Who reads the Daily Mail?

June 6, 2012 By

Hacker: Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?

Bernard: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits.

“A Conflict of Interest” from Yes, Prime Minister (31 Dec 1987).

The British television sitcom, Yes, Minister and its sequel Yes, Prime Minister, are amongst my favorite television shows. The humor and political insight of the series written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynch remains as fresh and sharp today as it did twenty five years ago.

The exchange above between Prime Minister Jim Hacker, Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby, and his private secretary Bernard Woolley is a treat. The setting for this scene is the Cabinet Room at No. 10 Downing Street.  Hacker is vexed by his poor press and is worried that the situation will become worse as there are rumors of a scandal in the City (London’s financial hub). Sir Humphrey advises him not to act unless the rumors turn out to be true, while Bernard counsels the P.M. not to worry about what the newspapers say. This advice was foolish, Hacker responds, launching the set piece about the prejudices and readership of the British press.

Twenty five years later these stereotypes largely hold true. Perhaps a modern version would drop the Communist Party newspaper The Morning Star — the joke being they want another country, the Soviet Union, to run Britain — not being relevant today. A modern retelling, however, could insert The Independent in its place, with the joke being the Independent is very keen on the European Union.  Not as good a joke as the original, I concede.

The place of the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph might also be swapped — with the Mail being the more conservative — or cranky — of the two.

To understand the joke a viewer would have to understand that the British press is cheerfully biased. Each paper holds strong editorial positions and its news coverage is often driven by its editorial line.  Taken as a whole, this is not such a bad thing.  When one is able to read the coverage in the Guardian alongside that of the Times, Telegraph and others a thoughtful reader gets a well-rounded view of events.

Here lies one of the differences between the U.S. and U.K. media market.  The New York Times is as driven by a left-liberal political agenda like the Guardian — yet there is no Telegraph or Times to balance its coverage.  Speaking in very broad terms, the closest U.S. analogy might be the Washington Post v. Washington Times rivalry — yet the Washington papers have such unequal resources, circulation and influence they do not quite fit the bill.

However, when the British press are good, they are very very good — I would say the best in the world when the advocacy format seeks truth and moral virtue — and delivers a great story. But when they are bad, the British press is dreadful — with advocacy gone wild.

An example of a truly awful advocacy article can be found in the Daily Mail‘s coverage of the service at St. Paul’s Cathedral for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Now I enjoy beating the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, about the head and shoulders with a stick as much as the next man — an Amelkite to be smote hip and thigh. But there is a difference between disagreement and vilification — and the Daily Mail story is cruel.

The headline of the story sets the tone. “Archbishop of Canterbury uses Diamond Jubilee Thanksgiving sermon to preach about his pet issues of City greed and the environment”.

The subtitles drive home this point for the reader who still may have doubts.

Outgoing Archbishop has a reputation for being controversial and holding liberal views
He previously questioned the legitimacy of the Coalition in a left-wing political magazine

HORRORS — Dr. Williams hates sin, loves the environment and is a liberal who has written in a left wing magazine. They might as well have added that he is a sandal-wearing, pacifist, socialist, hairy weird beard who lacks a sense of rhythm. (The sight of Dr. Williams bopping in time to Stevie Wonder singing “Superstition” at the Queen’s Jubilee concert made me cringe.)

The lede is not shy in telling us what is wrong with Dr. Williams.

The Archbishop of Canterbury made a pointed remark about the traps of ‘ludicrous financial greed’ and ‘environmental recklessness’ as he praised the Queen’s selfless service to others and urged the nation to follow her example.

Dr Rowan Williams could not resist politicising his thanksgiving sermon yesterday at St Paul’s Cathedral celebrating the Diamond Jubilee.

He made reference to several cherished Left-wing causes as he stated that the ‘challenge’ this jubilee sets us is to make sacrifices in pursuit of ‘a shared joy far greater than narrow individual fulfilment’.

The Mail then justifies its claims of liberal lunacy by quoting from the sermon.

He said: ‘Moralists, archbishops included, can thunder away as much as they like; but they’ll make no difference unless and until people see that there is something transforming and exhilarating about the prospect of a whole community rejoicing together – being glad of each other’s happiness and safety.

‘This alone is what will save us from the traps of ludicrous financial greed, of environmental recklessness, of collective fear of strangers and collective contempt for the unsuccessful and marginal – and many more things that we see far too much of, around us and within us.’

Dr Williams’ views on bankers and the environment are well known.

What sermon did the Mail hear? True,  it did not call Dr. Williams a vacuous toffee-nosed malodorous pervert. But this article is so over the top in its abuse and exaggerated sense of horror that it is just silly — Pythonesque.

I wonder who the Mail is trying to cultivate with this article, which is little more than abuse — a sustained attack on Dr. Williams’ character, person and office. It does not appear to be conservatives for at the end of the article it takes Dr. Williams to task for not pushing gay clergy and women bishops. Perhaps there is a constituency that dislikes liberals, the Welsh and social conservatives?

Dr Williams, who was selected as Archbishop of Canterbury in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee year in 2002, has a reputation for being liberal and controversial.

Many voiced doubt before he took the role as he backed the separation of church and state in England. He has been critical of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq in political statements he has made over the years.

He was also in the reformer’s camp on both the issue of women bishops and openly gay clergy, but in the face of huge opposition from the conservative element of the church he has been forced to sit on the fence, pleasing no-one.

In 2009 he was forced to defend his controversial comments about the introduction of Islamic law to Britain.

Perhaps I am too close to the story, having written about Dr. Williams in hundreds of stories over the years, but to my eyes appears to be more about animus than reporting. As journalism it is junk. Tabloid trash without the girls on page 3.

What say you GetReligion readers? Trash or treasure from the Daily Mail?

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Filed Under: Anglicanism, Journalism, Politics, Pop Culture

Has Time printed the worst Anglican article ever?

May 18, 2012 By

“How Will Anglicans React if New Hampshire Episcopalians Elect Another Gay Bishop?” Time Magazine asks in a 17 May 2012 article printed on its website.

To which this Anglican responds, “Why don’t you ask them?”

