Brittany Griner: ESPN gets close to key question

May 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Truth be told, I still think that the question I asked a few weeks ago remains one of the most interesting questions one can ask about that big story that keeps unfolding down in Waco: “So, how did Brittney Griner end up at Baylor?”

That’s an interesting question for Griner.

That’s an interesting question for Griner’s parents and her wider family.

That’s an interesting question in terms of gossip about national-level hoops recruiting.

That’s an interesting question in terms of Baylor University’s standing as a Baptist institution that prominently promotes its stance as a Christian campus.

You just knew that, after Griner announced that she is a lesbian, this story was going to have long news legs. The latest story from ESPN raises a few interesting questions and at least acknowledges a key document in the situation.

Still, the heart of the story remains something that has not yet been proven — that Griner actively opposed how Baylor, and perhaps her own family, handled her emerging stance as a gay woman. Here is the top of the story:

Former Baylor women’s basketball star Brittney Griner says that Kim Mulkey, her college head coach, told players not to be open publicly about their sexuality because it would hurt recruiting and look bad for the program.

“It was a recruiting thing,” Griner said during an interview with ESPN The Magazine and espnW. “The coaches thought that if it seemed like they condoned it, people wouldn’t let their kids come play for Baylor.”

Griner, now preparing for her first WNBA season with the Phoenix Mercury, casually acknowledged she was gay during interviews with USA Today and with SI.com last month, when she referred to herself as “someone who has always been open.” Griner said she had been open about her sexuality with family and friends since she was a freshman at Nimitz High School, in Houston.

Well, the truth — of course — is that Baylor does not condone sexual activity outside of marriage and, thus, from the point of view of traditional Christian faith, does not condone gay sexual activity.

Now, Griner is quoting saying that it was an “unwritten law” not to TALK about sexual orientation. That’s a key issue from the point of view of public relations, recruiting (in all forms) for the university, etc., etc.

That is an issue of image and it’s certainly true that Baylor could come off looking badly, when it comes to demanding, or at least urging, Griner to keep silent. It would be interesting to know if her family played some role in that, too. After all, Griner told Baylor coaches she was gay during the recruiting process. It’s clear that they reached some kind of agreement.

Once again, there’s that question: How did the nation’s No. 1 recruit end up in Waco?

Anyway, Baylor’s stance on sexual ethics is in writing and, to its credit, the ESPN team goes to the source.

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Does journalism matter?

April 29, 2013 By 11 Comments

Does journalism matter? Not as much as it once did – if audience numbers or circulation rates are any guide.

The influence and authority of the nightly network news and the morning metropolitan daily is on the ebb. They like the sea of faith were once, too, at the full, round earth’s shore and lay like the folds of the bright girdle furled. But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating, to the breath of the night wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world — sorry, can’t help myself when I get that Arnoldian urge.

Perhaps journalism is going the way of poetry?  In 1992, Dana Gioia, (who would later become the chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts), wrote an essay entitled “Can Poetry Matter?”.   Unlike fiction­, poetry no longer mattered, and had become the specialized calling of a small and isolated group, he argued. Five years later, the novelist Jonathan Franzen made the same complaint about fiction, deploring the neglect of novels in favor of movies and the web. Journalism — as practiced by the New York Times, Guardian, Washington Post, the BBC and the American networks — suffers from the ills of poetry and fiction — domination by a priestly caste whose views are formed by a closed world shaped by secularist materialist political-left pieties and an increasingly outmoded publishing platform.

Host Todd Wilkin of the Issues, Etc. show of Lutheran Public Radio and I discussed these questions on 25 April 2013 in the context of my GetReligion articles “Gosnell fog blankets Britain” and “Master of my domain”. We began the show with an overview of the British press coverage (none to speak of save in the op-ed columns of the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, which has written more about this story than any non-Philadelphia paper.) I did give Todd an update on the Guardian, noting that on 19 April one of its loonier left Comment is Free contributors explained to the comrades of Islington:

Now the [Gosnell] trial is underway, and anti-abortion activists are insisting there’s been a cover-up by ideologues intent on averting honest discussion about the case in order to suit a cynical political agenda.

They’re right. But the ideologues doing the cover-up are on the “pro-life” side.

Yes, its those nasty pro-lifers who are responsible for the news blackout. Go figure.

