by Judith Weisenfeld

Glee, Fox's award-winning series about a high school glee club, returned on April 13 after a mid-season hiatus, crushing its competition and posting impressive ratings among viewers across the 18-49 age range. 

The sense of anticipation greeting the show's return had been boosted by the buzz surrounding the upcoming Glee concert tour and the frenzy about open auditions for new cast members, as well as by cast appearances at the White House Easter egg-hunt and an hour on Oprah.  The extent of Glee's cultural power might be measured by the fact that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently named the show as among his favorites–perhaps, some reporters noted, in an attempt to improve his election chances.  

Critics have located the show's appeal in what many have called an endearing rendition of the awkwardness of high school and in its revival of the possibilities of the television musical.  When it honored Glee in February of 2010, Catholics in Media Associates (CIMA) noted that “the show demonstrates how the arts integrate life and learning in a joyful way, tinged with humor and sometimes pathos.” 

A shared belief in what CIMA called Glee's “beautiful and kind heart” has resulted in organizations like the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) joining the Catholic organization in honoring it.    

Predictably, attention to religion in Glee has focused on its representations of Christianity because Quinn, the only prominent character who identifies as Christian, was president of the high school Celibacy Club until she becomes pregnant within the first few episodes.

Embedded within the show's multicultural grab-bag of stereotyped characters is also a broader vision of American Judaism than television generally puts before viewers. Alongside conventional background characters like the nerdy Jacob ben Israel, who lusts after the ambitious central character Rachel Berry, Glee includes a mohawked Noah “Puck” Puckerman, whose family eats Chinese food and watches “Schindler's List” each year on Simchas Torah.  Responding to his mother's teary assertion during one year's ritual that Noah is “no better than them” for not dating Jewish girls, Puck pursues Rachel (spurred on by a dream he believes was a message from God) and woos her with a tribute to the “musical Jewish icon,” Neil Diamond. 

Rachel is marked as Jewish, but the show's creators made her Jewish family consist of two fathers, one of whom is black.  In having her assert that either man could be her biological father, the show gestures at the possibility of Jewish racial diversity. 

Perhaps only true Gleeks will know that the background character Tina, known only for being Asian (alongside a male character referred to as “other Asian”) and for faking a speech impediment, bears the surname of Cohen-Chang, another nod to uncommon configurations of religion and race in the world of television. 

Unfortunately, the show's failure to use characters of color other than as props for the white characters gives little hope that details of their lives will move beyond esoteric Gleek knowledge.  Nevertheless, Glee might yet give media watchers the opportunity to do more than follow predictably-politicized representations and to turn instead to more complex racial and religious terrain.

Judith Weisenfeld is Professor of Religion and Associate Faculty in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author most recently of Hollywood Be Thy Name: African American Religion in American Film, 1929-1949 (University of California Press, 2007).

    

 

by Kevin Patra

Tiger Woods made his return to golf after a five-month absence from the sport that he has dominated for the past decade. He spent his scandal-plagued, rumor-filled sabbatical with his family, attending counseling sessions and rediscovering his roots in Buddhism.

Last Monday, in his first official press conference since he crashed into a fire hydrant five months ago, Woods said he “meditates religiously again” as he used to with his mother. He said his return to his faith would keep him “more centered, more balanced.”

Woods seemed confident that his return to Buddhist practice would help him in every phase of his life, from a reconciliation with his wife to his play on the golf course. He said he must be more respectful and calm in both his good and bad moments. He vowed to “tone down my negative outbursts and … my positive outbursts.”

Before the tournament, ESPN Columnist Rick Reilly speculated that Woods' overbearing drive is what made him the world's best golfer. Then Reilly wondered whether Woods' more Buddhist attitude toward the game would hinder his performance on the golf course.

It was a theme that played throughout news media coverage of the Masters weekend. After his stellar play on the first day the media labeled Woods calm by his standards, with only a few outbursts. But as the weekend wore on and his play wavered, many wondered where this new Tiger was indeed committed to his new attitude, as he dropped clubs and was caught on camera using some choice language.

Some on sports talk-radio berated Woods for his outbursts and suggested that his claim of returning to Buddhism was just for show. During Woods' early Sunday struggles CBS commentators consistently brought up his demeanor and questioned whether his religious vow was helping him at all.

It is interesting that Woods' faith has been brought up so often since the scandal broke. After Brit Hume set the media world abuzz with his statement that Tiger should convert to Christianity, Woods' faith has been an ongoing question mark for reporters and bloggers alike.