Question headlines are often a flag of trouble ahead for an article — a signal that the article will be weak. The question is usually a rhetorical one — the answer is given by the editorial voice of the article. Or it is some sort of “come on” — an exaggerated statement to attract the reader’s attention.

No, this is not the worst Anglican article ever printed. There have been silly Anglican articles, wrong Anglican articles, dumb Anglican articles, partisan/hack job Anglican articles, and egregiously cruel and ignorant Anglican news articles printed over the past few decades, so it is false and unkind of me to say this is the worst Anglican article ever. Nor can the author be blamed for the silly headline, as reporters seldom write their own headlines.

But this article on the forthcoming episcopal election in the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire is a wreck. While the editorial voice of this ill-informed story supports the progressive agenda in the Episcopal Church, it does so by treating the actors in this drama as one dimensional creatures — cartoons who represent issues rather than people whose lives are not exclusively driven by issues in human sexuality.

The lede of this story begins:

In the summer of 1992, an Episcopalian priest in Baltimore officiated at the wedding of two female congregants. Though he had been “careful to obtain all the necessary permissions,” it wasn’t long before the Rev. William Rich found himself on the front page of the Baltimore Sun and at the center of a religious controversy. Rich was criticized by many in the community and church for performing a gay wedding ceremony, but he’s never regretted the move. …

First problem — the claim that Fr. Rich performed a wedding for two women is false. The 1992 Baltimore Sun article reported that a blessing ceremony took place — but also stated this ceremony was not a marriage and should not be construed as being a marriage.

Father Rich, who is a chaplain at Goucher College, says the ceremony he devised at the request of the women involved was not a wedding but “the blessing of two people committed to each other.”

The Bishop of Maryland told the Sun:

Bishop Eastman said he was assured by the priest “that the liturgy in question was not in any sense intended to be a marriage as Christians understand that sacrament.”

“It was meant to be a private event addressing personal, pastoral needs,” the bishop added. “Neither the two women involved nor Father Rich desired to advance a cause or make a public statement of any kind.”

There is a difference between marriage in a church and the blessing of two people in a same-gender relationship. It is a gross error to conflate the two.

The article then transitions into the story that Fr. Rich is one of three candidates standing for election as Bishop of New Hampshire. It reports that he is an “openly gay man” and and notes that delegates to the diocesan electoral convention:

… will cast their vote by secret ballot to choose a replacement for the current bishop, the retiring Gene Robinson, who is also gay. If a second gay man is elected to the post, the selection will likely reverberate through the staunchly conservative arms of the Anglican Communion, a global network of churches to which the Episcopalians belong. It could also widen a fissure in the network that’s been forming for quite some time.

Second problem — the analysis offered here is just plain dumb. Gay and lesbian clergy have stood for election in several dioceses of the Episcopal Church since Gene Robinson was elected in 2003, and one was elected suffragan or assistant bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles in 2009. The news that a gay clergyman is standing for election as bishop of New Hampshire is hardly shocking to anyone who has any knowledge of the Episcopal Church or the wider Anglican Communion.

The assertion that the election of Fr. Rich would widen a “fissure in the network” is an equally silly statement. The Anglican Communion is not a network of churches but a communion of churches — this is a theological term. The Lutheran World Federation is a network of churches. The Roman Catholic Church is a single church — it would say it is the church. Anglicans like the Orthodox are in between. They see themselves as part of a single catholic church whose members reside in autonomous national churches — one of the battles being waged within the Anglican world is on the nature of this autonomy. Is it absolute or conditional?

To call Anglicans a network of churches implies Time has decided that it backs one side in the dispute — or is an indication of ignorance.

I suspect it is ignorance on Times‘ part, as the impending fissure has already happened. Approximately 22 of the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion are in some form of impaired communion with the Episcopal Church. This rupture has taken many forms, but the break has already occurred.

(Last October the Episcopal Church’s national office released talking points disputing the figure of 22 of 38 cited by GetReligion’s Mollie Ziegler Hemingway in an article she wrote for the Wall Street Journal. However, a little checking showed the Episcopal Church’s claim to be false.)

The current state of play is of a broken communion. One where some bishops will not attend meetings if other bishops, whom they regard as apostate, are present. A communion where its leaders can no longer worship together as they cannot all receive the Eucharist, Holy Communion, in the same service has already split. As the former primate, (the archbishop or presiding bishop of a province) of the Province of the Southern Cone (the southern half of South America) told me in 2009, the traditionalists do not believe the leaders of the Episcopal Church are “Christians as we understand it.”

The article attempts to place what it thinks might be the impending split in historical context, stating the:

… crack in the Anglican community began to appear about nine years ago when Robinson became the first openly gay (and not celibate) man to be ordained as bishop.

Problem three — The crack has been around for almost 40 years and has been steadily widening. The consecration of Gene Robinson was a significant event, but hardly the first event in the splintering of the Anglican Communion. GetReligion‘s tmatt has written extensively on this point and I need not restate the accurate Anglican timeline here.

The language used by this article is biased and ill-informed and full of questionable assumptions and conclusions. The story of Gene Robinson wearing a bullet-proof vest to his consecration is shared. And yes, it is true he wore such a vest. Yet the article does not go further in developing this point and the claims repeated over the years of physical danger. The only clergyman whose murder so far can be laid at the feet of the Anglican wars is Canon Rodney Hunter of Malawi. Popping in the death threat business without context speaks to the lack of knowledge of the subject under review.

Ignorance continues to drive this story to its end. It notes:

It doesn’t look like the issue is dying down, either. Last month, an ultra-conservative Anglican offshoot group, the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans, held a conference in London to address the gay bishop question.

Problem four — The FCA conference was not held to address the gay bishop question. The FCA seeks to reform and renew the Anglican Communion from within and by doing so, win souls for Christ. It is also laughable to call the FCA an “ultra-conservative Anglican offshoot group” as it leaders represents the majority of members of the Anglican Communion. One might was well say the Diocese of New Hampshire is an “ultra-liberal Anglican offshoot group”.

