After looking at the tape more carefully, I have a somewhat more nuanced view (cue: lofty NPR background music) of Diane Sawyer’s PrimeTime special with Mel Gibson. She did not wrinkle her nose in disdain nearly as much as I thought she did.

Nevertheless, I still find it somewhat predictable that evangelical scholar Darrell Bock is labeled an “evangelical scholar,” while the other experts are all given more neutral titles. Take the Jewish scholar, for example. Was she Orthodox, Conservative or Reform? And that former priest, scholar John Dominic Crossen, is he consistently on the left side of every Catholic debate? Viewers might like to know things like that. The implication, again, is that there are conservative views on biblical issues and then there are normal, scholarly, sensible views.

But on second viewing, I was more impressed with the range of material covered in the actual quotations in the special. There were major insights. Clearly, Gibson is not going to speak ill of his father. But clearly the son has no doubts about the reality of the Holocaust.

It also seems that Gibson knows that there are historical and doctrinal issues on both the Jewish and Christian sides of the many historical questions about Jesus. As he told Sawyer:

Let’s get this out on the table and talk about it, you know. This is what the Talmud says. This is what the Gospel says. Let’s talk. Let’s talk. People are asking questions about things that have been buried a long time. … I hope it inspires introspection.

Finally, I was fascinated by Sawyer’s final remark. It seems that reporting this story created tension in the newsroom. Was it hard to be fair when covering such an emotional, complex topic? Here is all she would say: “One more note, we should point out that all of us at ABC News who worked on this report learned a lot about each other, too. We hope you join in our conversation.”

Perhaps ABC wants feedback, as well.

Compared to Newsweek‘s cover story, Entertainment Weekly‘s “The Agony & the Ecstasy” is the very model of shoe-leather journalism. Author Jeff Jensen, denied access to a screening of The Passion of the Christ or interviews with director Mel Gibson and star Jim Caviezel, spoke with more than two dozen other people, both defenders and critics of Gibson’s film.

EW promotes the story with one of Matt Mahurin’s more restrained illustrations, weaving a strand of film through a crown of thorns atop Gibson’s head. Jensen offers a telling detail about Gibson early on. It speaks both to Gibson’s combativeness in defending his film, which was under fire while he was still shooting in Italy, and his concern for his star:

While shooting The Passion in late 2002, Gibson hounded [Caviezel] like Satan tempting Christ in the wilderness: You don’t have to do this. You can quit. Caviezel tolerated his director’s doubts at first, but eventually broke. This is what I was made for, said the devoutly Catholic actor. Why do you keep bugging me? But Caviezel had misunderstood. Gibson wasn’t doubting him–he was warning him. After you finish this film, Gibson explained, you may never work in Hollywood again.

As with reporters who render Episcopalians as Episcopals, Jensen writes that Gibson “chose to re-embrace his father’s faith, a fringe Catholicism known as Traditionalism.” Gibson and his father, more precisely, embrace a Lefebvrite faith, which does, as Jensen reports, reject many of Vatican II’s changes.

But Jensen adds this ad hominem argument from silence: “These 1962-65 Vatican II reforms also absolved Jews for the killing of Christ; Gibson hasn’t said whether he rejects this as well.”

Similarly, Jensen writes as though Gibson picked this fight for the sole point of being ornery:

The director himself laid down the first piece of kindling more than a year ago, when he defended his film on Bill O’Reilly’s Fox News talk show — even though no one had publicly attacked it. Seven weeks later, The New York Times Magazine published a story about his father, the Catholic Traditionalist, who was portrayed as a Holocaust-denying extremist prone to blaming Jews for the evils of the world.

The two incidents were not so far removed from each other. Gibson appeared on O’Reilly’s show because he knew that Times reporter Christopher Noxon was working on a hostile story about Gibson’s father and, by extension, about Gibson’s film, which he was still shooting in Italy.

Jensen raises an important point about artistic freedom, only to dismiss it:

Gibson defenders note that an artist has no obligation to those who would thought-police a work in progress. (Although in this case, he stands on shakier ground: “What he doesn’t get is that this isn’t about him,” says one source close to Gibson. “This is about 2,000 years of bigotry and hatred.”)

Let’s be clear about this much: As Peter Boyer reported in The New Yorker, assorted New Testament scholars attempted to demand changes in Gibson’s film. If professors at Azusa Pacific University or Wheaton College had attempted a similar stunt while Martin Scorsese was shooting The Last Temptation of Christ, most likely they would have heard–with some choice profanities thrown in for effect–that filmmakers, not professors, are the best people to direct films.

