Asking the Boy Scout questions that matter the most

May 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment

If you know anything about the politics of gay rights, you know that there is absolutely nothing that the Boy Scouts of American can do right now that will not lead to major divisions in their organization. The key force that will cause a future split is, of course, the deep divide among mainstream religious groups on the moral status of homosexual behavior.

There is no safe ground for the Boy Scouts, none whatsoever.

It’s very clear where American public opinion is headed, at the moment. Thus, there are few if any surprises in the media coverage of that new Washington Post-ABC News poll, which asks two questions related to the Boy Scouts debate. Let’s walk through a short Post “On Faith” blog item on the results:

A wide majority of Americans support the Boy Scouts of America’s proposal to admit gay scouts for the first time, and most oppose the organization’s plans to continue to bar gay adults from serving as scout leaders, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The century-old group’s National Council will gather later in May to vote on the plan, unveiled last month, which would allow gay scouts but maintain a ban on gay scout masters. In splitting the decision, the group may be trying to modernize while continuing to appeal to a diversity of views on homosexuality — seven in 10 scout groups are chartered by religious institutions.

So, with that seven-in-10 statistic, what are the most crucial follow-up questions that the authors of this poll needed to ask? It’s clear what the real issue is here, but it does not appear that the poll team was interested in the hard facts (poll .pdf here) behind the news.

Opposition to banning gay scout leaders ranges by religious group and along well-worn political fault lines. A 56 percent majority of Catholics oppose the continued ban on gay scout masters, a number that rises to 75 percent among people who identify as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular. By contrast, Protestants are closely divided, 49 percent supporting and 47 percent opposing the ban on gay scout leaders. While the new survey did not ask Protestants whether they identify as “born-again or evangelical Christians,” surveys have consistently shown evangelical Christians are more conservative than mainline protestants on issues of homosexuality.

Once again, it is absolutely useless to ask where American Catholics stand on just about anything without asking a detailed question about Mass attendance. It Boy Scout troops are hosted by Catholic parishes, that means that the key players in future decisions are almost certain to be people — parents with children — who not only attend, but help lead, those parishes.

How many sacramentally active, weekly Mass Catholics oppose the ban on gay Boy Scout leaders? If the goal of the poll is to investigate the future of the Boy Scouts, that’s the crucial question on the Catholic side of the aisle. Frankly, I was stunned at that anti-ban 56 percent number — stunned that it was not higher.

The key statistics that the poll did not investigate can be seen in a chart at the Boy Scouts website (the “On Faith” site does contain a link).

Where are most Boy Scout troops based? Total units linked to congregations in:

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Filed Under: Baptists, Evangelicals, Journalism, Mainline, Marriage & family, Mormons, Politics, Religion, Same-sex marriage, Sex, Social Issues Tagged With: , , , , Leave a Comment

Untangling the Tsarnaevs’ Muslim ties, carefully

April 22, 2013 By 15 Comments

On Friday we asked readers to send in thoughts on good and bad coverage of religion angles for the Tsarnaev brothers. And we’ve seen quite a bit of good coverage — too much to go into but I hope you’re seeing it in your local and national outlets. We’ve also heard from religion reporters and others who pointed out problems.

One early problem was the attempt to define the brothers as either “devout” or “not devout.” For an example of the former, we have the New York Post:

The Chechen immigrant brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon were devout Muslims who appeared to become more radicalized in recent months — posting Islamic “jihad” videos on social-media sites and following the preachings of a firebrand cleric.

I’d argue against using the word even when dealing with someone you think can be described that way without question. I’d avoid it like the plague when dealing with folks you don’t know terribly much about. It’s important when using that word to have a shared understanding of what it means to be devout in a given religion. In what way were they devout, exactly? Tell us more about their fasting, their alms-giving, their prayer lives, their Hajj journeys. Or is that not what the Post meant? What did they mean?