The article continues with silly statements and assertions about the structure of the Anglican Communion, why Archbishop Rowan Williams announced his retirement, but returns to New Hampshire for its close.

When asked about the potential for controversy if the diocese were to elect another gay bishop, Reverend Adrian Robbins-Cole, the president of the Standing Committee, insisted that the committee only felt excitement about Rich, as well as the other two candidates, Rev. Penelope Maud Bridges, and Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld. “What we really focus on is trying to be guided by God to elect the bishop who we need in New Hampshire and whom we think is going to thrive and grow,” Robbins-Cole says. “That’s our real focus.”

An Associated Press style point here. It should be “the Rev.”, never  “Rev.”

I do feel sorry for Fr. Rich. Time is touting his candidacy in such a vulgar way that it might well trigger a backlash among New Hampshire voters. It also does a disservice to Fr. Rich’s candidacy as it turns him into a one dimensional figure whose only merit is that he is gay. Being classified as a novelty candidate, or a one issue priest, treats him as a token and implies the Diocese of New Hampshire sees only that aspect of his  life and work.

What then can one say about this wreck? It is factually incorrect, ill-informed about the issue, dismissive and disparaging of one side, and condescending towards the other. It asks a question of Anglican conservatives, but goes for answer to a white Australian conservative — when the majority of voices arrayed against the liberal wing of the church are African, Asian and Indian.

This may  not be the worst Anglican article ever written, but it comes close.

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Filed Under: Anglicanism, Journalism, Mainline, Same-sex marriage

Circulation, leadership and the Godbeat

May 6, 2012 By

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported on a major change at the paper recently:

LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas Democrat-Gazette executive editor Griffin Smith announced Monday that he is leaving the post effective Tuesday.

Smith, speaking to the newsroom, said there was no single factor in his resignation, adding he knew it was the “right time.” In his address to several dozen employees in the paper’s downtown headquarters, Smith thanked the staff and publisher Walter Hussman.

“It’s been a tremendous privilege to work here with him and with all of you at this newspaper,” he said.

Hussman said the paper will not hire a new executive editor for the “foreseeable future.” Managing editor David Bailey will lead the newsroom.

Bailey, who called Smith “intellectually brilliant” and a good friend, indicated he didn’t plan major changes in the day-to-day operations of the newsroom.

“It’s a really wonderful institution,” Bailey said. “It’s a wonderful institution because it takes great pains to report very accurately and very carefully and to do so with authority and credibility. I don’t think that’s something you tamper with.”

So what does that have to do with the Godbeat? Well, Frank Lockwood, the religion editor at the paper — aka Bible Belt Blogger, has some insight, having served under him for a while. He notes that Smith’s grandfather and father were also journalists and attorneys and that the grandfather was a newspaper publisher before becoming chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. Frank fills in some details here:

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s executive editor announced his resignation this week after nearly 20 years of service.

Before leading Arkansas’ statewide paper, Griffin was one of the founding journalists at Texas Monthly, a writer at National Geographic (writing those great big stories that they run on Guatemala and China, for example).

He is an attorney and a former White House speech writer (for Jimmy Carter.)

Griffin is a big believer in the importance of religion coverage, a big fan of Terry Mattingly’s column and a journalist who really got religion.

While other papers were eliminating the religion beat, he remained committed to offering weekly religion pages.

And he committed resources to the religion beat, dispatching a reporter to the last two Episcopal Church triennial conventions and continuing to send reporters to the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.

By the end, reporters from secular publications had all but disappeared at SBC gatherings, but Griffin felt it was important to cover the SBC in the Bible Belt. So the Democrat-Gazette kept sending a reporter.

Griffin found a way for my predecessor to travel to the Vatican in 2005. And, when the Pope died, she was there to cover his death and the election of Pope Benedict.

He gave big coverage to the split in the Anglican communion, instantly sensing its importance. Likewise, he understood the news value when an Episcopal diocese in northern Michigan elected a “Buddhist bishop.” Ultimately, the Democrat-Gazette was able to report that Kevin Thew Forrester had been defeated several days before the Episcopal Church made the announcement.

Griffin understands this state and its people and he has great news judgment.

Let me share some circulation figures from 1992, the year Griffin became editor here.

I hope I’ve typed all these correctly. (I used the 1994 World Almanac to get the older data.) You’ll notice a trend or two:

Standard (non-branded) print circulation statistics (Sep. 30, 1992) and March 31, 2012

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette      176,741       175,276
Detroit Free Press                        580,372      132,635
San Francisco Chronicle             556,765      165,523
Miami Herald                                404,679     167,057
St. Louis Post Dispatch               339,545      169,608
Orange County Register             332,164      162,921
Boston Herald                              330,614      103,616
Atlanta Constitution                   302,616      163,607
Fort Worth Star-Telegram        256,199       136,624
Louisville Courier-Journal       236,103       136,766
Kansas City Star                          287,119       163,697
New Orleans Times-Picayune  269,639      133,577
Baltimore Sun                             227,706       136,708
Oklahoma City Oklahoman      210,004      116,350

There are a few things worth noting. Most religion reporters these days are battling against innumerable pressures. They’re being asked to do more with much fewer resources than even a few years ago. Many editors are completely axing religion beats or failing to see the importance of having an educated reporter on that beat. When you have an editor who does see the value in the beat, it can make all the difference.

And those circulation numbers are fascinating, no?

Newspaper concept illustration via Shutterstock.

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Filed Under: Anglicanism, Evangelicals, Godbeat, Journalism

Why journalists love “Mad Men” and not religion news

April 19, 2012 By

What does the “Mad Men” fad have to do with religion news and religion writing?

Hang on, we’ll get to that. I promise.

But first things first. I have been fascinated with the religion beat ever since I was in college, when I discovered that — even at Baylor University, the world’s largest Baptist university — most of my journalism colleagues simply were not interested in writing news stories about religion.

Oh, everyone wanted to write opinion pieces about religious subjects — but not news. Everyone wanted to write edgy columns focusing on the many ways that our university was wrong, but no one wanted to interview people on both sides of the tough issues and then write balanced stories that attempted to chart the debates.

