by Benjamin Gottlieb

The shamefully shallow coverage of posthumous baptisms that were performed last week on the parents of the late Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal exemplified the mainstream news media's propensity to goose conflict and ignore the kind of contextualization that might complicate a black-and-white narrative.

Last Tuesday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles decried the actions of several Mormon churches that performed baptisms via proxy for Wiesenthal's parents, who were killed during the Holocaust. After the Church of Latter Day Saints issued an official apology, many journalists wasted no time in cranking out stories that revealed little understanding of the practice, its consequences or its history.
 
Posthumous baptisms are nothing new – Jewish and Mormon leaders have negotiated for decades over how to deal with these postmortem baptisms, an essential fact that was absent in much of the coverage of the Wiesenthal episode. Moreover, news organizations such as Reuters failed to inform readers about the origins of the practice and whether it was conducted just on Holocaust victims — an invitation, apparently, to consider religious practice generally, and Mormon practice in particular, as inherently bizarre. 

The New Testament scripture on which the practice is based comes from 1 Corinthians 15:29, which reads: “Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?” And posthumous baptisms, performed via proxy, are not reserved just for Holocaust victims. If day-of coverage of the Mormon Church's official apology could be forgiven the lack of these important bits of context, much of the follow-up coverage, which seemed equally oblivious, was unforgivable.

To insinuate – as did the Los Angeles Times and NPR – that the candidacy of GOP Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney could “conceivably” be jeopardized by the actions of others inside his faith is completely unreasonable. It would be one thing if those responsible for “baptizing” Wiesenthal's parents were regular guests at Romney's dinner table. But that is simply not the case. In fact, many news outlets did not even mention the names of the people who performed the baptisms, choosing instead to portray the LDS Church as wholly responsible.

Also completely ignored in last week's coverage was the fact that these baptisms do not carry any weight in Judaism. A baptism, posthumous or not, could never be considered more than a nice gesture at best. The irony is that both Jews and Mormons have been singled out, at various times, for their “unusual” religious practices. Reporters might pause to consider the biases that have historically shaped their coverage of these religious “others.”

Benjamin Max Gottlieb is a multimedia journalist and photographer based in Los Angeles, California. His work has been featured in a variety of news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, CNN International, CNN's “Business 360” blog, NBC Los Angeles, KCET.com and the Santa Barbara Independent, among others. He is currently a graduate student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, pursuing an M.A. in Online Journalism, and serves as the Executive Editor of NeonTommy.com — a 24/7 online-only news publication. He is also the art director of InTheFray.org, an online magazine that explores global issues with personal perspectives and critical analysis. An avid backpacker and self-proclaimed troubadour, Benjamin is constantly exploring new ways to tell stories.
 

by Jason Kehe

Surveys often bring out the worst in journalists. They don't require actual reporting—just imagination. We see a collection of numbers, determine which are the sexiest or the most shocking and slap on some “explanatory narrative.” Bim, bam, boom—it's journalism. Then we congratulate ourselves for providing our readers with “the real story.”

Of course, the problem is that, in our effort to simplify, distill and explain, we sometimes end up simply distorting. Several of the most recent instances of distortion in the world of religion reporting followed the publication of the Guttman Center's “A Portrait of Israeli Jews.”

It was the third survey in a series, begun in 1991 and repeated in 1999, that seeks to measure the changing religious profile of Israeli society, an important and valuable project. The explanatory narrative to emerge from the findings—the context, the trend, the “so what”—was, during the first few days, relatively simple: Israel is getting more religious. 

That in itself was a fair conclusion, and some variation of “Record number of Israeli Jews believe in God” was the go-to headline. But after those initial reports, some journalists began to commit one of the more grievous sins of the profession—creating conflict under the guise of providing context. What resulted were headlines like this: “The end of the secular majority.” Suddenly, the Guttman survey heralded the end of democratic Israel.

That's a sexy narrative, isn't it? “Survey puts fate of Israel democracy in doubt” is sure to get more readers than “80 percent of Jews believe in God.” But what many of these reports failed to explain was why increased religiosity supposedly equals decreased democracy.