Todd then moved to a discussion of Diane Winston’s Religion Dispatches article “The Myth of News Media as Secularist Conspiracy”. I observed her arguments were rather thin — blaming the reader for being stupid is never a convincing argument before we turned to the assertion that this was not a religion story.

The Gosnell story is not a religion story, it’s a crime story. People with religious convictions may read their passions into it, but Gosnell did not seem to be motivated one way or the other by a faith commitment. Yet cultural religionists imply that the absence of religious commitment in the nation’s newsrooms—and consequent acceptance of baby-killing, oops abortion, is among the reasons that the Gosnell story was overlooked.

The notion that the news media is a secularist cabal ignoring stories that challenge its shibboleths is wrongheaded.

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That ghost in Dr. Ben Carson’s, well, moral theology

April 12, 2013 By 1 Comment
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The folks who edit and operate the newspaper that lands in my front yard are having a Devil of a time trying to figure out what to do with Dr. Ben Carson. Frankly, their struggles are beginning to remind me of their struggles to understand the role that the church plays in the lives of many African-Americans in the politically liberal state of Maryland.

Carson is not only one of the most famous and respected African-American leaders in Baltimore, he is one of Charm City’s most famous and respected leaders — period. In addition to being a global figure in medicine and science, the outspoken director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is also an outspoken Christian and moral conservative, which raises problems.

So what to do when he actually speaks out? Read the following material from The Baltimore Sun very carefully and look for the ghost:

Neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson stepped down Wednesday as commencement speaker at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine after complaints from students about controversial comments concerning same-sex marriage.

The withdrawal came less than a week after medical school Dean Paul B. Rothman chastised Carson for his comments and met with graduating students concerned that the famed physician was an inappropriate commencement speaker. Carson sent Rothman a letter saying that he didn’t want to “distract from the celebratory nature of the day.”

“Given all the national media surrounding my statements as to my belief in traditional marriage, I believe it would be in the best interest of the students for me to voluntarily withdraw as your commencement speaker this year,” he wrote in the letter to Rothman, which the dean shared with the Hopkins community. …

As Carson, 61, prepares to retire from medicine in June, he has become more outspoken about his political and social views. He criticized President Barack Obama’s health care reform law at the National Prayer Breakfast in February, which made him a darling of conservatives.

Now let me stress that my goal here is not to discuss the actual content of the public remarks that led to this embarrassing standoff between our city’s most prestigious academic and scientific institution and its most acclaimed medical superstar. Don’t click “comment” to bash or to praise Carson.

I also know — since I keep writing about this fact at this here weblog — that as a liberal private institution, Johns Hopkins has every right to limit the degree to which members of its voluntary association speak out in ways that contradict its core, defining doctrines. It appears, at this point, that the leaders of Johns Hopkins believe in cultural and intellectual diversity, so long as the members of its proudly tolerant community do not have to tolerate the views of anyone they deem to be intolerant.

What I am trying to note is how the Sun leaders have decided to frame the nature of the doctor’s comments and, thus, the current controversy.

This is the key, for me, journalistically speaking. If you read Carson’s own words on moral issues, you learn that he does not have (How does the story put it?) “political and social views” on issues linked to sex and marriage. The moral views of this political independent are pretty much defined by his Christian beliefs.

Why write about this conflict between Carson and Johns Hopkins without making a single reference to the intellectual content of his faith?

Why turn this into a story about his alleged “political” and “cultural” views on sex, marriage and family? By the way, what does “cultural” mean in this context? Is that a reference to, well, race?

So what happens when Carson is quoted in this piece?

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Abortion, rights, viewpoint discrimination and Johns Hopkins

April 9, 2013 By 8 Comments

One of the most awkward and painful truths in American higher education is that it is perfectly legal for private colleges and universities — on the left and right — to discriminate against people who refuse to follow, or at least respect, the teachings at the core of these voluntary associations. However, and this is the tricky part for many journalists, these institutions must use a truth-in-advertising approach when dealing with potential students, faculty and the public.

In other words, if a liberal school is going to limit free speech, it must say that right up front when students sign documents to be enrolled. The same thing is true for, obviously, religious schools that want to defend their faith’s moral teachings on marriage, family and sex.