However, my mentor — the famous Texas journalist David McHam — once pulled me aside (after a particularly troubling episode of the student newspaper ignoring a valid religion-news story) and said something that changed my life.

McHam noted, and I promise you this quote is accurate: “I think religion is the worst covered subject in journalism. Do you want to try to do something about that?”

I did. So he introduced me to religion reporter Louis Moore, then of The Houston Chronicle, who was an officer in the Religion Newswriters Association. I started learning everything I could about religion writing and, here’s the key, that included asking people about all the reasons journalists offered for ignoring religion news and the role that religious faith plays in real life in America and around the world. Yes, we’re talking about “ghosts” and “blind spots.”

This leads me to the spring of 1982 and some research I did in graduate school — 30 years ago, obviously. An interview way back then provided a hook for my syndicated column this week, which marked the 24th anniversary of the birth of my “On Religion” feature for Scripps Howard News Service. Here’s the top:

The late, great Associated Press religion reporter George Cornell noticed a striking pattern as he dug into a 1981 survey of journalists in elite newsrooms such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, ABC, CBS and NBC.

In the space marked “religion,” 50 percent of these elite journalists wrote one word — “none.”

“They wrote ‘none’ and many even underlined that word,” said Cornell, in an interview conducted for my graduate project at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Parts of the interview were included in my 1983 cover story on religion-news coverage for The Quill, the journal of the Society of Professional Journalists.

In the religion slot, he noted, they “didn’t just say ‘none.’ They said ‘NONE.’ ”

Other numbers jumped out of that controversial report by researchers S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman, such as the fact that 8 percent of the journalists said they attended worship services weekly, while 86 percent said they seldom or never did so. In contrast, the Gallup Organization has consistently reported that about 40 percent of Americans claim to attend services each week.

Now, ever since that piece in The Quill, I have been listening to people argue about this question: Why do so many of the people who manage mainstream newsrooms refuse to take religion news seriously?

Of course, there are plenty of religious believers who simply assume that journalists hate religious believers — especially traditional believers.

That’s too simplistic. You can just as easily point a finger of blame at religious schools for failing to produce journalists with the skills needed to work in the mainstream press.

As I have said a million times, the religion-beat wars are linked to a “blind side” that has two sides. The bottom line: The two halves of the First Amendment just don’t get along. Far too many religious people simply do not respect the valid role that the press plays in a free society and far too many journalists do not respect the role that religious institutions play in that same free society.

I could go on and on. But before I get to “Mad Men,” you might want to look at this classic 2007 PressThink essay by Jay Rosen entitled “Journalism is Itself a Religion.” It contains a key question: The press may, by its nature, doubt claims of eternal truth. However, does this inborn skepticism require journalists to poorly cover the views of people who do believe in eternal, transcendent truths? In other words, is it tolerant to be intolerant (thus producing unbalanced often inaccurate news coverage) when dealing with true believers that you believe are intolerant?

Like I said, I have heard so, so, so many theories on why religion news gets so little institutional respect in the Fourth Estate.

Then, earlier today, one of my best friends — Rod “Crunchy Cons” Dreher — came up with an interesting new spin on this issue. His blog piece, which is full of interesting twists and turns (movie reviewing, “craft” beers, suburban news bureaus as visions of hell, etc.), is called “The ‘Who Watches Mad Men?’ Effect.”

You need to read the whole crazy thing, which focuses on why journalists tend to become so entranced with items in elite culture and pop culture (think “Mad Men”) that are simply not that relevant to, well, most of the people who once read daily newspapers.

Hang on:

“Mad Men” was, at least for a while, a really innovative, interesting drama (it may still be, I dunno). It’s relative lack of popularity may say very little about its quality, and quite a lot about the limits of mass consumer taste. Fifty skrillion more people drink Budweiser than drink craft beers. All the interesting stuff in American beermaking is happening at the craft level. What is there to say about Budweiser?

You get the point. And yet, I wonder about this same dynamic applied to the coverage of religion in America. Unlike the arts, fine dining, beermaking, etc., religion is not about connoisseurship and innovation. Yet if one follows the mainstream media’s coverage of religion, one generally sees a disproportionate amount of attention paid to the kinds of religion stories that are conventionally interesting than to the kind of religion stories that reflect how many, even most, religious Americans live. The Episcopal Church, for example, is the “Mad Men” of American religion. Slightly more people watch “Mad Men” on a given week than belong to the Episcopal Church, which has about 2 million members, and steadily falling. There are vastly more people in suburban megachurches on a given Sunday than in Episcopal parishes. Yet who gets the media attention? Part of this is because TEC really is and has been at the forefront of a huge religion story: the way churches are splitting on the subject of homosexuality. What was pretty much only an Episcopal phenomenon 15 or 20 years ago is now unquestionably mainstream.

My guess, though, is that the disproportionate press attention paid to TEC’s Sturm and Drang has as much to do with what interests the people in newsrooms who decide what’s news. Newsrooms, as has been firmly established, are highly secular places. They are also places where one’s progressive bona fides are not established by one’s position on economic issues, but on culture-war issues, especially on sexuality. This is why the pope can talk all day long about the poor, or about peacemaking, and the US press is ho-hum about it. But let him say something about sex, and it’s stop-the-presses time.

Anyway, I’m generalizing, but it’s still interesting to think about why certain things, and certain issues, get covered by the media, and others don’t.

In other words, religion — especially in its traditional forms — is simply not cool to the kinds of young-ish, urban, secular and/or “spiritual but not religion” people who tend to populate newsrooms (or even urbane Baby Boomers such as former New York Times editor Bill Keller).

This brings me to one final point, one troubling juxtaposition of religion-beat statistics that caught my eye the other day when I was following up on Sarah Pulliam’s post about the new religion-news study (.pdf is here) from the University of Southern California and The University of Akron.

Thus, here is the end of this week’s Scripps Howard column:

In this survey, nearly 60 percent of the journalists said they think “religious people are far too sensitive about religion stories.” At the same time, a sizable minority of news consumers — 37 percent — remain convinced that journalists are “hostile to religion and religious people.”