Yes, religious orthodoxy usually doesn't foster democratic values like tolerance and equality; in that sense, an increase in Israeli Jewishness could reasonably be seen as troubling. It might even be the case that Israel is experiencing a surge in orthodox religious power and expression. But is that what this survey actually, unambiguously reveals?

From 1991 to 1999, the authors saw a marked decrease in religiosity, which they attributed to the massive influx of Russian immigrants. But that decrease did not last long, and the numbers have now returned to 1991 values, presumably because the Russians have assimilated. So if we cut out 1999, the change isn't so drastic at all—in fact, it just reflects a stabilization of Israel's religious profile. Is that cause for such great concern? Was there ever really a “secular majority” to begin with, or was that just a statistical blip of the mid-'90s?

Also clear is the finding that the increase in religiosity manifests mainly in the observance of Jewish customs and rituals, not in “practices which we categorized as 'religious,'” the survey authors say. So it's circumcisions and bar mitzvahs that are on the rise, not necessarily outmoded orthodox practices. In fact, the number of orthodox Jews has only increased by a couple of percentage points. And what do wolf-crying pundits make of the fact that a large majority of respondents (73 percent) believe Israel can be both a Jewish and a democratic state, or that most think women deserve better treatment? These aren't the viewpoints of a burgeoning theocracy.

The picture of Israel that emerges from the 121-page survey, which anyone who covers this story should at least skim, is of a very religious but ultimately tolerance-minded society. Yes, there is great, possibly growing pride in being Jewish in Israel. But is that so worrisome—or, really, so shocking—for the so-called “Jewish state”? No—and it doesn't signal the end of Israeli democracy. Responsible journalists should know better than to trust numbers on a page.

Jason Kehe is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. He is currently finishing his B.A. in Print and Digital Journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and is the Assistant Book Editor at Los Angeles magazine. He has spent the past three years writing and reporting on L.A. arts, with a special focus on theater coverage. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Jewish Journal, Daily Trojan and Neon Tommy.com, where he served as Senior Arts Editor for two years. Jason also studies neuroscience and film.

by Anthony Hatcher

I first heard about the Susan G. Komen foundation / Planned Parenthood flap via email. A colleague sent a message to all faculty and staff at my university about the foundation's announcement that it would deny funding to organizations under government investigation. In this instance, he noted, House Republicans are looking into whether Planned Parenthood violated the law by using federal funds for abortions. The subject line of the email read, “So sad.”

On Facebook, my sister-in-law commented on the same news story using the same words: “So sad.” Komen backed away from its decision to bar Planned Parenthood from grants three days after a national backlash.

In another reversal related to women's health, President Obama tweaked a policy requiring religiously affiliated organizations, such as Roman Catholic hospitals, to provide free birth control through their healthcare plans to employees who request it.

Catholic bishops, Republican politicians and many evangelicals declared the Obama administration's stance a war on religion. Timothy Dolan, president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops said, “Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience.”

After much rhetorical rending of garments, the president changed course, slightly. Instead of requiring religious employers to pay for contraception, the organizations' health insurance providers must directly provide those services to employees for free. That wasn't enough for Obama's official critics.

In the Washington Post's “On Faith” blog, Cathy Lynn Grossman wrote, “President Obama's effort to accommodate the Catholic Church by altering his administration's rule on birth control coverage has not appeased the church, congressional Republicans or GOP candidates trying to take his job next year.”

That's the response of public figures, but what about the public? Theologian Martin Marty, among others, noted that, “In most surveys that we have seen, about 98 percent of Catholic women of child-bearing age tell the poll-taker that they use contraceptive birth control devices and pills, whatever official church teaching and the bishops may say.” Who are these women? Why weren't they being sought in droves and interviewed by reporters?

NPR and a handful of other news outlets often interview “civilians” for such stories, as they've done in their coverage of how Catholics are split over the contraception provision.

When I was a reporter, one of my editors once said the newspaper needed to talk to more “real people.” His point was well taken. Experts in various fields and officials in government need to be interviewed for stories, but sometimes everyday folks should be heard too. Startling as this may sound, leaders are often out of step with their constituents.

