So, does LA need a ‘conservative’ newspaper or not?

May 1, 2013 By 8 Comments

Time for a quick trip into tmatt’s infamous GetReligion file of guilt.

You just know that plenty of GetReligion readers are going to send us emails about an essay — in this case, from The Week — that runs with the following headline:

Why newspapers need to hire more Christians

For starters, it would help rebut conservative concerns about media bias

This essay by Matt K. Lewis opened with a reference to the recent death of one of the most talented Christians who has ever worked in the hallowed environment of The New York Times — the great John McCandlish Phillips (click here for my recent Scripps Howard column on this reporter-turned-preacher). Here’s the key transition material in the Lewis essay:

Conservatives have long lamented our East Coast secular media, charging that its worldview bias (even more than its overt political bias) skews America’s information supply. Too often, Christians feel like they’re cast as the type of fringe characters one might associate with the bar scene from Star Wars. …

This longstanding lack of diversity in the newsroom is confirmed by the Times’ McCandlish Phillips obituary, which noted that “there were [no other evangelical Christians working at the Times] when he joined the paper.”

That was unfortunate. Media outlets who want to understand America should at least have a few journalists hanging around who share — or at least, aren’t hostile to — the Christian faith.

Lewis later deals with the fact that many newsrooms do contain their share of believers, often professionals whose religious views are quite progressive/liberal who work on the opinion side of the newspaper business. That’s good, but it almost misses the point.

The key issue being discussed here is actually the need for intellectual and cultural diversity and, quite frankly, tolerance in many major newsrooms when it comes to traditional forms of major religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Here, once again, is a key passage from the highly symbolic — especially in light of future events (hello Bill Keller) — 2005 self-study at The New York Times entitled “Preserving Our Readers’ Trust.”

Our paper’s commitment to a diversity of gender, race and ethnicity is nonnegotiable. We should pursue the same diversity in other dimensions of life, and for the same reason — to ensure that a broad range of viewpoints is at the table when we decide what to write about and how to present it. The executive editor should assign this goal to everyone who has a hand in recruiting.

We should take pains to create a climate in which staff members feel free to propose or criticize coverage from vantage points that lie outside the perceived newsroom consensus (liberal/conservative, religious/secular, urban/suburban/rural, elitist/white collar/blue collar). …

Too often we label whole groups from a perspective that uncritically accepts a stereotype or unfairly marginalizes them. As one reporter put it, words like moderate or centrist “inevitably incorporate a judgment about which views are sensible and which are extreme.” We often apply “religious fundamentalists,” another loaded term, to political activists who would describe themselves as Christian conservatives.

Now, let me stress that longtime GetReligion readers will know that I think, based on my experiences in mainstream newsrooms, that there are fine reporters doing accurate, balanced reporting on religious and cultural issues who are not believers of any kind. That’s not the point of the Times review material. The point is that culturally and intellectually diverse newsrooms do a better job covering modern America than newsrooms that are not as diverse.

At the same time, on the issue of Christians in the newsroom, my position is the same as that of Phillips. Bias issues exist, but it would also help if there were more religious believers who had the skills and the guts to work in elite newsrooms, which are not environments that embrace those with thin skins. We are dealing, as I have said many times, with a blind spot that has two sides. All too often, mainstream journalists do not respect the valid, First Amendment role that religious liberty plays in American life. At the same time, far too many religious believers do not respect the valid, First Amendment role played by the press.

Now, I said all of that to note this recent article at The Daily Beast about the potential sale of The Los Angeles Times to everybody’s favorite billionaire libertarian brothers, David and Charles Koch. I’m talking about the one that ran under the headline, “Could There Be A Conservative LA Times?”

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Filed Under: Journalism, Politics, Religion, Same-sex marriage, Sex, Social Issues Tagged With: , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Got news? Partisan, partisan, partisan

September 30, 2010 By

What we have here is a highly partisan op-ed page piece — it’s written by Jim Towey, a George W. Bush staffer — on an openly conservative editorial page that bluntly protests a situation in the mainstream press that certainly looks painfully partisan.

Thus, this is precisely the kind of thing that your GetReligionistas try to avoid, because it’s a partisan, partisan, partisan thing. Ick.

But there’s a problem.

At the heart of this partisan op-ed is a valid faith-based news story that isn’t getting any mainstream ink.

Now, sadly, this is one of those Wall Street Journal pieces where you need a digital subscription in order to read the whole thing. However, in this case the first few paragraphs will do just fine:

I was George W. Bush’s director of faith-based initiatives. Imagine what would have happened had I proposed that he use that office to urge thousands of religious leaders to become “validators” of the Iraq War?