Wait a minute. That 37 percent figure is uncomfortably similar to the consistent Gallup finding (the previously mentioned 40 percent) on the number of Americans who claim to attend weekly worship services. Is there a connection?

This correlation is relevant, but these groups “do not overlap completely,” said veteran religion-news researcher John C. Green of Akron.

Nevertheless, he said, “there is a connection between regular worship attendance and the perception that the news media are hostile to religious people.” At the same time, “less-religious journalists are more likely to agree that religious people are too sensitive.”

The standoff continues. It’s kind of like deja vu all over again.

Cheers. Sorry for rambling about a bit. There is so much I could say on this topic after 30-plus years on the front lines.

NOTE: Please focus your comments on the key issues: Why do so many mainstream newsrooms (many, but not all) struggle to cover religion news in an accurate and balanced manner? Why is religion so hard to “get”?

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Filed Under: Anglicanism, Announcements, Evangelicals, First Person, Godbeat, Journalism, Mainline, Religion

Rowan Williams exits Canterbury, Round 2

March 16, 2012 By

There have been no surprises so far in the first day coverage of the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams’ decision to retire at year’s end. A little before noon London time the archbishop’s press office released his resignation statement. Within the hour a Press Association interview and a background item for editors were released.

Throughout the afternoon comments and appreciations from political and religious leaders came across the wires (really the internet) — and from these sources the first day stories were formed.

What makes the difference in the quality of stories is the quality of the reporters and the experience/biases/insight they bring to their jobs. The Times, Telegraph, Independent and Guardian news reports are of high standard and reflect the professionalism of their reporters. The Daily Mail takes a different approach.

Rowan Williams has today announced he is stepping down as Archbishop of Canterbury but not before having a swipe at the ‘dim-witted prejudice’ against Christianity in Britain.

After a turbulent decade in office the leader of the 77 million-strong Anglican Church will leave at the end of the year.

He is tipped to be replaced by Archbishop of York Dr John Sentamu, who would be the first black holder of the prestigious office.

But in a stark warning Dr Williams said ‘ignorance’ was damaging the church because too many people seem to oppose Christianity but ‘don’t know how religion works’.

Granted the Daily Mail has a different demographic than the broadsheets, but the article continues in this herky-jerky manner, jumping from assertion to assertion. It has no focus, no sense of itself — and no sense of the story.

The Sun article could have been written as a parody. It begins:

Dr Williams yesterday revealed that he would be standing down after ten years to take up a new post as Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Bookies have given Dr Sentamu odds of 6/4, just ahead of the Bishop of London Richard Chartres at 7/4 and the Bishop of Bradford Nick Baines at 5/1.

William Hill [a bookmaker] spokesman Graham Sharpe said: “Since Rowan Williams became Archbishop of Canterbury, John Sentamu has very much come to the fore and has been the best-backed contender to succeed him for some while, although Richard Chartres, the beaten favourite when Williams was appointed, is also a strong contender.”

I must admit that I would not have had a bookie’s tout as my first quote. But the Sun is the Sun.

The stinker of the day, however, was the one surprise. The Italian newspaper La Stampa‘s usually excellent Vatican Insider offered opinion as news — and ill-informed opinion at that. Speaking of the controversy over women bishops in the Church of England, it wrote:

Since the Anglican Synod of York approved the ordination of women bishops in July 2010, the decision has gradually spread throughout the Anglican Communion, against the wishes of traditionalist communities. The Anglican Communion consists of 38 independent provinces and one of these is England. A number of provinces already have a bishop. The hemorrhage of faithful in the Anglican Church could be greater than expected as a result of the approval of the consecration of women bishops.

The Catholic Church opposes the process that will lead to the introduction of a law, next July that will authorise the ordination of women bishops. …  Opening up the Episcopate to women will have negative consequences in terms of the Anglican Church’s dialogue with the Vatican. It seems pretty clear that the approval of women’s ordination will lead onto the ordination of openly gay bishops. This is the path the Anglican world has chosen to go down, inattentive to the ever growing communities that are choosing to return to Rome precisely as a result of this “liberal” change. …

Pretty nasty, and wrong. The assertion that “women’s ordination will lead onto the ordination of openly gay bishops” is questionable. The first woman bishop was the Rt. Rev. Penelope Jamieson who served as Bishop of Dunedin on New Zealand’s South Island from 1990 to 2004. There are, or have been, women bishops in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Cuba and the United States — all predating the July 2010 vote by the Church of England’s General Synod.

The op-ed pieces are all over the place. For an American reader what might be amazing is the number of stories. There are so many out there that I have space only to focus on one newspaper for this article.

In addition to its news reports, the Guardian offers five analyses pieces as well as a cartoon. The best is by Stephen Bates, the newspaper’s former religion reporter. If you have time to read just one piece from all those I cite, read this one. While I do not share his politics, I have been a long time admirer of his work. His story is fair, thorough (irritating in places) but also heartfelt. He has sympathy for the subject of his article, but remains committed to telling the truth. In short, great writing.

The archbishop’s biographer, Rupert Shortt, has a weaker story. A fan of Dr. Williams, his article presents only one side of this complex man — and also makes mistakes of fact when it moves away from the man to the issues.

Soon after his move to Lambeth Palace, the [Dr. Williams] urged [the pope] to kick-start stalled talks on reunion between Rome and Canterbury. Benedict’s condition for allowing this was that the Anglican communion should streamline its structures and start talking with a more united voice. Williams agreed; the covenant has formed a major element in his strategy.

No, that is not how it happened. The Anglican Covenant arose from an internal Anglican document called the Windsor Report — not from without.

Opponents describe [the Anglican Covenant] as an authoritarian measure at odds with traditional church polity. So far it has been supported in more conservative parts of the communion, especially Africa and Asia, but rejected elsewhere. If the Church of England itself refuses to endorse the covenant, the plan will probably be doomed.

Yes, if the CoE fails to endorse it, it will be doomed — the rest is questionable. The opponents who see the covenant as being too strict and “at odds” with the church’s traditional polity are the liberals. It is also not supported in the more conservative parts of the communion — the archbishops of the traditionalist coalition of Asian and African provinces last year said they could not support the covenant because it was too lenient.