But was Kobe Bryant's religion so closely scrutinized before, during or after his alleged rape case? Politicians caught on the wrong side of a sex scandal often ask for forgiveness from Christ, and the country quickly moves on to juicier issues.

When South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford first apologized for his extramarital affair, he suffered plentiful accusations about the contradictory nature of his religious beliefs and his actions. But his religious beliefs were soon forgotten as media consumers became more concerned about the taxpayer money he spent. His divorce from his wife Jenny was finalized last month, but with little mention of any religious irony.  

Maybe the steady interest in Woods' Buddhism is simply a consequence of his prominence as a figure in American sports culture. But more likely it is because, unlike Sanford, Woods' religion is seen as foreign, mysterious or bizarre.

But therein lies the issue. In a heavily Christian nation, the majority of people understand what it means to believe in Christ. When Christians mess up they generally apologize, ask for forgiveness and begin patching together their life. But  when the face of the sports world, promoter of everything exceptional, Mr. Nike himself, talks about how his Buddhist roots will help him overcome, the comparatively conservative world of American sports culture does its best Tim Allen “huh?” grunt.

Some pranksters even turned Woods' return to his faith into a joke, flying several banners over the opening day of the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, one reading, “Tiger: Did you mean Bootyism?“

Could you imagine the outrage if Woods was Christian and a banner was flown mocking Christ?

A commentator for Fox News remarked that Woods' invoking of Buddhism during his first public apology suggested that “religion had replaced patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

This is inconsistent with how the news media generally treat religion. If Woods had said he was a born-again Christian, his faith wouldn't likely be the focus of criticism during his on-course outbursts. The same should hold true for his beliefs as a Buddhist.

Kevin Patra is an M.A. candidate in online journalism at USC Annenberg. He is co-founder of the sports commentary website thesportsunion.com

by Meghan McCarty

The terrorist bombings on the Moscow subway that killed 39 people and injured dozens more were an indisputable tragedy, but the comparatively dispassionate and nuanced coverage of the events in the mainstream news media reveals marked cultural and political biases in the way we conceive of and report on terrorism.

Although the terrorists who carried out the Moscow attacks were Muslim extremists from the Caucasus region of Russia, MSM coverage has largely avoided the “radical Islamist” narrative, which usually attributes the extremism and violence of Muslim terrorists to the radicalizing influence of Islam.

The Russian incident, however, has been framed in nationalist terms–a brutal aspect of the ongoing struggle between separatists from the Caucasus region around Chechnya and the Russian government. While the Chechens' Muslim identity is presented as a significant cultural difference between the separatists and those they oppose, their religion has not been singled out as the reason for their radicalization, as it frequently is in coverage of Muslim terrorists who threaten U.S. interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and especially the United States.

Even as the news of the Moscow attacks was breaking, and before the identity of the suicide bombers was known, the press was already defining them within the terms of the regional conflict, as in the lead of this early breaking story in the Washington Post: “… two female suicide bombers shattered Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's claim to have contained a separatist insurgency in Russia's southwest …”

The standard terms used to describe and thereby define the terrorists behind the Moscow bombings also speak to this context of national struggle. The New York Times headlined, “Chechen Rebel Says He Planned Attacks,” to describe Doku Umarov, an avowed proponent of global Islamist jihad with ties to Al-Qaeda.

CNN even prepared a time-line detailing the two-decade history of violence in Chechnya.

Conservative pundit Michelle Malkin decried what she considered the “whitewashing” of jihad in the coverage of the Moscow bombings in her blog, but even Fox News seemed to take a break from their Islamist jihad alarmism to talk about the events in the context of separatist war with Russia. In fact, Fox ran a story on the possible motivations of the “Black Widows,” terrorist Chechen women who lost family to Russian violence.

This deeper exploration of the historical and national context of the Moscow attacks and especially the reporting on the personal histories of the “Black Widows” who carried them out provides a specificity of motive not usually found in American news media coverage of Muslim terrorists.

By contrast, how quickly the MSM pointed to Islam as the explanation for the actions of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bomber, disregarding their individual stories in favor of the standard narrative about the threat of Islam.

The Palestinian group Hamas is similarly framed, as in this AP article about “Islamic Hamas … which does not recognize Israel's right to exist.” Rather than describing Hamas as a popular movement of violent struggle against occupation, much like the Chechen “rebels” and “separatists” who are also Muslim, the MSM tend to cast the militant Palestinians in “clash of civilizations” terms

The lesson of news media coverage of the Moscow bombings is that deeper contextualization of terrorist acts is not the same thing as justifying them. On the contrary, it is the job of journalists to explore the complex motivations and conditions that lead to such attacks, not to demonize an entire religion.