We see similar confusion about devotion at the other end of the spectrum, too. We frequently see reporters equate it with regular corporate worship — no matter if the religion itself holds corporate worship in the same way that, say, the Roman Catholic Church does. An Islamic community center isn’t just a Methodist Church for Muslims. Piety in Islam is not the same as piety in another religion, necessarily.

Still, a good first step in learning more about the suspects’ religious lives does involve finding out if they were part of a worship community. I was glad to see that the folks over at CNN made some calls early on. They reported:

Muslim leaders in Boston tell me they don’t know the suspects. They seem to not have ties to any of the big mosques in the area.

And:

Muslim leaders condemn bombing suspects and no Muslims in Boston seem to know them. http://on.cnn.com/13mRL1j

This Boston Globe story, “Islam might have had secondary role in Boston attacks,” followed a similar theme.

It turns out, though, that the brothers did pray at the local Cambridge mosque. Later stories mentioned that, adding that they exhibited no violent tendencies. Subsequent updates indicated that the older brother had publicly reprimanded a speaker who praised Martin Luther King, Jr. and had been asked to leave. Updates to that story included a different account — that the brother had simply been asked to calm down. This Boston Globe story says that there was more than one outburst. It’s all an evolving story, it seems.

When the news came out that the brothers had worshiped at the local Cambridge mosque, some reporters began calling it the “Islamic Center of Boston,” either in their stories or in tweets. It’s actually the Islamic Society of Boston. Here’s how the Los Angeles Times put it in its story on the shouting incident:

At the Cambridge mosque near where the bombing suspects lived, two worshipers who showed up for Saturday’s prayer service recalled seeing both men.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was thrown out of the mosque — the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center — about three months ago, after he stood up and shouted at the imam during a Friday prayer service, they said. The imam had held up slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of a man to emulate, recalled one worshiper who would give his name only as Muhammad.

Enraged, Tamerlan stood up and began shouting, Muhammad said.

“You cannot mention this guy because he’s not a Muslim!” Muhammad recalled Tamerlan shouting, shocking others in attendance.

“He’s crazy to me,” Muhammad said. “He had an anger inside.… I can’t explain what was in his mind.”

Tamerlan was then kicked out of the prayer service for his outburst, Muhammad recalled. “You can’t do that,” Muhammad said of shouting at the imam.

Still, Tamerlan returned to Friday prayer services and had no further outbursts, Muhammad said.

The other mosque attendee, who identified himself only as Haithen, described Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as nice, friendly and “really laid back.”

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was different though. “His persona was not really so nice,” this worshiper said.

But it wasn’t the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center! After quite the Twitter campaign led by one of the ISBCC’s imams, the Times corrected the story. Still, there is some tie between the two groups. In a great round-up of the current news, Huffington Post explained:

Imam Suhaib Webb, of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, the city’s largest mosque, said in an interview that he had recently heard of the incident. “That’s a sign right there that his views aren’t mainstream,” Webb said.

The Cambridge mosque leaders’ theology is not extremist, he said. Webb’s mosque has the same owners but a separate administration from the Islamic Society of Boston. Webb said he never met the brothers and had not found their names on his mosque’s membership list.

One of the things that might be helpful is learning a bit more about these “same owners” as well as their differing administrations. I mean, I understand that there are certain things that other congregations in my church body share and certain things that are different, but I’d love to know how that plays out among Muslim adherents. The ISBCC is run by the Muslim American Society, a group started by U.S. supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. I’m somewhat surprised by how little journalism we see on the Muslim American Society, but here are some old pieces from the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post, both of which are absolutely riveting.

Anyway, early reporting on this story could not have changed more dramatically. I hope we see more genuine interest in what role religion and religious communities played in these brothers’ lives — at home, in the local community and in the larger world.

Net image via Shutterstock.

Filed Under: Islam, Journalism, Uncategorized, Worship Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , 15 Comments

Who believes what in Egypt’s debates about rape?

March 27, 2013 By
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Let me be honest here and say what I truly want to say about the following New York Times stories: It’s about freaking time. Now, I say that both as a journalist and as one of those old-school supporters of human rights who still likes to quote, every now and then, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from that right-wing think tank, the United Nations.