Jensen’s most troubling flourish is in comparing The Passion to one of the most notorious examples of film as propaganda:

If The Passion is denounced as anti-Semitic, and still becomes the most popular piece of hate-fueling cinema since The Birth of a Nation, his defiant, unconciliatory stance may well read as a decision to trade away Jewish concerns for Christian box office dollars. That’s something Hollywood may not be so quick to forgive or forget.

Again, the more precise comparison would be to The Last Temptation of Christ, despite the very different purposes of Gibson as a relapsed Catholic and Scorsese as a still-lapsed Catholic. Both films have generated fierce, even hysterical, levels of opposition even before opening on the first screen.

Some Christians, led by Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, offered to buy Scorsese’s prints from Universal Studios if it would agree to the film’s destruction. No one has sought to destroy Gibson’s film as a material object, but countless people have sought to destroy its reputation in utero.

This much is clear from people who have seen the film: Gibson builds on an image of the traditional Pietà , having Jesus’ grief-stricken mother stare into the camera, to implicate all people in his death. If that message somehow gives aid and succor to the Ku Klux Klan or other numbskull haters of Jews, then The Passion of the Christ will vie for the unenviable title as the most misunderstood film in decades.

OK, I understand the tensions between Mel Gibson and his hired guns, when it comes to relating to the secular news media in the months running up to the release of the final cut of his movie.

I understand that he is trying a grassroots, faith-based initiative to get early ticket sales up and, thus, gain clout with nervous theater chains.

I know that all of the coverage of this film has been shaped by early coverage growing out of a leaked first draft of the script. The hostility meter soared in the New York Times, in particular, right from the get-go. Gibson is genuinely hated by the leaders of the Lifestyle Left.

But Icon is conducting a bizarre PR campaign in which thousands of people get to see the movie and hear the film’s creators explain their views and their faith, while reporters — those of us who have to quote people for a living — are left totally on the sidelines.

Has this made the story go away? No way.

Has this made the coverage even more one-sided that it would have been otherwise? Amen.

Editor and Publisher recently did a piece allowing the religion-news specialists to sound off. They did so.

Here is a sample, quoting a traditional Christian who is a veteran on the beat:

Julia Duin, a religion reporter for The Washington Times, tells a bizarre tale of being invited to a screening at a church in Orlando, Fla., on Jan. 21 by Gibson’s publicist. At the event, she says she was forced to sign a confidentiality agreement promising not to reveal anything about the film, was kicked out before the film started, and eventually snuck back in to view all but 25 minutes of the movie.

“Paranoia is a good adjective to describe it,” she said of the experience. “I did not enjoy it.” When asked about the film, she said it was “not very complimentary to the Jewish leaders of the time, but I didn’t think it was anti-Semitic. I don’t think you come away from it thinking that Jews are all bad for all time.”

The agreement Duin had to sign stated that “‘The Passion of the Christ,’ is a work in progress, not yet ready for public scrutiny.” It also required screeners to agree to “hold confidential my exposure, knowledge and opinions of the film and the question and answer session with Mr. Gibson.”

The statement added that a media embargo for reviews and articles about the film’s contents would be in effect until the week the film opens, but “pastors and church leaders are free to speak out in support of the movie and your opinions resulting from today’s experience and exposure to this project.”

Postscript: Many people have asked me to recommend one sweeping article that covers the whole “Passion” controversy landscape. That’s a hard one. But “The Jesus War” from The New Yorker is the article that I think does the best job covering the various viewpoints in this media storm. Check it out.

We are, of course, in the midst of the pre-Passion of the Christ landslide in the mainstream media.

Doug and I could have created an entire blog just on this one issue and not get a wink of sleep for several months. So far, I have written only one column about the film — because I am a reporter and I actually need to quote real people. I focused on the Jesuit who did the translation work for the script.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to do journalism when no one can talk, other than the angry people on both sides who are in the midst of fundraising heaven.

I have been fascinated by the lack of critical voices among conservative Protestants. At some point, the overwhelming Catholic symbolism is going to tick off a really conservative Reformed Protestant and the fur will fly somewhere online. I would keep an eye on the letters pages of World magazine and its blog.

And I have also been searching for commentary on the orthodox — small or large “o” — side of Judaism.

Two of the best pieces I have found are:

* David Klinghoffer, on what Jewish scriptures have to say about issues related to the Passion.

* And Dennis Prager, on the profoundly different ways that Jewish and Christian believers can view the same movie.

Here is a sample from the Prager piece:

When watching “The Passion,” Jews and Christians are watching two entirely different films.

For two hours, Christians watch their Savior tortured and killed. For the same two hours, Jews watch Jews arrange the killing and torture of the Christians’ Savior.

In order to avoid further tension between two wonderful communities that had been well on their way to historic amity, it is crucial for each to try to understand what film the other is watching and reacting to.

In the midst of the flood (new metaphor), please check these out.