How does one find a reliable source on the ground? Poynter.org managing editor Steve Myers has written about a social media tool to help reporters locate breaking news sources via Twitter. Journalists can also rely on the tried-and-true method of working the phone. Either way, it's worth the effort to seek non-officials (noncombatants?) whose perspectives can be useful for understanding a complex story.

Anthony Hatcher, a former newspaper journalist, is an associate professor of communications at Elon University in Elon, NC. His research focuses on religion and popular culture. He teaches a course at Elon in religion and media.

by Megan Sweas

Since President Barack Obama announced his contraception compromise on Friday, the coalition of religious conservatives that had united against the Health and Human Services mandate to cover contraception has begun to fall apart. Obama said that insurance companies rather than religiously affiliated institutions would be required to cover “objectional services.” Roman Catholic bishops in the U.S. question whether this would actually work, but in rejecting the compromise Friday night, they also called “for the rescission of the mandate altogether.” (Rocco Palmo has a “bulked up” explanation of the bishops' position.)

With the bishops' calling for legislative action to counter the mandate, reporters might want to look closer at Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whose own faith life arguably embodies the conservative Catholic and evangelical unity we've seen so clearly in this issue. According to Mother Jones, his proposed “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” could affect more women than just those employed by religious hospitals and schools.

Meanwhile, the Catholic Health Association as well as liberal Catholic groups, leaders and commentators are urging the bishops to accept the compromise.

Coverage of this unfolding drama in the New York Times has included the various reactions, while a follow-up (with a rather unclear time-line) reported that the focus of the Obama administration's efforts was on the CHA and not the bishops. The Los Angeles Times didn't catch the bishops' message that the compromise was not a “win,” though it took the advice of Maura Jane Farrelly, who wrote on this blog on Thursday that reporters should look to the state level for the full story. Many articles have framed this larger narrative to include same-sex marriage and the question of whether churches must provide benefits or adoption services to gay couples, a development that Farrelly pointed to last December.

But there is also an internal conversation among American Catholics that is worth looking into if reporters want to understand the post-compromise divide. There are a couple of stories from the past few years that can provided deeper context for current conflicts over healthcare.

The first is the debate about the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, in which pro-life activists set up a strict purity test for projects funded by the Catholic Church. Essentially the “Reform CCHD Now” movement argued that an otherwise uncontroversial organization could be disqualified from funding by simply signing on to a campaign with an organization that has a board member who is pro-choice.

The second is the story of Catholic Healthcare West, the country's fifth largest hospital system, which cut its ties with the Catholic Church and became Dignity Healthcare. The contraception mandate has overshadowed this almost completely ignored story. While business priorities may have driven the Dignity Healthcare decision, it's worth exploring what it means for a hospital to be Catholic. The nuns who govern the system seemed confident that they didn't need a connection to the bishops to run an ethical operation. Independence might provide them with greater leeway to provide broader care options. The former Catholic Healthcare West (which does provide contraception coverage) is also the parent company of St. Joseph Hospital in Phoenix, which lost its Catholic status after allowing an abortion to save the life of a mother.

With these stories in mind, opposition to the contraception mandate can be understood not only as a question of religious liberty (an assertion that continues to merit closer scrutiny) but also as an imperative to preserve doctrinal purity in public sphere. While the religious liberty angle may have united conservative and liberal Catholics, conservative evangelicals and the Republican presidential candidates, the purity question helps clarify the more recent split within the Catholic ranks. The folks working in CCHD-funded organizations or in other Catholic hospitals have argued that the messiness of real life means purity is not always possible, or even desirable, in all cases. The compromise offered by the Obama administration might not be perfect, this reasoning goes, but it serves the greater good.

The bishops say they weren't consulted about the “accommodation,” but given their commitment to purity, it's worth asking whether they're truly interested in compromise and, if so, what such a bargain might look like. This question, so far unasked, would help to illuminate important internal debates with the American Catholicism.