The top of this particular story gets right to the point:

CAIRO – The sheer number of women sexually abused and gang raped in a single public square had become too big to ignore. Conservative Islamists in Egypt’s new political elite were outraged — at the women.

“Sometimes,” said Adel Abdel Maqsoud Afifi, a police general, lawmaker and ultraconservative Islamist, “a girl contributes 100 percent to her own raping when she puts herself in these conditions.”

The increase in sexual assaults over the last two years has set off a new battle over who is to blame, and the debate has become a stark and painful illustration of the convulsions racking Egypt as it tries to reinvent itself.

Obviously, we have a conflict here about essential human rights. My working assumption, right from the get-go, is that there is no one Muslim point of view on women’s issues linked to modesty in public life. Anyone who has read anything on these issues knows that a wide range of viewpoints exist among Muslim women and men.

So what have the women done to ignite this cultural and, yes, moral earthquake in the wake of the Arab Spring and the changes at the highest levels of Egyptian government and law? What is the nature and the content of this conflict?

Let’s try to walk through the labels attached to the competing points of view:

Women … have … taken advantage of another aspect of the breakdown in authority — by speaking out through the newly aggressive news media, defying social taboos to demand attention for a problem the old government often denied. At the same time, some Islamist elected officials have used their new positions to vent some of the most patriarchal impulses in Egypt’s traditional culture and a deep hostility to women’s participation in politics.

The female victims, these officials declared, had invited the attacks by participating in public protests. “How do they ask the Ministry of Interior to protect a woman when she stands among men?” Reda Saleh Al al-Hefnawi, a lawmaker from the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, asked at a parliamentary meeting on the issue.

Say what?

So we have “conservative Islamists” in the lede and in this passage, as well as a prominent “ultraconservative Islamist.” Readers must assume that their views on issues related to these crimes are different than those of ordinary “Islamists.”

Meanwhile, all of these competing “Islamist” groups appear to be linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which means that there must be cultural and religious debates going on inside the ruling elite about issues linked to women’s rights, free speech, public protest, etc.

I am sure that in a debate between leaders in different Islamist camps, people often express their views in terms that are doctrinal as well as political/cultural. For example, what are the specific doctrinal, cultural and political views that are associated with what the Times calls the “most patriarchal impulses in Egypt’s traditional culture”?

Now, read the whole story and look for a single passage that references what any of these events have to do with the clashing beliefs found in these various “Islamist” camps.

Good luck with that.

What readers are given, instead, are shadows and hints. Consider this gripping passage, for example:

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Filed Under: Islam, Journalism, Marriage & family, Middle East, Sex, World, World Religions

What do you mean ‘we’ Kemosabe?

February 27, 2013 By

This is a small item, but I found it interesting none-the-less. I wonder what you think.

Today the Washington Post has an update on an important First Amendment issue (important for a few different First Amendment reasons).

Rives Grogan is  a former pastor at New Beginnings Christian Church in Los Angeles. He climbed a tree during the inauguration of President Obama this year and shouted religious messages about abortion. By all accounts, including his own, the protester was zealous and was a distraction.

He was arrested and — no joke — exiled from Washington, D.C. Honest.

Now for the update:

Rives Grogan is allowed back into the District.

The protester who took to a tree to shout antiabortion comments during President Obama’s inauguration in January had been banned by a D.C. judge from setting foot in the city.

But that order was amended during a hearing Monday. The revised order says the tenacious Grogan may roam widely among us while awaiting trial but must avoid a clearly defined area on Capitol Hill that encompasses the Capitol grounds, the House and Senate office buildings, the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress.

The barring of Grogan from the city after his five hours in the tree touched off a vigorous debate over free speech and political dissent in the nation’s capital.

Emphasis mine.

Now, does anyone else find the “us vs. him” approach of that third paragraph to be odd? I can’t stand how political reporters suspect “othering” in, for example, every single pronouncement a Republican makes about President Obama but there’s something about this construction here that I find odd.