All of the pieces stress the archbishop’s intellectual attainments — his brilliance. Amelia Hill also saw it as part of the problem.

But his intelligence – or, rather, his sublime confidence in his intelligence – has led directly to some of the crises that have marked his tumultuous decade as leader of a global Anglican communion sharply divided on issues of sexuality and gender.

From my experience in covering Dr. Williams for The Church of England Newspaper — which is what it sounds like, though it is not the official newspaper of the church, there is no such animal — Ms. Hill is correct. A number of Dr. Williams’ blunders arose from his refusal to take advice. The Sharia law fiasco being the most notable among many self-inflicted media messes.

Commentator Giles Fraser and the Guardian’s editorial also damned him with faint praise. Fraser writes from the perspective of a liberal activist who has been let down by one of his own.

One does not choose morality as one chooses cornflakes. So whilst his instincts may have been gay friendly, his increasing appreciation that the African church was dead against any accommodation with homosexuality made him side with the conservatives. He wanted a global Anglican community built around core values. And so, in effect, he became a split personality – with Williams the man at odds with Williams the archbishop. After the bitter Lambeth Conference of 1998, Williams, and several other bishops, made gay Christians a promise: “We pledge we will continue to reflect, pray and work for your full inclusion in the life of the church.” Unfortunately, it was a promise he would fail to keep.

The editorial board argued the job had become too big for the man.

Rowan Williams failed as archbishop of Canterbury, because the job description makes success impossible. But the announcement of his resignation makes clear that he failed at one particular impossible task he set himself: to hold together the Anglican communion. That gathering – now more of a dispersal – of 38 churches worldwide continued the schism between liberals and conservatives which has been under way since the 1990s. Both here and abroad, Dr Williams made enough sacrifices for unity to alienate his liberal supporters without satisfying his conservative enemies. But this is what he felt was his duty as archbishop, and in the patient and humble way he followed this thankless path, jeered at from left and right, he offered an example that not only Christians found attractive.

This is a defensible argument, but one I would not advance. It is reminiscent of editorials about Jimmy Carter circa 1979, and it also makes assumptions about liberals and conservatives that is not entirely straight forward. However this is not the place to wax eloquent about the byzantine world of church politics.

I expect the second wave will focus on who is likely to succeed Dr. Williams, and in a few weeks we will begin to see the pendulum move from favorable to unfavorable stories. But I must say, so far so good. An all round good job (exceptions noted.) And, this will keep me gainfully employed for months to come.

My concern, however, is how those outside of Anglican or British circles will be able to follow what is going on. From simple issues (What exactly is the Archbishop of Canterbury?) to the complex, (Why is the archbishop disliked by the left when he is an admitted “hairy lefty”?), these stories assume a degree of knowledge that is most likely not there. Even the British tabloid speculation as to who might be the next archbishop is based on an ill-founded assumption of how the process works.

What do you think GetReligion readers? Will this story catch on outside of English and Anglican circles? What hook might there be to catch a wider audience?

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Rowan Williams exits Canterbury, round 1

March 16, 2012 By

Words cannot describe how much I pity the journalist who has to try to write — in roughly 18 inches of type — a mainstream news report on the decision by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to step down from his beleaguered throne at the ripe old age of 61.

Has there ever been a religious leader who disappointed so many different people in so many different ways?

Yet, even as I say that, I freely acknowledge that he will be remembered as the unlucky fellow who — through his willingness to make Anglican compromise after Anglican compromise, to shout “Peace! Peace!” when there was known peace — will be known managed to hold the global Anglican Communion “together,” whatever that word means, when the odds were totally stacked against him.

This is precisely the reality that is captured in The New York Times story on this long-awaited announcement.

The lede is long, long, long and, brothers and sisters, it had to be.

LONDON – After a decade of struggling inconclusively to keep the worldwide Anglican Communion from breaking apart over such intractable issues as women clergy, gay bishops and same-sex marriage, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, announced on Friday that he will step down at the end of year to take up a high position Cambridge University, switching from a turbulent era in the church to academia.

This story has holes in it, in large part because of length issues. However, I am sure that many Anglicans — on the left and right, for radically different reasons — would have liked to have seen at least one paragraph that captured the degree to which Williams had once been a well-published voice in favor of the modernization of Anglican theological on sexual morality. I believe that it’s likely that he will veer back to the candid left, now that he has stepped down.

However, he was willing to shelve many of his own views in order to accomplish one major goal, which was to avoid being the archbishop who sat in the throne of Canterbury while the Anglican Communion exploded into formal, as opposed to informal, schism. He is stepping down without having to look the queen in the eye and deliver that particular bad news.

The most serious flaw in this rather solid story is that it never delivers a fact paragraph or two containing the hard, cold statistics that face his successor in terms of life in local pews and at local altars.

As we have long stressed here at GetRelgion, coverage of the Anglican wars is incomplete without some acknowledgement that the conflicts are unfolding at the local, regional, national and global levels. In this case, at the very least, readers needed to know what is statistically going on (a) in the pews of British churches and (b) at the global level, where First World churches (mostly liberal in doctrinal approach) are in rapid decline, while Global South churches (mostly conservative on doctrine) are experiencing rapid growth.

Instead we simply read that Williams:

… will be leaving a church struggling with dwindling congregations and torn by corrosive debates over issues ranging from homosexuality to the role of women in the church. …

In his decade in office, Dr. Williams has never seemed a confrontational figure, seeking consensus on the most contentious issues coursing through the church at a time when the institution has also been challenged by some secular Britons seeking the exclusion of faith from public life, akin to the concept of laïcité in France.

Indeed, a recent survey conducted by a secular group found that almost a half of those identifying themselves as Christians had attended no church services over the past year other than those for weddings, funerals and baptisms. Many were not familiar with the Bible, the survey found, and the proportion of Britons identifying themselves as Christians had slipped from around three-quarters to just over a half.

And then there’s the slight confusion over the meaning of the word “liberal” in this description of the recent controversies over the “occupy” demonstrations near St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Tell me, what does the word “liberal” mean in this context in terms of creedal doctrines?