At the moment, the newspaper that lands in my front yard is covering a controversy at Johns Hopkins University that is a perfect example of this legal puzzle.

To my shock, the Baltimore Sun team found a voice on the legal left that perfectly stated most of the crucial legal equation in this battle over a voluntary association’s efforts — perhaps — to practice “viewpoint discrimination” among competing student groups. But first, here is the set up for the current debate (warning: this material includes “scare quotes”):

A group of students at the Johns Hopkins University is reviving a campus anti-abortion group that members say will perform “sidewalk counseling” — attempting to discourage pregnant women entering clinics from going through with the procedure.

But critics worry that the tactics of Voice for Life will harm the vulnerable women the group says it is trying to help.

On Tuesday, a panel of undergraduates will review a decision by the Hopkins Student Government Association to deny recognition to the group. At stake are university funding and privileges that are available to officially sanctioned student clubs, with advantages that include the ability to use the university logo and host events and raise money on campus.

The effort has sparked a debate at Hopkins about abortion rights, free speech and the role of the university in accommodating a controversial group.

Now, the story makes it clear that no one disputes the free-speech rights of these students, when it comes to legal protests on public sidewalks. The issue here is whether this chapter of Voice for Life will be denied status, and funds, as a student organization promoting debate on a controversial issue. Needless to say, the campus already recognizes a wide variety of similar groups on other issues.

Enter, to my relief, a logical legal voice to discuss these issues:

David Rocah, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, said it the university has the legal right to deny recognition to Voice for Life but would be “profoundly wrong” to do so.

“Even though private colleges and universities are not subject to the First Amendment, they hold themselves out as institutionally committed to the same principle of free speech and free inquiry and respect,” he said. “The student government’s actions in denying reorganization to this club because they don’t like their form of political protest is offensive, misguided and wrong, and completely antithetical to being an institution that values a diversity of opinions and viewpoints.”

Hopkins spokesman Dennis O’Shea said the student government should be “afforded the opportunity to review the earlier decision under its own policies and in light of the university’s commitment to broad debate and freedom of expression.”

Notice that, as a liberal private school, Johns Hopkins has every right to practice viewpoint discrimination. What this story does not address, however, is whether conservative students at this prestigious school are warned in advance that their rights would be — legally — limited. Was truth-in-advertising practiced here? That quote from the JHU spokesperson is not very enlightening.

So the story gets a difficult point about 75 percent right, which is a high score — unfortunately — on this type of culture wars story.

Meanwhile, I should mention that many readers will be outraged when they hit one other section of this story, a passage in which this pro-life group is compared with (wait for it):

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Another Catholic school shocks press with ‘morality clause’

April 7, 2013 By 5 Comments

A reader sent in a story from Louisiana focusing on a Catholic-education topic that will — trust me — be in the news more and more in the years ahead.

But first, here’s some background.

One of the trends we are seeing in the era of the Obama White House, and Justice Department, is an attempt to draw a legal line between freedom of worship and freedom of religion, period. The best example, so far, is found in the Health & Human Services mandates, which allow more protection for expressions of faith linked to worship and denominational life than for expressions of faith that contact people outside the doors of explicitly religious sanctuaries.

As I wrote in a column for Scripps Howard last year:

The larger civic argument … focuses on whether government officials can decree that “freedom of worship” is more worthy of protection than “freedom of religion,” a much broader constitutional concept.

After all, the HHS mandate recognizes the conscience rights of a religious employer only if it has the “inculcation of religious values as its purpose,” “primarily employs persons who share its religious tenets” and “primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.” In other words, “freedom of worship” protects a nun when she prays for people with AIDS, but she may not be protected by “freedom of religion” when caring for non-Catholics with AIDS in a ministry that hires non-Catholics.

In response to this new regime, I believe we will see more and more institutions linked to religious groups — especially schools — drawing up much stricter and more explicit doctrinal covenants for teachers, students and everyone else linked to these voluntary associations. Their leaders will, in other words, be asking people to sign on the bottom line to show that they are committed to faithfully living in accordance with specific doctrines or, at the very least, publicly supporting those doctrines.