Part of it is that I have no idea why the reporter is using the first person plural in a news story. But more than that, “we” are just as much those people who get arrested and annoy people with our political pronouncements and religious views as “we” are the people who don’t, right?

I’m not sure I like the idea that “we” are better or set apart from the people who find themselves in court or otherwise in the crosshairs of government.

Couldn’t this just be avoided by avoiding the first person? Particularly on hot topics like free speech, religious expression, abortion rights, etc.?

Filed Under: Evangelicals, People, Politics, Social Issues Tagged With: , , , , ,

Tiny little news stories about booming Diocese of Orange

December 13, 2012 By
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The Diocese of Orange — as in Orange County — has a new leader, Bishop Kevin W. Vann, who has moved from one rapidly growing Catholic flock, in Fort Worth, to lead another in a diocese that the experts believe is one of the most rapidly growing in the United States. It is already the nation’s 10th largest and, with its rising tide of Latino and Asian believers, there is little sign this growth will stop anytime soon.

I was not surprised that both The Orange County Register and The Los Angeles Times covered the recent rites in which Vann was installed as the fourth leader of this still young diocese.

I was surprised — stunned, actually — that both newspapers offered such short, perfunctory reports. I mean, the Register — as the local newspaper — dedicated all of 440 words to this event.

It was wise, I think, to dedicate much of that tiny space to the multicultural aspects of the rite, which drew a crowd at a UC Irvine facility that was slightly too large to be held in the former Crystal Cathedral facility that will soon become the diocesan Christ Cathedral. Consider the following information:

American Indian and Vietnamese dancers opened the ceremony. Vann welcomed the crowd in four languages — English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean – while other portions of the service were translated into Chinese, Tagalog, Polish and Tongan. At one point, Vann lifted his voice in Spanish three times: “Viva Cristo Rey!” he said. “Viva!” came the shouted reply, again and again.

Actually, the bishop delivered part of his sermon in Spanish, as well, a gesture that was more than symbolic, methinks. Those seeking to know what he actually said on this occasion can, of course, turn to the essential Whispers in the Loggia website for that kind of information.

I must admit that I laughed out loud when I hit this story’s short, short snippet of the sermon. You see, in addition to waving an Angels baseball hat, saluting his family and other essential acts:

He also delivered a spiritual message.

“We are gathered here today as the body of Christ, as the family of God,” he told the 4,000 who filled the center. “To bring the message of God to the world.”

What do you know? The bishop delivered — note the precise term — a “spiritual” message. What a shock.

Actually he delivered a rather complex, and at times emotional, message about growing up near the Mississippi River and learning about the power, and the dangers, of rivers that combine a wide variety of different waters and currents into one strong body of water. It was a metaphor for the great gifts, as well as tensions, found in Southern California.

Well, dang it, this was not the kind of message that crunches down well into one soundbite. If only he had said something, well, nakedly political.

How did the Times handle that complex message in its 460-word report?

Greeting the crowd in Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean, Vann spoke of his Illinois upbringing near the Mississippi River and his journey out West.

“By the hand of God I believe we have been brought together to be, as the Scripture says, the stream that gladdens the city of God,” said Vann, who also flashed an Anaheim Angels ball cap.

“Let us sing and keep going,” he told the crowd. “What do I mean by keep going? Make progress.”

This story did, however, deliver one rather meaty set of facts about the new shepherd:

Vann is not unfamiliar with the challenges that a growing contingent of worshipers will provide. As the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, since 2005, he oversaw more than $135 million in capital improvements and helped oversee the opening of the nation’s largest Vietnamese church.

Vann will face a $100-million capital campaign, which will go toward parish renovations, school funding and upgrades to the high-profile Crystal Cathedral for Catholic worship.

That’s just about it, in terms of content.

Not much news content on which to chew — unless one watches the actual rites online and pays close attention to things like Bible verses, prayers and metaphors.