Meghan McCarty is an M.A. candidate in journalism at USC Annenberg and a Graduate Associate at Annenberg TV News.

N.B. On further reflection, I've fallen victim to a good story too. Tom's post would have been better served by closer editorial oversight, an omission for which I am responsible. His integrity is unassailable, and any reporting errors—or judgment questions—should have been addressed by the editor before posting.

---

Just weeks after a “bruising health-care fight,” Congressman Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) announced he would not run for re-election. By supporting what became politically incompatible principles: health care reform and a ban on federal funding for abortion, Stupak found few friends and made many enemies. Although more than a few liberal Democrats were unhappy with Stupak's role in forcing President Obama to sign an executive order affirming the funding ban, hard-line conservatives were even angrier when he voted for the bill. Claiming Stupak “caved,” they targeted his congressional seat and swore to defeat him.

Stupak's fate underscores the surreal nature of ultra-conservative political machinations as well as the media's capitulation to their Orwellian doublespeak. Was the ban on federal funding for abortion ever really at risk during the debate over health care reform? According to many observers, it was not  because the Hyde Amendment stipulates that federal money cannot pay for abortions. (Since Hyde needs to be passed annually, ending the ban is possible, although not probable.)

Many news outlets, as CBS does here, made it clear that the bill will keep private insurance funds, which could cover abortion, separate from federal and taxpayer monies, which cannot subsidize the procedure. Moreover, no health care plan would be required to offer abortions. The fact that the bill was supported by a coalition of 59,000 Roman Catholic nuns, whose pro-life credentials are exemplary, suggests that hardliners were less worried about federal funding for abortion than extending health care benefits to millions of uninsured Americans.

Rather than expose this cynical ploy, most mainstream media played along—covering the story as if federal funds would pay for abortions should the bill pass. This is nothing new. As long as the rightwing narrative perpetuates conflict with crisp sound bites, reporters treat fictions as reality. The news media's inability or unwillingness to distinguish BS from news (yes on WMDs, no on climate change and a lot more to discuss on “because the Bible says so”) is astounding at the very moment when they ought to be striving for credibility.

For these very reasons, I disagree with comments that my colleague Tom Pfingsten posted last week. As Tom argued, reporters should contextualize, analyze and avoid sensationalism. But neither should they play fast and loose with the facts. Why label “pro-life” nuns who supported health care reform as “progressive” if you know that word is associated with “pro-choice” politics in the minds of your audience? Why write “Christian taxpayers detest the idea of their money being used to fund what they consider to be state-sanctioned murder” when there was never a real possibility of public money paying for abortions?

As Tom said, the media did a poor job of explaining why abortion was a deal breaker (and subsequently why Stupak's support for the health care bill cost him his seat). But unlike Tom, I'd argue that's because the press coddles conservatives. Journalists have given hardliners a pass for so long that they've forgotten that distinguishing truth from lies is more important than telling a good story.

Diane Winston

 

by Rebecca Wanzo

Jesus is not the only Messiah whose resurrection has been celebrated in recent weeks. Many superhero comic book fans are looking forward to X-Men: Second Coming #1, which begins a new chapter in the recent apocalyptic travails of the X-Men.

For those of you who have never cracked a comic, seen one of the movies or learned about the fan-boy zeitgeist through osmosis, the X-Men are evolved humans who have mutant abilities. And over the last decade the mutant community has hit some hard times. Writer Grant Morrison got a kick out of a genocidal plot that killed millions of mutants; the X-Men disbanded at one point; and currently the only ray of hope is a young girl with the shockingly original name of Hope.

Mutants will be saved, of course, because the X-Men is an incredibly successful franchise.  But this won't be the last such narrative in comics: stories about cultures on the edge of ruin saved by messiahs are perennially popular.

Messiahs are a common theme in comic books. Superhero comic creators frequently play with the Christ allegory, and some comics blur the line between Messiah and Anti-Christ. Perhaps no comic writer does this more frequently than Mark Millar, author of Wanted (adapted into a film with Angelina Jolie), and Kick-Ass, coming soon to a theater near you. Millar's brilliant Superman: Red Son imagines that Superman had landed in Russia instead of Kansas and illustrates the improbability of universal saviors. Even more provocative is his comic book miniseries American Jesus, which illustrates how one person's Messiah can easily be another person's Anti-Christ.