I can tell you two things that would have happened immediately. First, President Bush would have fired me — and rightly so — for trying to politicize his faith-based office. Second, the American media would have chased me into the foxhole Saddam Hussein had vacated.

Yet … President Obama and his director of faith-based initiatives convened exactly such a meeting to try to control political damage from the unpopular health-care law. “Get out there and spread the word,” Politico.com reported the president as saying on a conference call with leaders of faith-based and community groups. “I think all of you can be really important validators and trusted resources for friends and neighbors, to help explain what’s now available to them.”

Since then, there’s been nary a peep from the press.

That certainly seems to be true, looking at this Google News search built on a few logical terms.

There was this completely one-sided press release at CNN.com, but I hesitate to point readers toward it because it does not contain a single voice expressing concern about this use of the faith-based project. It’s so PR pitch-perfect that it could be a satire of some kind. Ick.

All of this is rather sad, since it provides more fuel for the people who — with good cause, from time to Time — see the mainstream press as a nakedly partisan force on the side of moral and cultural progressives and in opposition to traditional forms of faith.

Regular GetReligion readers know that I think that complaint is simplistic, most of the time. Unfortunately, it’s easier to make that case on moral and cultural issues than on basic political issues, as candid mainstream journalists have admitted from time (click here) to time (then click here).

Now, I know that some of you are thinking: What does this have to do with the health-care debate? Wasn’t that a high-stakes battle over politics, pure and simple? What’s so controversial about religious leaders getting involved in lobbying for or against health-care reform? I don’t know. Let’s ask Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) about that question.

Anyway, all of this is helping to fuel a high tide of anti-MSM acid out there in Middle America, according to some new data from the folks at Gallup. Here’s the top of the organization’s announcement:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – For the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% now saying this is a record high by one percentage point. … The 43% of Americans who, in Gallup’s annual Governance poll, conducted Sept. 13-16, 2010, express a great deal or fair amount of trust ties the record low, and is far worse than three prior Gallup readings on this measure from the 1970s.

Trust in the media is now slightly higher than the record-low trust in the legislative branch but lower than trust in the executive and judicial branches of government, even though trust in all three branches is down sharply this year. These findings also further confirm a separate Gallup poll that found little confidence in newspapers and television specifically.

Nearly half of Americans (48%) say the media are too liberal, tying the high end of the narrow 44% to 48% range recorded over the past decade. One-third say the media are just about right while 15% say they are too conservative. Overall, perceptions of bias have remained quite steady over this tumultuous period of change for the media, marked by the growth of cable and Internet news sources.

So, that 48 percent number is pretty high — but it’s not a majority. Then the people who think the press is doing fine, plus the folks who think that the MSM lean to the right? That adds up to about 48 percent or a tick higher.

Sounds like a pretty divided, partisan situation to me. Sad. Sad. Sad.

What to do? Well, for starters, if anyone sees a fine, balanced mainstream news report focusing on that tax-payer-funded, faith-based campaign to back Obamacare, a news report that takes both sides of the debate seriously, please let me know. I am always looking for solid, non-partisan news reporting on tough issues that are rooted in religion. We need more of that, as I am sure the Gallup pollsters would agree.

Filed Under: Got news?, Mainline, Pentecostalism, People, Politics

Media bias ships headed left and right

January 18, 2006 By

Ship391Do you want to see a classic example of two journalists talking right past each other on issues linked to media bias and, indirectly, religion?

It seems there was a debate, of sorts, the other night at the University of California at Santa Barbara between Eric Alterman, author of “What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News” and conservative talk-show host Tucker Carlson of MSNBC. According to reporter Devon Claire Flannery’s story in the student newspaper, The Daily Nexus, most of what transpired was pretty predictable. Thus, the voice on the right says:

Carlson contended that three issues — abortion, the second amendment and gay marriage — are always presented from a left-leaning point of view in American media. On average, Carlson said, journalists tend to be white, come from liberal, coastal areas, graduate from liberal colleges, and as a result have the same culture and perspective of the world.

“Everybody in journalism is pro-choice, pro-gun control and for gay marriage,” Carlson said. “When you only have people [in the media] that all think the same, you do not have good coverage. You can’t cover America until you have a newsroom that looks like America … who thinks like America.”

Then the spotlight turns to Alterman, who says what he always says, which is that media is steered by conservative bias:

“If we had a liberal media, then 44 percent of Americans would not have believed the Sept. 11 bombers were Iraqis,” Alterman said. “We get an extremely biased version of the news.”

Alterman also contended that, even if television pundits or politicians were not overtly liberally biased, the structure of media in general allows for much more coverage of conservative interests. “Everyday I read the Business Section of the New York Times. Not the Labor Section, not the Environment Section,” Alterman said, referring to two nonexistent sections. “These are conservative assumptions.”