Within days of setting up a tented camp, virtually on the cathedral steps, the occupiers drew adversaries from among many of the most powerful people in Britain, including Prime Minister David Cameron and the mayor of London, Boris Johnson — who supported legal moves for the protesters’ eviction — and bankers and financiers who saw the camp as a threat to London’s appeal as a financial center.

A rancorous debate within the Church of England had hard-liners retreating in the face of a powerful group of liberal theologians led by Dr. Williams, who argued for an acceptance of the protesters and their cause. The liberals saw the protest as an opportunity to steer the church toward a renewed embrace of Gospel teachings on social justice.

To me, that sounds like a clash between political liberals and political conservatives, not between doctrinal liberals and doctrinal conservatives. That’s a completely different situation, in terms of traditions and ancient doctrines, than the clashes over the moral status of sex outside of marriage or the evolution of the Anglican priesthood. That’s a different level of debate, compared with clashes over the Virgin Birth of whether Jesus Christ was raised from the dead.

However, like I said at the beginning, this was an almost impossible story to write for a daily newspaper on this side of the Atlantic.

So, how did the British papers do? Hold that thought. That’s Father George Conger’s beat.

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Filed Under: Anglicanism, Godbeat, Journalism, World, World Religions

The masterpiece of Satan

March 1, 2012 By

Ad fontes — to the sources — is a helpful phrase to keep in mind when reading press reports about church leaders. It is always useful to set what is reported to have been said by the pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other leading clerics against the text of their address. Sometimes the two do not agree.

The Daily Mail this week had a story about a speech given by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, that was sort of true. The reporter’s interpretation of what the archbishop said missed the nuances of Dr. Williams’ objections to gay marriage. As British commentator Peter Ould noted, the “over my dead body” tone ascribed to Dr. Williams by the Daily Mail didn’t quite match the archbishop’s argument that gay marriage was not an “intrinsic human right.”

This is nuance, (and I should say that understanding Rowan Williams is like learning Hungarian — a very difficult skill that few people have mastered and one that doesn’t reward the student for his labors).

And then there is error. By error I mean the sort of report produced last Friday by the Independent on Pope Benedict XVI. (The same story by the same author also appeared in the Belfast Telegraph and the print edition of the Irish Independent.)

Blogger Amy Welborn drew my attention to this 24 February 2012 story datelined Milan entitled “Pope warns Church to resist temptations of power after moves to canonise Don Luigi Giussani.”

It begins:

Pope Benedict XVI has warned the Catholic Church to resist temptations of power, even as it emerged that ecclesiastical figures in Milan had moved to canonise Don Luigi Giussani, the founder of the Vatican’s controversial political campaigning wing.

It then moves into a one paragraph summary of the pope’s Ash Wednesday audience.

The Pontiff told his weekly audience on Ash Wednesday this week that the Church was faced with temptations of power just as Jesus was in the desert. “Jesus found himself exposed to danger and faced with the temptation of the evil one who offered him a Messianism far afield from God’s plan, through success and power and dominion,” he said, adding that the same was faced “by the Church and us believers”.

The article drops the pope in paragraph three and moves the scene north to Milan. It reports that unnamed critics are concerned about moves “to make a saint of Don Giussani,” a priest and scholar whose “teachings gave rise to Communion and Liberation”, which the article describes as an “ultra-conservative, lay organisation” that has pursued a “right-wing social agenda on topics including stem cell research and assisted dying.”

It would have helped had the Independent mentioned Mgr. Guissani’s first name was Luigi. Don is an honorific that is almost always followed by the first name, not the surname, but I digress. More commentary and a quote follow:

Moderate catholic groups have opposed its aims and methods. But Pope John Paul II backed the organisation’s political campaigning. And its current, central position in Italian society was underlined last year when a key Communion and Liberation figure, Cardinal Angelo Scola, became the Archbishop of Milan.

As archbishop, Cardinal Scola, who had been a close friend of Don Giussani until his death in 2005 aged 82, received the official Communion and Liberation request to begin the beatification and canonisation processes.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise: the Vatican has always been about power,” said James Walston, a politics professor at the American University in Rome. “But if Don Giussani’s the sort of person they’re going to be canonising, then Heaven help us.”

The article then goes off on a different tangent, dropping the Communion and Liberation angle but moving farther away from the Ash Wednesday homily.

Another prominent Church figure – the Milan priest, tycoon and hospital director Don Luigi Verzè, who died last year – was accused of being too close to the rich and powerful as result of close friendships with Silvio Berlusconi and disgraced former Italian prime minister Bettino Craxi.

He left a €1.5 billion black hole in the accounts of Milan’s San Raffaele teaching hospital and faced allegations of fraud.

In her note to GetReligion, Ms Welborn stated that the author appeared to have a “lot of time on his hands” to be able to connect the Pope’s Ash Wednesday Homily to the “first steps in the movement in the canonization cause” of Mgr. Giussani.

She also observed that “power is used to connect these first two stories with “some random rich guy priest in Milan who seems to have no connection to any of this.”

Is Ms. Welborn being fair? I think she is being too kind. This article is, as she notes, “bizarre”. But it is also tendentious, sloppy, one-sided, and logically challenged.

What we have are three stories that concern Italy and Roman Catholics that have been cobbled together by the Independent under the theme of power (or the abuse thereof). Now a talented writer possesses the stylistic legerdemain to tie just about any story together — this reporter does not have this skill.

Looking at the official English language text of the pope’s Ash Wednesday weekly audience, I did not find the quotes cited in the Independent article. The power passage does appears in the Italian version. A partial English language translation came in a 22 February 2012 bulletin from the ANSI news agency. As the Independent story was written from Milan the day after the English-language ANSI story was published, I assume ANSI was the source.

Remember — ad fontes. The ANSI summary does not do justice to what the pope said. His homily was not about power but conversion of life.

In these forty days may we draw nearer to the Lord by meditating on his word and example, and conquer the desert of our spiritual aridity, selfishness and materialism.

