Another hack piece by CNN … maybe (Updated)

March 30, 2013 By Bobby Ross Jr.

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:

At evangelical colleges, a shifting attitude toward gay students (My piece for @cnnbelief) religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/30/at-…

— Sarah Pulliam Bailey (@spulliam) March 30, 2013

I tweeted back:

@spulliam I already called @getreligion dibs on that hack piece. 🙂

— Bobby Ross Jr. (@bobbyross) March 30, 2013

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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Two items of GetReligion biz (prayers for George, please)

March 3, 2013 By tmatt

Let me share two items with readers this weekend, both of a personal nature.

The first is personal, in that one of your GetReligionistas has been missing for a few days and his readers need to know why. Father George Conger recently had some serious spinal surgery and, while it went well, this is not the kind of thing that one recovers from quickly. He faces some pretty serious rehabilitation and it may be some time before he is his usual erudite, spunky self near a keyboard and a mouse.

So, those of you who feel comfortable with the word “prayer,” please offer a few invocations on our brother’s behalf. He has enough high-church blood in him to appreciate a few requests for the heroic prayers of St. George, I would think.

We will keep you posted, but know that this is not the kind of situation that you rush. Until then, your GetReligionistas will be working shorthanded (we’ve been down one scribe after the loss of Sarah Pulliam Bailey, as it was) for a while. So expect some days when there are only two posts, especially since I will be traveling for about a week, including a visit to New York City to lead a few seminars at this year’s spring College Media Convention.

Also, thank you for those who wrote kind notes appreciating my recent rather personal post about the coverage of the death of the great pianist (and Texas Baptist) Van Cliburn, one of my classical music heroes as a Southern Baptist preacher’s kid growing up in East Texas.

Thus, I thought I would share a big chunk of reflection on the pianist, published in The Washington Post Style section. It concerns an encounter with Cliburn in the late 1950s, when the father of writer Patricia Dane Rogers was dying of cancer in the family’s New York apartment. Her parents met the pianist at their doctor’s office soon after his world-shaking victory in the international Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow, which made him one of the most famous musicians in the world.

Months later, when it was obvious that her father’s illness was terminal, Cliburn offered to come over and play for him.

Did they have a piano?

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The Pope joins Twitter #HabemusPapam

December 13, 2012 By mollie

Even though the Pope joining Twitter has been news for weeks, I was still surprised at what a big story it was yesterday. I’ve been on Twitter for years (joined the morning after an epic anti-Twitter rant at the local pub) and I don’t even have 4,000 followers. Even before the Pope had issued his first tweet, he had more than 1 million followers. He tweeted his first item yesterday. Or as Rocco Palmo put it, #HabemusPapam.

And yes, everyone got super excited. The cool thing was that there was some really great coverage of the piece. And I’m not talking about The Onion‘s hilarious “Pope To Identify With Catholic Youth By Giving Up On Catholicism” satire. We’ll get to the better stuff in a minute.

One religion reporter sent us something that she thought was not so hot. She was too kind. It read like it was written by a teenager who thinks he’s a lot funnier than than he is. Headlined, “Mockery outweighs piety after pope’s Twitter debut,” the AFP story begins:

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI’s debut on Twitter got off to a bumpy start on Wednesday, with mockery outweighing piety in reaction to the first tweets from the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics.

The pope’s second tweet — “How can we celebrate the Year of Faith better in our daily lives?” — prompted a string of tongue-in-cheek- answers.

“With some nice cold chocolate milk. And the Lord?” wrote one user tweeting in Portuguese with the handle @tensoblog.

Another distinctly sin-minded user, @binnie, joked: “Hookers and blow.”

Hardy har har har har har. Anyway, the claim made by the news outlet is that mockery outweighed piety. The story doesn’t even come close to substantiating this claim. It doesn’t even try. It leaves out information that might have thrown the claim into question. For instance, there’s no mention that the Pope had, say, 50,000+ “retweets” or close to 20,000 “favorites.”

Is a story about the friendly jokes — and the unfriendly mockery — worthwhile? Perhaps. Perhaps that’s what you want to emphasize. But to claim that the Pope’s Twitter debut got off to a rocky start and that mockery outweighed other reactions is more media wishful thinking than reality. Let’s stick to reality in journalism, please. And if you do want to do a story about people who curse, mock, tweet risque pictures at the Pope, could you at the very least move it beyond the “OMG! Naughty words to B16!” level of discourse? What does this say about people who would do such a thing? How does it make Catholics feel? What do the Pope’s people think about this? Etc.

Leading up to the big day of the Pope’s first tweet, I rather enjoyed this whimsical take on “Spiritual wisdom in 140 characters or less,” first published in the Plain Dealer and sent out by Religion News Service. The Washington Post had an interesting take last week headlined “Ask the pope @pontifex: With Twitter account, Benedict XVI just a tweet away.” It’s about how the Twitter account makes him more reachable. Sarah Pulliam Bailey also had a look forward at Odyssey Networks.

The Washington Post had a different take yesterday, noting that the first tweet from Benedict came about because of Twitter outreach:

It may look as if Pope Benedict XVI’s first tweet on the auspicious date of 12/12/12 will be a divine act. But orchestrating the pontiff’s debut on Twitter has been a far more earthbound effort, involving an elaborate behind-the-scenes production…

The effort is part of Twitter’s powerful — not to mention low-cost — strategy to expand its influence and rack up more users by getting the world’s biggest names in sports, Hollywood, government and religion onto the Internet’s leading megaphone for self-promotion.