Ship602I, for one, would like to see the source poll for that Sept. 11 statement, but never mind. The key here is to note that Carlson is talking about media bias on religious and moral issues, for the most part, and Alterman responds by talking about issues of economics and other more strictly political concerns. Apples and oranges, in other words.

In fact, in his “What Liberal Media?” book, Alterman’s chapter on social issues admits that the MSM is, for the most part, biased on precisely these kinds of issues. At one point he hauls off and says:

I concur that the overal flavor of the elite media reporting favors gun control, campaign finance reform, gay rights and the environmental movement, but I do not find this bias as overwhelming as some conservative critics. …

Of course, he also says:

From my own perspective as an urban, East Coast liberal who is surrounded by others who hold views not unlike my own, I am perfectly prepared to believe that members of the elite media transmit liberal views in the guise of objective reporting on occasion. On some issues this bias might be called pervasive. …

Alterman then digs into the meat of the famous Los Angeles Times series by the late David Shaw (please click here) on the issue of media bias in coverage of the ultimate media-bias issue (from the point of view of moral conservatives) — abortion.

In other words, Alterman and Carlson may not, in fact, disagree with each other all that much. Or, as I put it in a post here at GetReligion last summer:

… (the) heart of the MSM is a kind of moral Libertarianism. It’s kind of Clintonian economics and morality. Leave us alone and let us make lots of money. It’s a Hollywood conservatism. It’s a corporate thing. It’s a moderate Republican thing, the brand of faith that dominates business elites.

The problem is that our age is dominated by the politics of social issues. When the first non-conservative seat on the U.S. Supreme Court bench goes open, do you expect hotter-than-hot arguments over economics or morality? Foreign policy or religion? Do the same dynamics affect the journalism wars? Absolutely.

Do you think anyone pointed this out to the talking heads on the left and right during their “debate” the other day out in California? Probably not. These journalistic ships just keep passing without contact, headed in different directions.

Filed Under: Godbeat, Journalism

God bless PBS

September 15, 2004 By

Nicholi_1Amid the many hosannas for The Question of God, the two-part PBS series hosted by Harvard’s Armand Nicholi (pictured), Richard Ostling of the Associated Press delivers this surprising criticism:

Unfortunately, the biographies are interspersed with round-table chats led by Nicholi. The seven panelists are a pleasant enough group. But except for atheist Michael Shermer, who runs the California-based Skeptics Society, we’re never quite sure who these individuals are, why they were invited, what religious backgrounds they reflect and why we should pay particular heed to their opinions.

[Director Catherine] Tatge booked equally amiable panelists for her Genesis series, but many were noted experts.

Many of the panelists for Moyers’ Genesis series were indeed experts, but that series had its own talking-head indulgences. How many people would have thought of artist Hugh O’Donnell, Byron E. Calame of The Wall Street Journal or writer/musician/artist Elizabeth Swados as essential authorities on any biblical book?

I think the conversations between Nicholi and his guest panelists form the heart of the series. They represent the same pointed discussions that take place day after day, whether in restaurants or libraries or through popular culture, between believers and skeptics.

The more cringe-inducing aspects of the series are the depictions of the adult Freud and Lewis by actors Peter Eyre and Simon Jones. In a few moments, the program imagines Freud and Lewis in the same room, exchanging their views on religion as if Freud had just dropped by the Eagle and Child pub.

Ostling concludes with these strong points:

The believers may be so pleased PBS is even taking the God issue seriously and portraying Lewis’ famous conversion that they’ll overlook the subtle tilt against belief. If Lewis had been on the panel he would have answered skeptical challenges that are left hanging and have assailed Freud’s lack of proof for his supposedly scientific theories.

So “Question” unwittingly indicates that faith remains on the defensive among cultural elitists, notwithstanding popular revivals and the supposed “Twilight of Atheism” proclaimed in a new book by Alister McGrath, a Lewis-style atheist turned Oxford theist.

Eric Alterman recently wrote an entertaining screed bemoaning the increasing conservative presence on PBS. It’s only a matter of time before some hardened secularist pundit sees The Question of God as evidence of oppressive God-talk at PBS.

TV critic Roger Catlin of The Hartford Courant deserves praise for tweaking one PBS affiliate’s discomfort with the series:

Connecticut Public TV obviously doesn’t feel its viewers are up to such intellectual activity, though. So they fill prime time with three hours of reruns of the British reality series “1940s House” (CPTV, 8 p.m.), bumping “The Question of God” to 1 a.m. with a replay at 4 a.m. (in case that’s a better time for you).

Filed Under: Radio & TV