reporters to refrain from using social media platforms to comment on the decision. However, take a look at this morning’s news summary from USA Today. Spot any patterns?


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Press quiet as a mouse when it comes to Catholic angles in this Disney-DeSantis fight

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Press quiet as a mouse when it comes to Catholic angles in this Disney-DeSantis fight

I was never nuts for Disney. I’ve never been to one of their a theme park, either as a child or now as a parent of two children, and never indulged in their movies much over my lifetime. I’ll freely admit that puts me in the minority, both in the United States and around the world, when it comes to Disney consumption.

I was, however, once a Disney employee. No, I didn’t work in one of their stores. Instead, I was employed at ABC News in New York, where I worked for their digital unit running the website and other internet assets such as social media. It was a great place to work — although not “The Happiest Place On Earth” as the official tagline for Disneyland states. It was, after all, a newsroom — but one of the perks was free tickets each year to their amusement parks.

I say all this in the context of the ongoing feud regarding the Florida “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which is now law after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it. This is the much-discussed bill that bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade “in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

The law continues to get media coverage for two reasons. First, because of Disney’s involvement and second due to the larger notion that DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, is — everyone chant the media mantra — “engaging in a culture war.” This remains a political story, a business story and a pop culture story.

Is this also an important religion story? It certainly is (tmatt takes on this very topic in GetReligion’s most recent podcast).

My most recent GetReligion post focused on the news media’s largely ignoring the Republican DeSantis’ Catholic faith in regard to the widespread news coverage around the bill, which opponents effectively labeled “Don’t Say Gay” even though the bill never used those words.

At the same time, the news coverage for conservative press around the legislation has centered much more on Disney’s late-in-the-game activism in opposing it. The coverage among mainstream and progressive news sites continues to center on that activist “Don’t Say Gay” mantra.


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Notre Dame's 'woke' rebuild plan: Why the glaring lack of mainstream news coverage?

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Notre Dame's 'woke' rebuild plan: Why the glaring lack of mainstream news coverage?

Before the pandemic dominated the news cycle starting in 2020 (and continues to do so), the fire that ravaged Notre Dame in Paris in 2019 was among that year’s biggest stories.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the famed cathedral was once again catapulted into the news cycle — despite it being a busy few days thanks largely to the Omicron coronavirus variant — after The Telegraph, based in London, reported a scoop under the headline “Notre Dame interior faces ‘woke’ Disney revamp.”

What followed was an amazing lack of mainstream news coverage.

Here’s how the Telegraph story (behind a paywall) opened. The following is a meaty excerpt since so many of you do not have a subscription to the British newspaper:

Paris’ fire-ravaged Notre-Dame cathedral risks resembling a “politically correct Disneyland” under controversial plans for its renovation seen by the Daily Telegraph.

Critics have warned that the world-famous cathedral will be turned into an “experimental showroom” under plans to dramatically change the inside of the medieval building.

Under the proposed changes, confessional boxes, altars and classical sculptures will be replaced with modern art murals, and new sound and light effects to create “emotional spaces”.

There will be themed chapels on a “discovery trail”, with an emphasis on Africa and Asia, while quotes from the Bible will be projected onto chapel walls in various languages, including Mandarin.

The final chapel on the trail will have a strong environmental emphasis.

“It’s as if Disney were entering Notre-Dame,” said Maurice Culot, a prize-winning Paris-based architect, urbanist, theorist and critic who has seen the plans.

“What they are proposing to do to Notre-Dame would never be done to Westminster Abbey or Saint Peter’s in Rome. It’s a kind of theme park and very childish and trivial given the grandeur of the place,” he told The Telegraph.


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