So what will this look like in practice, in news coverage? It appears, in this KATC.com story, that the producers didn’t realize that their local event was part of a larger, national trend in Catholic schools. Note the shocked tone in this:

A new morality clause that is now included in Diocese of Lafayette teachers’ contracts bars teachers from engaging in homosexual activity, using birth control or being married outside the church, KATC has learned.

The new clause has led to the end of at least one teacher’s career at Our Lady of Fatima School, who is gay.

“Fatima School did not ask me to leave. It was because I could not sign my contract and be honest to its content,” teacher Jane Riviere said in a statement. “The leadership was very respectful, compassionate and understanding during this process.”

This opening raises all kinds of questions. For example, does the covenant forbid homosexual activity or all sexual activity outside of the Sacrament of Marriage? I predict the latter. Also, is this covenant, in reality, simply a variation on covenants that are increasingly being used in many Catholic schools across the nation, in part due to the Ex Corde Ecclesiae manifesto by the Blessed John Paul II?

Part of the problem is that local Catholic officials, instead of sharing the content of the covenant and showing it’s links to Catholic trends elsewhere, appear to have slammed the door in the face of journalists seeking information. That is unfortunate.

Of course, the journalists could have used a search engine and found similar covenants with a few clicks of a mouse.

Let’s read on.

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Was the New York Times Easter error no big deal?

April 3, 2013 By

The New York Times has been taking quite a bit of heat for its shockingly erroneous understanding of Christianity. Earlier this week, it published a brief story about Pope Francis’ Easter message and went on to say that “Easter is the celebration of the resurrection into heaven of Jesus, three days after he was crucified, the premise for the Christian belief in an everlasting life.”

Now, there are many things wrong with that line, as my kindergartner could tell you.

I thought my write-up of the piece was pretty mild. But reader Joshua wrote:

Ok, I understand the error and the argument of how egregious the difference in meanings are, but … call me crazy, I don’t understand the effusive, scornful finger-pointing hoopla over it. It’s not a religious newspaper, and errors happen.

And reader Jeffrey Weiss, well known as a religion-news beat professional, wrote:

Even Homer nods, as the saying goes, and even LeBron tosses the occasional airball. I’d not be quite so fast to dump the NYT for what is a bonehead mistake. For those of you of a particular religious tilt: It’s a human institution and all such are inevitably fallen, yes? Even in these reduced times, I’d put the Times record of accuracy up against most of the rest of the world. Surely tens of thousands of facts a day. In this case, the story showed up on a holiday, of course, where the editing crew is likely skeletal. People who really know Easter probably weren’t working. That’s not an excuse, of course. It’s a major unforced error.

Because I’m a human who errs with alarming frequency, I’m inclined to be understanding and I sure do love how Weiss puts the best construction on the folks working the Easter shift at the Times. And yet I am not sure I agree. Anyone who has gone through a New York Times editing process knows that there really are layers and layers of fact-checking and it boggles the mind that the error could have been made by a Vatican reporter, much less made it through that editing process on the way to press.

The Canadian scribe and human-rights activist Mark Steyn wondered — as relates to the correction and the initial mistake — “How could any expensively credentialed J-school grad type those words?“:

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Another hack piece by CNN … maybe (Updated)

March 30, 2013 By

Screenshot from CNN.com home page

What’s good for the goose is good for, um, Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

Right?

Sarah, former online editor for Christianity Today and now managing editor for Odyssey Networks, spent three years as a GetReligion contributor before leaving us this past October.

To be honest, I still haven’t forgiven Sarah for giving up her high-paying gig as a GetReligionista. How dare she abandon our close-knit team of blogging professionals?

But anyway, this tweet by Sarah caught my attention today:

I tweeted back:

So here we are, with me about to treat Sarah to a big ole helping of the no-holds-barred media criticism that she doled out so often herself. (After typing that, why do I feel a sudden urge to take a break and watch some professional wrestling?)

Actually, in case you couldn’t tell, I’m delaying the inevitable part of the post where I have to say what a great journalist Sarah is and how much I enjoyed her 2,800-word story because, well, you know how much GetReligion readers hate posts that actually praise mainstream media coverage of religion.

Right?

Here’s the top of Sarah’s story:

Wheaton, Illinois (CNN)– Combing through prayer requests in a Wheaton College chapel in 2010, then-junior Benjamin Matthews decided to do something “absurdly unsafe.”

