In late July, I received an article from GetReligion.org, a blog by former religion reporters who highlight both well-done and poorly executed religion coverage in the media. The article claimed that there was scant national news coverage of vandalism at U.S. Catholic parishes between July 10 and 16.
This destruction included the beheading of a statue of Jesus at a Miami parish, graffiti on a monument to unborn children at a New York parish, defacements of statues of the Virgin Mary in four different states and a man setting fire to a Florida parish on July 11 while a handful of parishioners were inside getting ready for mass.
I thought GetReligion had gotten it wrong. As a former religion reporter, I have a homing pigeon instinct for Godbeat news, and surely, I thought, if nearly a dozen Catholic churches were attacked in a six-day period, I would have heard about it.
Still, I don’t check my digital subscriptions to national papers every day, so I realized I could have missed the coverage. I did a quick internet search to check the accuracy of GetReligion’s claim.
It was correct.
While there was plenty of reporting on the July attacks on Catholic sites, only seven were by nonreligious (or non-right leaning) media. Of those, most were small outlets located in the coverage area where the attacks occurred.
The only semi-comprehensive piece by a major mainstream outlet was a July 22 Wall Street Journal article that looked at the incidents as a trend and quoted Catholic leaders. When the attacks continued the weekend of Aug. 1 with two fires at a parish in Weymouth, Mass., the only non-religious media coverage was a brief Associated Press story.
Now, ask yourself: If there’d been a week of such anti-religion actions against mosques or synagogues, would it have made national news? I’m confident it would have.
But someone paints satanic symbols on the door of a 100-year-old Catholic church in New Haven, Conn., a few days after someone sets fires at a Florida Catholic church and someone else spray-paints a red “IDOL” over the statue of the Virgin Mary? The national news media, for the most part, sighed.
The reason national coverage matters is because regional media outlets take cues about news trends from the big guns. When the New York Times or ABC Nightly News invest resources to do deep dives on an issue, smaller outlets pay attention and coverage spreads.
In this case, that didn’t happen, so people are left with questions:
- Were these attacks on Catholic parishes isolated incidents or, as some Catholic leaders fear, part of something more coordinated and sinister?
- Did activist Shaun King incite it all with his June 22 tweet to his 1.1 million followers that “statues of the white European they claim is Jesus ... his European mother and their white friends ... are a form of white supremacy ... Tear them down”?
- Are left-wing radicals driving it or far-right Trump supporters?
I consider journalists to be some of the most intelligent people on the planet, and despite experiencing religious “teasing” in newsrooms myself, I’ve defended my tribe plenty against claims of bias against Christianity.
But right now, I have the urge to whisper, as I would to someone whose slip is peeking out from under her skirt, “Hey, your bias is showing.”
That prejudice, although likely from ignorance and not malice, can make Christians feel, at best, misunderstood and, at worst, demeaned, dismissed and attacked by the press. Is it any wonder they support Trump — an egomaniac, misogynistic former adulterer? He’s the only one saying, “I see the bias, too.”
While we all like to think we’re super open-minded, the fact is, everyone has prejudices, be it toward race, class or creed. One example is the press calling evangelical Christian bakers “intolerant” for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay marriage, but never delving into why both Orthodox Jews and Muslims supported the Christian bakers’ religious freedom to take that stance.
As someone who spent nearly 20 years in journalism, I can affirm that most journalists are amazing people desperate to serve the public good through reporting accurate, timely news of local and national events.
Unfortunately, I can also affirm that many journalists are woefully uninformed of religion in general, and dismissive of Christian people in particular. Neither speaks well of a profession that has long prided itself on objectivity.
So it may be time for a come-to-Jesus meeting about religious bias in the newsroom. I’m sure Catholics would be happy to provide the holy water.