The Independent assumes the audience for the pope’s warning against the pursuit of power was the Vatican. However, if you read the homily you find the intended audience are Christians believers — the “pilgrim church” (Chiesa in cammino), not the institutional church. The issue of power was one of a number of minor chords played by the pope. Nor did I find the English equivalent of the phrase quoted by ANSI, faced “by the church and us believers.”

I was also struck by the reporter’s apparent unfamiliarity with the pope’s book “Jesus of Nazareth“. The best seller (2.5 million copies as of 2008) discusses the temptation narrative in detail and the Ash Wednesday homily is thematically tied to the book.

Moving to the second story within this story, the comments about Communion and Liberation (CL) are a bit much. The Independent states Pope John Paul II backed CL’s political campaigning. When did he do this? And when did CL engage in political campaigning. Facts that support these allegations are needed to justify the story’s claims.

Pushing Cardinal Scola into this story is also questionable. While the cardinal was involved in CL some 20 years ago, his membership ended when he became a bishop. Was CL responsible for his appointment as Archbishop of Milan? If so, say so and show how.

What is the Independent alleging when it mentions that Scola received the request to being the process of canonization of Mgr. Guissani? Is this a hint of an old boys network at work? Why did the Independent omit the statement that as a priest of the Archdiocese of Milan Mgr. Guissani’s case for canonization must first go to the Archbishop of Milan — Cardinal Scola?

The third story within this story is even more bizarre. How does the flamboyant Fr. Verzè relate to CL or the pope? The Independent‘s story about his death makes no mention of any these links but focuses on the priest’s ties to disgraced former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. A further aside — the Independent should widen its expert list, the same professor who offered caustic comments about Mgr. Giuissani in this article is the go to guy in the Independent‘s Verzè story.

So what do we have here. Distorted quotes. No voice appearing in support of Mgr. Giussani or CL. No explanation of the homily. No links between Fr. Verzè and the first two items. Plenty of opinion, but little reporting.

Why did this happen? Did a sub-editor cram three stories into one and slice out the balancing voices and background? Did no one not know any better. Is the Independent‘s reporter a knave or a fool? Or is there more to it?

Anti-Catholicism has a long and respectable history in Britain. Theology, great power rivalries, nationalism, anti-Irish animus have all played their part in its first five hundred years. The last half of the Twentieth century saw the rise of a new variety — an English anti-clericalism expressed by the chattering classes in disdain for the established church and a loathing for the Church of Rome.

Now this is a very broad statement that I concede is simplistic. But placing the question of the fell hand of a poor editor to one side, I am hard pressed to find an explanation for this story. Knave, fool, something more? Does this meet the test of good reporting?

What say you GetReligion readers?

N.b. The title … Charles Spurgeon said “The masterpiece of Satan is popery;” while Cardinal Manning said “The Catholic Church is either the masterpiece of Satan or the Kingdom of the Son of God.”

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Filed Under: Anglicanism, Catholicism, Journalism, World

Another Episcopal cathedral shoe drops

February 27, 2012 By

It is the year 2012, do you know where your local Episcopal cathedral is? Are you sure that there still is one?

Veteran religion-beat pro Richard C. Dujardin at The Providence Journal had a short, but important, story the other day about a church closing that — if what I am hearing is correct — represents a bit of a trend in the hard-hit liberal Protestant economies of the Northeast and Midwest. What we have here is a story that needs a few more facts on the ground and in the pews.

The basic question: Is there an official list somewhere of the Episcopal Church cathedrals that are being closed and/or sold? Does anyone have a website up with folks placing bets attempting to predict which of these lovely sanctuaries will be the first to be turned into condos? A really spectacular bed and breakfast? Here is the opening of this timely report:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The Episcopal Cathedral of St. John — which began as King’s Church in 1722 and is the Diocese of Rhode Island’s fourth oldest church — is shutting down, with a final service set for April 22.

Parishioners of the cathedral church, the seat of Bishop Geralyn Wolf, learned the news on Sunday from the Right Rev. David Joslin, the cathedral’s interim dean, and Deacon Barbara May-Stock, during the parish’s annual meeting on North Main Street.

Parishioner Marjorie Beach says many were in tears when advised that because of declining numbers of pledging families and the cost of salaries and benefits, the parish could no longer continue — at least for now. The church closed temporarily once before — during the American Revolution.

This is where things get complicated.

You see, what is shutting down is the worship and community life of the parish congregation that meets in the cathedral building. The story goes on to note that the “St. John’s building at 271 North Main will retain its status as the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island.” The members of the cathedral parish are being urged to join one of the six other Episcopal parishes in Providence.

Dujardin also notes, perhaps with an eye toward future coverage:

The last Holy Eucharist for the cathedral congregation will be held on Sunday, April 22, at 9:30 a.m., followed by a time to celebrate St. John’s many years of service.

Now, this story leaves me with so, so many unanswered questions.

For starters, how many active family units remained in this parish until the very end? I have read somewhere (the work of mainline researcher Lyle Schaller is as logical a place as any) that it takes a bare minimum of 85 strong pledging units to pay the salary of a full-time Episcopal priest and that an increasing number of parishes in this declining mainline body are struggling to clear that hurdle.

This is such a short, short report. It appears that editors decided that there was no room to cover the hard economic facts that created this collapse. When I first read the report, I noted that one comment attached to it claimed to have the hard facts on the situation — but that comment seems to have vanished. This often happens, with good cause, when people leave comments making strong fact claims, yet without offering URLs that point to on-the-record information.

Still, It would have only taken a few words to provide the basic facts. I would assume that the diocese must have moved heaven and earth to keep the cathedral open, which raises another question: How much diocesan support was the parish receiving, money drawn from other parishes? How is the economic health of the diocese as a whole? How many other parishes are at, or near, the magic 85 pledging-units number?

Also, how many other Episcopal cathedrals have had to close, downsize or relocate? I know of the Delaware story. There is the strange case of the Diocese of Western Michigan. Are any others up for sale or being closed due to cost?

Just asking. It seems like a hard-news story to me, one requiring some reporting of the facts in the pews.

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Filed Under: Anglicanism, Mainline, Marriage & family, World, Worship