He posted a letter on a public forum bulletin board near students’ post office boxes. In the letter, he came out as gay and encouraged fellow gay Christian students — some of whom had anonymously expressed suicidal plans in a pile of the prayer requests — to contact him if they needed help.

In a student body of 2,400 undergraduates in the suburbs of Chicago, at what is sometimes called the Harvard of evangelical schools, Matthews said that 15 male students came out to him. Other students seemed somewhat ambivalent about his coming out, he said.

No one told him he was wrong or needed to change, Matthews said some students were obviously uncomfortable with someone who would come out as gay and remain a Christian.

“I don’t think most Wheaton students knew what to do because they’ve been given ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ rhetoric, but they don’t know how that plays out in real life,” said Matthews, who graduated in 2011. “They would mostly just listen, nod and say, ‘Yeah man, that’s hard.’”

Sarah packs the report with diverse voices, relevant context and history, strong survey data and important nuance that recognizes the complex nature of the issues at play. All in all, it’s an extraordinary story, worthy of the lead spot that it occupies on CNN’s home page at the moment I type this.

If I have any criticism, it’s that the story takes too long — in my humble opinion — to quote any Wheaton officials. We’re nearly 900 words into the piece before we get to this:

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So, how did Brittney Griner end up at Baylor?

March 25, 2013 By
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Trust me when I say that I am very, very aware, after nearly a decade in this niche in cyberspace, that GetReligion readers are stunningly uninterested in sports news. However, I am a sports fan and I have noticed, as a religion-beat reporter through the years, that religion and sports often get shoved into the same blender in the American marketplace.

Can you say “Tim Tebow”? I knew that you could.

Anyway, even the most oblivious of GetReligion readers, when it comes to sports, will have noticed that quite a few tall people — male and female — can be seen on legions of cable channels at the moment bouncing and shooting basketballs. The words “March” and “Madness” are often connected with good cause. Millions of Americans are in hoops heaven, these days.

Now, as Baylor University alum, I am primarily tuned into the women at this point (although the guys are in the NIT, which staggers on year after year). The Baylor Lady Bears are the defending national champions and are the favorites to win it all once again, due in large part to the superstar center in her size 17 sneakers.

There has been quite a bit of good writing lately about 6-foot-8 senior Brittney Griner who, at this point, has clearly established herself as a gamechanger in her sport, especially on defense. It is not a stretch to call her the Bill Russell of women’s basketball. I thought that, in particular, this Kate Fagan at ESPN.com — “What Brittney Griner Says About Us” — did a great job of digging underneath much of the online hatred that Griner has faced through her remarkable career. Read it all.

The articulate young woman from Baylor also received some recent attention in The New York Times. Here is a key sample from that news feature, near the end:

As a freshman, Griner sometimes appeared to grow flustered by the taunts of opposing fans and by jostling from opposing players. After being flung in the lane, she punched Jordan Barncastle of Texas Tech, breaking her nose. But Griner has since grown largely inured to the catcalls and the strong-arming (though she drew a flagrant foul this season for grabbing Connecticut’s Stefanie Dolson by the arm and seeming to yank her down).

“I think she’s developed a really poised demeanor,” Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer said. “I watch men’s games and I’m like, ‘That doesn’t happen to the best male players, the way Brittney gets beat up.’ She doesn’t seem to get discouraged. She doesn’t tank. Some players, things don’t go their way, and they tank.”

If opposing fans try to rattle Griner, they are also drawn to watch her in large numbers. When Baylor traveled this season, home attendance for opposing teams rose an average of 3,642 fans. She attracted the largest crowd ever to watch a game at West Virginia — 13,447, a ballooning contrast to the Mountaineers’ home average at the time, 1,894, lowest in the Big 12.

Asked to name Griner’s biggest influence, Gary Blair, who coached Texas A&M to the 2011 national championship, said, “Putting butts in seats at road games.” …

But there is one team that can stand up to Baylor, Griner joked Monday, pressed by ESPN commentators.

“The Miami Heat,” she said.

Now, all of this for me raises an interesting question, a question that — for four years — I have been waiting for a major newsroom to ask: Why did the No. 1 recruit in the recent history of women’s basketball, a girl who was already dunking the basketball dozens of time in competition while in high school, choose to go to Baylor University in the media hotbed of Waco, Texas?

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