Megan Sweas is an Annenberg Fellow studying the intersection of religion and politics in USC's Specialized Journalism program. She previously covered political and social issues as associate editor of U.S. Catholic magazine, where she also managed the website. After graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, she spent a volunteer year at Free Spirit Media, a non-profit youth media organization on Chicago's West Side.

by Emily Frost

Accusations that the Obama Administration is denying freedom of religion have been flying this past week – from both Roman Catholic and evangelical leaders. Evangelical minister Rick Warren tweeted, “I'm not a Catholic but I stand in 100% solidarity with my brothers & sisters to practice their belief against govt pressure.” A few days earlier, Timothy George, an evangelical and dean of the Beeson Divinity School, joined forces with the Baptist leader Chuck Colson to write “an open letter to evangelicals” in support of the Catholic leadership's opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services' ruling that required religious institutions to provide reproductive health coverage.

President Obama has since shifted his position, exempting religious institutions, but former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington that Obama's original position has done wonders to re-energize the conservative base. It has also unified religious conservatives, he said, proclaiming, “We're all Catholics now.”

The speeches and tweets of religious leaders and political figures make for flashy news coverage, but when reporters rely too heavily on them to construct journalistic narratives, they also tend to obscure the beliefs of everyday adherents. Rachel Weiner's Washington Post column, “The culture war is back,” is sure to get a lot of traffic – but is that really the whole story?

In a recent article about how Catholic bishops are preparing to battle birth control regulations, New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein lumped “evangelicals and other religious conservatives” together. She left no room for progressive, “emergent” evangelicals, as they are often called, or even apolitical believers. Reporting on the same topic, David Gibson used a similar phrase in the Washington Post. He writes of “evangelicals and other conservative Protestants” as though they are one and the same. CNN's Belief Blog co-editor, Eric Marrapodi, does no better, labeling evangelicals a “politically formidable religious group” in his analysis of the contraception decision.

By equating evangelical or Catholic faith with conservative politics, journalists fail to report on the nuances within these fluid demographics. Specifically, they overlook the divide between what public figures prescribe and how lay people describe their own interests. A large proportion of both evangelical and Catholic women, for example, say they use a “highly effective method” of birth control, according to the Guttmacher Institute: 68 percent of Catholic women and 74 percent of evangelical women (73 percent of mainline Protestant women reported using “highly effective methods”).

Clearly there's a disconnect between what we're being told “everyone” in these faith groups thinks and the lived reality of faith on the ground. Younger evangelical voters, to take another example, supported Obama in 2008 at higher rates than their older counterparts. Anna Greenberg, of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, polled 1,000 adults in September 2008 and found that 30 percent of white evangelicals aged 18 to 29 supported Obama, compared with 22 percent aged 30 and over. In the same poll, 48 percent of the younger group described a negative feeling toward President George W. Bush. Based on these data, Greenberg believes the Republican brand has suffered damage among younger evangelicals. In other words, they no longer represent an electoral bloc that can be counted on to vote conservative.

Notre Dame history professor Mark Noll reminds us that among evangelicals, “a substantial minority do not [vote Republican] — and quite a few evangelicals remain in principle uninvolved in active politics.” In January of 2009, the Pew Research Center found that in a poll of 1,503 adults 50 percent of white evangelicals reported favorable feelings towards the Democratic Party; 48 percent reported a positive opinion of the Republican Party.

Intriguingly, despite many reporters' tendency to conflate conservative political views with evangelical Christianity, the general public is not convinced. According to a 2008 survey by Ellison Research of 1,007 American adults, only 6 percent said evangelicals are defined by their political outlook. In their continuing coverage of the healthcare debates, reporters might take a cue from their audiences and stop assuming that the evangelical and Catholic voices that are speaking loudest are telling the whole story–or even a substantial part of it.

Emily Frost is a radio reporter and online journalist. She is an Annenberg Fellow at USC's Annenberg Graduate School for Journalism and a host and the Executive Producer at Annenberg Radio News. She is currently interning at KPCC's “The Madeleine Brand Show.” Previously, Frost worked in  online media, radio, and documentary film in New York City. She is a graduate of Wesleyan University.