Filed Under: Catholicism, People, Race, Worship Tagged With: , , ,

Risking lives to save souls in Mexico

November 2, 2012 By

Before I left on a mission trip south of the U.S. border this past spring, a Facebook friend was so kind as to post a State Department warning for all of us “crazy enough to travel to Mexico.”

That same day, I read a wire service report where one source suggested that mission groups going to Mexico “bring a body bag along.”

Still, I chose to trust in God and go on the trip. But I prayed hard when a convoy of trucks filled with men toting machine guns and sporting green military uniforms zipped past our church vans and set up a makeshift checkpoint. As it turned out, the soldiers behaved extremely professionally as they examined cargo in our caravan of 13 vans. They assured us they were trying to protect us from any potential threats. I used the trip as a peg for a Christian Chronicle news story on “A rocky road for Mexico missions.”

Because of that experience and my previous reporting adventures in places such as Tijuana, Juarez and Saltillo, a Los Angeles Times Column One feature on evangelical missions in Mexico piqued my interest. The headline of the front-page story touted Americans “risking lives to save souls.”

A chunk of the top of the 1,400-word report:

MONTERREY, Mexico — Pastor Andres Garza had told the American evangelicals to stay away from his troubled city. The drug war made it too difficult to guarantee their safety.

But now they were back, in their golf shirts and sensible shoes and halting Spanish, happily milling around Monterrey’s new headquarters for evangelical Presbyterians.

Garza smiled at his old friends. Al Couch, 81, a retired pharmaceutical salesman from Nashville, had come here so many times in the past that he’d earned the nickname “Monterrey Jack.” But this was his first time back since Garza had warned the Americans early last year that the violence had grown too intense. …

The way Garza saw it, the Americans’ return on this September weekend was part of an epic spiritual battle for a city, like Babylon, that had fallen into decadence and was in need of salvation. There was also a little of Jesus’ story in their visit.

“They came from a very secure place, the way Jesus came from heaven, to a place that isn’t very secure,” he said — and they had come to save souls.

The writer does a nice job of setting the scene. In fact, the entire story is filled with compelling details and anecdotes on the security situation and crime concerns in a modern, once fairly safe big city (I recall riding a public bus by myself in Monterrey just a few years ago and feeling totally secure).

However, the full report left me with a hollow feeling as a reader. The old men who ignored warnings to stay home and not travel to Mexico came across as rather shallow figures to me. To illustrate, consider this section of the story:

Most of the Americans figured they would be safe because they were short-timers with no connection to the drug world. Over breakfast, they spoke with a common strain of fatalism: Who’s to say I won’t get hit by a bus back in San Antonio? Or murdered in my sleep in Dallas?

“I pray they’ll keep us safe,” said Montana resident Jim Routson, 61. “But when your time’s up, your time’s up.”

There was talk of the renowned Protestant missionaries who had spread the Gospel in dangerous places in times past: Adoniram Judson, who survived a wretched imprisonment in 19th century Burma. Jim Elliot, slain, in 1956, by Waodani warriors in the jungles of Ecuador.

“Once you’re not afraid of death,” said Whited, 76, the retired pastor, “life gets a lot easier.”

Do these men really share a common strain of fatalism? Or would faith be a better word to describe their outlook? Why aren’t they afraid of death? Could there be a spiritual reason for that?

Trust me, I’ve interviewed old men before. With certain old men, I can imagine that a reporter trying to delve deep into their souls might inspire frustrated grunts in response to probing questions. Nonetheless, a few more pointed follow-ups might have gone a long way toward busting the “religion ghosts” that haunt this piece.

Then again, maybe I expected too much based on my personal experiences. By all means, read the whole story and weigh in.

Filed Under: Evangelicals, First Person, Journalism, Religion, World Religions Tagged With: , , , ,

Journalism means never having to say you’re sorry

September 17, 2012 By

In comments to my post this weekend suggesting a few angles for coverage of Muslim protests against America and one of its resident’s films, reader Sari asked:

Why has there been virtually no journalistic comment on the antisemitic aspect?