But man is that a bad opening line, right? Why would it look like a divine act? Why is 12/12/12 “auspicious”?

The Post‘s On Faith section also had a great reaction roundup from a variety of different observers. Sample:

Matt Archbold writes for the National Catholic Register and blogs at the Creative Minority Report.

The pope’s Twitter feed is going live. I’m excited. While this is an excellent opportunity for young Catholics to encounter the church’s teachings, I suspect that this open line of communication will be utilized by some to be able to curse directly at the pope. Do you know how many four-letter words you can fit in a 140 character limit? I don’t have a calculator handy but I’m pretty sure it’s a lot!

But Christians are quite familiar with lion’s dens. Have been for a while. And let’s face it, real lions don’t just curse in ALL CAPS and use clever hashtags.

But the pope getting on Twitter does raise some interesting issues. If you don’t retweet the pope, is that a sin of omission?

If the pope “follows you” doesn’t that really set the Church hierarchy upside down? Do I really want that kind of responsibility? I don’t even have a mitre.

And if you get blocked by the pope is that a 21st century form of excommunication? Are we really about to see the birth of the excommunitweet? Because that would actually be pretty awesome.

Among his other observations are that the Beatitudes are written in 140 characters or less.

Actually, rather than doing this entire roundup, I should have just directed you to Cathy Lynn Grossmann’s comprehensive look in USA Today at the Benedict’s first day on Twitter. She looks at whose questions got asked, the specifics of how questions to the pope got answered, the Vatican’s use of Twitter up to this point, selections from Archbold’s comments, and more.

Church, Lone Star State and #RNA2012

October 5, 2012 By Bobby Ross Jr.

As Mollie mentioned, the GetReligion team — which mostly hangs out together in cyberspace — has assembled in human form at the Religion Newswriters Association annual meeting in Bethesda, Md., just outside Washington, D.C.

Mollie, George, Sarah and I already have convented a brief, impromptu GR meeting where laughing was the primary agenda item. (By the way, Sarah did an excellent job this morning on a panel dubbed “50 Shades of Evangelicalism: Diversity Among Young American Evangelicals.”) So far, I have not seen tmatt — he may be teaching or something this morning (or perhaps he’s off worrying about his Orioles having to face my Rangers tonight).

Much to my surprise, the first person I recognized when I arrived at the convention hotel was Carla Hinton, who succeeded me 10 years ago as religion editor for The Oklahoman. We both live in Oklahoma City, so it’s ironic that we had to travel 1,300-plus miles to run into each other at the elevator. At breakfast this morning, I sat next to Jeremy Weber, news editor for Christianity Today, who edits my freelance pieces for that fine publication. Suffice it to say that I’m enjoying seeing old friends and meeting some Godbeat pros for the first time.

If you watched this morning’s session on religious freedom (carried live by C-Span.org) and spotted a middle-aged dude with a balding head and a blue polo shirt with a Christian Chronicle logo, that was me. For details on that discussion (and other RNA sessions), I’d recommend following the #RNA2012 hashtag on Twitter. In a roomful of journalists, you can imagine that there’s a lot of smartphone tapping, laptop clicking and assorted other “live tweeting” going on.

Speaking of religious freedom, I posted earlier this week on a clash in an East Texas town over high school cheerleaders displaying banners with Christian messages at football games. The New York Times reported on the Texas case today, so I wanted to revisit that topic.

The top of the Times story:

KOUNTZE, Tex. — The hand-painted red banner created by high school cheerleaders here for Friday night’s football game against Woodville was finished days ago. It contains a passage from the Bible — Hebrews 12:1 — that reads: “And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”

That banner, and other religious-themed signs made by the high school and middle school cheerleading squads in recent weeks, have embroiled this East Texas town in a heated debate over God, football and cheerleaders’ rights.

School district officials ordered the cheerleaders to stop putting Bible verses on the banners, because they believed doing so violated the law on religious expression at public school events. In response, a group of 15 cheerleaders and their parents sued the Kountze Independent School District and its superintendent, Kevin Weldon, claiming that prohibiting the students from writing Christian banner messages violated their religious liberties and free-speech rights.

The Times piece doesn’t till a whole lot of new ground. However, as I read the story, I kept wondering if it would elaborate on the “law on religious expression at public school events.” I wanted to know: What law?

To its credit, the newspaper tackles that crucial question:

Mr. Weldon and school district lawyers said his decision to prohibit the messages was based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, which established that prayers led by students at high school football games were unconstitutional and had the improper effect of coercing those in the audience to take part in an act of religious worship.

While testifying on Thursday, Mr. Weldon — he and school board members had been subpoenaed, though Judge Thomas later nullified those subpoenas — said two lawyers he contacted, a district lawyer and a lawyer for the Texas Association of School Boards, advised him to prohibit the students from writing Bible verses. But he said that he supported the cheerleaders and that, as a Christian, he agreed with their religious viewpoints. …

One of the lawyers representing the students and their families, David Starnes, argued that the cheerleaders’ Bible-themed banners were protected private speech, not government-sanctioned speech, and that the Supreme Court’s ruling did not apply in this case because it had nothing to do with prayer. Cheerleading practice as well as banner-making occur after school on campus, and the squads are led by students, though adult advisers monitor and assist them. No school funds are used to purchase the banner supplies.

I could say more, but the noon hour has passed on the East Coast, and I don’t want to miss the next session — or the lunch that goes with it. I’m sure my fellow GetReligionistas will be sharing much more from #RNA2012. Stay tuned.