If you’ve been following this story, you know that when news broke about the 14-minute YouTube clip of an anti-Muslim film, reporters wrote that the guy behind the film said he was Israeli-American and that the movie had been funded by “100 Jewish donors.” I earlier wrote that it would have been wise to couch the filmmaker’s claims with a hint more skepticism. But what has the media response been to its own advancement of information that turned out to be false?

Devin Harner, an English professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/City University of New York, analyzed some of the missteps for PBS MediaShift. He highlighted an AP  story about “Sam Bacile,” was later outed as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Egyptian Coptic Christian and convicted felon.

The AP clearly dropped the ball on the original story, and perpetuated a latently anti-Semitic narrative that resulted in headlines such as “Israel Distances Itself from Prophet Muhammad Film” (as if the burden of distancing should be on them). They somehow figured out that Sam Bacile didn’t exist, and that his address and phone number were remarkably similar to that of Nakoula.

However, before this happened, there was some collective uncertainty surrounding Bacile, and, before I went to bed Wednesday night, I scoured Google News one more time, and was treated to retread stories such as “What We Know About ‘Sam Bacile‘” on NPR’s news blog, which admits, rather tediously, in its second paragraph, that “the bottom line is that we know very little about ‘Sam Bacile.’” The most compelling thing about the story, up to this point, is its use of scare quotes to establish symbolic distance, and to tell us that they’re onto him, even if they’re not.

Harner has some interesting thoughts on how the use of the first person plural displaces some of the blame from the journalists who got caught advancing a false narrative. Anyway, he highlights how some journalists’ b.s. detectors went off in response to the early reports (“Savvy bloggers detected B.S. in Bacile’s story. It’s the sort of work that the reporters should have done before they ran the original story.”). He adds:

The “credible” mainstream media’s complicity in perpetuating the falsehood is tragic as well. But perhaps more tragic is their collective inability to admit that they were played, and the fact that they posted “updated” stories, and “extras” shedding new light on Bacile, and in the process buried the original, erroneous stories under a blizzard of faux-mystery and spin.

Now, I wonder what you think about this. Harner points out how many media outlets failed to update Associated Press story after a correction was sent out. That is a problem, a very real problem in this internet age, but we should be careful about pointing blame to the right folks. On the one hand, yes, media outlets should be much more careful about being right with their breaking news, but also media outlets that take news wires and feeds should be careful about updating and running corrections.

In general, though, I agree with the general complaint about inability to admit error. I’ve been ruminating on this issue for months. We all make mistakes. Some of them are ones we deeply regret. I’m no exception. I was just this weekend reminded about a piece I wrote five years ago for a major daily that I wished I’d done differently. But I do wonder whether journalists are particularly bad at being reflective or taking criticism. It just seems that the posture we feel most comfortable with is “defensive.” Part of that is because everyone’s a critic. Part of that is because so much of what critics say is just not meaningful. You wouldn’t believe the trollish behavior that comes along with the first time your byline is put to paper. We’re trained to be skeptical and we’re even skeptical of our critics.

Still, I think the profession would be very well served by more reflection and humility. And when we make mistakes, I would hope that readers and viewers would be willing to hear a heartfelt apology and pledge to do better. But I’m curious what you all think. Few people will defend the early mistakes we saw on this story as it relates to the advancement of some anti-semitic narratives. But what are the larger lessons?

Filed Under: Islam, Journalism, Judaism, Uncategorized

A gunman’s shout: ‘I am opposed to social conservatism!’

August 16, 2012 By

Long ago, before the cooling of the earth’s crust, I took my first news copy-editing class as a young journalism student at Baylor University. Anyone who has worked as a copy editor know that one of the first things you learn is how to keep bad stuff out of print.

There are various kinds of bad stuff, of course.

There’s stuff that violates the principles found in the bible of daily journalism, the Associated Press Stylebook. Take that rule governing the use of the word “fundamentalist,” for example. There’s stuff that’s just plain bad, such as risque puns (think back page of The Columbia Journalism Review). There’s stuff that violates style principles that have been developed at the local level. For example, what do you call a person who lives in Charlotte, N.C.? Hint, this person is not a “Charlatan.” She or he is a “Charlottean.”

Finally, there is stuff that is considered “bad” by your local publisher or your editors — even if they do not want to admit it. Some of these concerns are valid. Some are a bit harder to live with.

There was a legendary story in Texas about a reporter at a newspaper that, for a long time, kept it’s policy forbidding any use of the word “rape” in stories. This reporter heard a woman at a crime scene shouting, “I was raped! I was raped!” Well, as the story goes, the editor spiked the quote. Thus, in anger, the reporter wrote — in warped loyalty to local style — that the woman had shouted, “I was sexual molested! I was sexually molested!” A copy editor left it in. Both, according to the legend, were fired.

So why do I bring this up? I recalled this anecdote while reading the top of The Washington Post report on the shooting at the Family Research Council. This particular story — after hours of work catching up on the event — is actually pretty good, but has some strange quirks.

Maybe it’s just me, but there was a strange void at the very top of this:

An armed intruder, spouting opposition to social conservatism, walked into the Washington headquarters of the Family Research Council on Wednesday and shot a security guard before the wounded guard and others wrestled him to the floor and subdued him until police arrived, authorities said.

They identified the suspect as Floyd Lee Corkins II, 28, of Herndon, who has a master’s degree from George Mason University’s College of Education and Human Development. Corkins was in FBI custody Wednesday night; authorities had not filed charges against him.

Now, I understand that the authorities have almost certainly clamped down on witnesses talking to the press. Still, let me ask the obvious: What does “spouting opposition to social conservatism” mean? Surely this gunman didn’t walk in there shouting, “I am opposed to social conservatism! I am opposed to social conservatism!” Were his words a bit more pointed than that? Will Post editors print them?

Journalism is all about the quest for specifics, for telling details. Thus, it is rather strange that the Post team went rather far into this story before mentioning this colorful fact about this event:

Two law enforcement officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said the gunman entered the lobby carrying a satchel, with a bag from a Chick-fil-A restaurant inside. The Atlanta-based fast-food chain has been embroiled in controversy in recent weeks after its president spoke out against same-sex marriage. The Family Research Council also opposes such unions. …

Corkins had been volunteering at a community center on U Street NW for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, according to officials there.

So what was Corkins shouting? Think about this in journalism terms: If a gunman who was a volunteer at a fundamentalist Christian church had walked into the lobby of a major gay-rights organization, with an empty Oreos bag stashed away on his person, would reporters want that info right up top in the report? Would they want to include the actual words that this firebrand was shouting?

I would think so. I certainly would want those details reported accurately and fairly — in the lede or soon after.

The Post story, meanwhile, did a fine job of getting informed and accurate reaction quotes and commentary from people on the cultural left and right. Gay-rights leaders were quick to reject this use of violence and conservatives were given a chance to offer their opinions on the question of whether this attack was a political crime, or even a “hate crime,” under the laws of the District of Columbia. Like I said, there’s lots of good daily journalism in this piece.

But the top of the story? Rather vague and mushy — especially since there was crucial info stuck (some would say “buried”) further down. I mean, which is more relevant to this story? That Corkins had a master’s degree from George Mason University or that he was a volunteer in an organization that totally opposed the Family Research Council?

Meanwhile, if you are interested in the political and cultural overtones of the arguments about the media coverage of the shooting, let me recommend this article by religion-beat pro David Sessions at The Daily Beast. It has that whole Newsweek/Daily Beast progressive-tone thing going on, but contains tons of links and good info.

Also, check out this early piece by Timothy Dalrymple, the Harvard guy who leads the Patheos evangelical channel. He is also a major player in assembling the website’s new religion and politics channel, which is the new home for your GetReligionistas.

Filed Under: Creeping Fundamentalism, Journalism, Marriage & family, Religion, Same-sex marriage, Sex, Social Issues