But that's not news to us in today's political culture. While the Messiah shine has fallen off Barack Obama and more people are coming to terms with him as a moderate, others are still looking for messiahs on the Right (Sarah Palin) and Far Right (David Brian Stone, aka Captain Hutaree) who will cast out evil from the nation. Messiahs can't be moderate; they have to be representatives of a pure ideology. This means that messiahs are not complex creatures and they do not entertain compromise.

Scholars and journalists who keep an eye on the interplay between popular and political culture need to be willing to press politicians on their use of elements of the Messiah narrative. That storyline is entertaining in comic books, but unworkable and potentially dangerous in the real world.

Rebecca Wanzo is an associate professor of English and Women's Studies at the Ohio State University. Her first book, The Suffering Will Not Be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling, looks at how citizens frame stories about suffering to make their claims intelligible to the state. Her current book project, The Melancholic Patriot, examines representations of African American citizenship in comic art.

by Courtney Bender

Here's a trick question: Under what circumstances does the presence of a Muslim in a para-military organization become a symbol of increasing tolerance? Answer: When you're reporting on Michigan militias.

News reports on the round-up of members of the “Hutaree” militia in southern Michigan have noted the role of Matt Savino, the leader of another local Michigan militia who declined to assist Hutaree partisans who were on the run from federal agents. Savino, reports note, is a 34-year old Navy veteran and a convert to Islam from Lutheranism.

A Michigan militia member is a Muslim? It appears that journalists don't know quite what to make of this; not one report that I came across has said anything more about Savino's faith, practice or community. He is a Muslim, enough said. Indeed it would seem that in this case, unlike other instances of group violence (potential or actual) that are catalyzed by religious fervor, religion is less important to the story than the Hutaree group's political motivations.

Still, as the perennial counterpoint to the spectral figure of the “Muslim terrorist,” Christian groups linked to violence and weapons present a familiar foil. The Hutaree story presents yet another opportunity for journalists and opinionists to “raise questions” about religion and terrorism.  

Last Sunday's New York Times lead opinion essay, for example, begins with a broad question about when to label an act “terrorism.” By the third paragraph religion has emerged as a central issue. While the essay lays out familiar arguments on every side, it also presents an example of the increasingly unquestioned, unexamined links between violent extra-state activity and religious ideology. One begins to wonder if it is possible to talk anymore about extra-state violence that is not religiously charged.

Where has secular extremism gone?

And what does this have to do with the Muslim militia commander, Matt Savino? Savino appears to be levelheaded and rational. Intriguingly, he states that his militia doesn't discriminate according to race, gender or sexual orientation.

But does any of this make the Lenawee Militia any less a militia-esque? Does Savino's reasonableness and his group's apparent tolerance make it any less worrisome that they're amassing an arsenal and standing at the ready to combat what they view as tyranny? Have we become, both as journalists and as news consumers, so inured to stories linking small, violent groups with religious fervor that we have trouble acknowledging that a non-discriminatory group that also stockpiles guns and trains in paramilitary combat techniques is just as much a potential threat to public safety as a group that hates gays and reviles the black man in the White House?

The narrative formulas that shape the way journalists describe the role of religious ideology in fomenting violence tend to undercut all that earnest opinion-piece probing. Why is a cadre of armed, angry men framed as less menacing if the men are white and predominantly Christian and if their grievances are directed against a left-leaning government? Why does the Muslim leader of a similar band of would-be rebels get a pass on closer scrutiny if his sexual and gender politics sound more Tiburon than Taliban?     
Savino reports that he met with David Stone in 2006 to inquire about joining the Hutaree. It was soon clear that the collaboration wouldn't work out. Savino's religion was one reason, but there was also another fly in the anointment. Savino favored the AK-47 and Stone's Hutaree militia required the AR-15.
 
In other words, Savino owned the wrong kind of gun.

Courtney Bender is an associate professor of religion at Columbia University. She is the author of the forthcoming The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination (Chicago, 2010) and Heaven's Kitchen: Living Religion at God's Love We Deliver (Chicago, 2003) as well as the co-editor (with Pamela Klassen) of After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagements (Columbia, 2010).

by Tom Pfingsten

Politicized or not, most Christians have deeply religious reasons for opposing abortion, and that's why it's a shame that the U.S. media's coverage of the issue at the most crucial moment of the recent congressional health-care debate was reduced to two lone words: “Baby Killer!”

They were shouted by Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) and they instantly displaced any thoughtful coverage that might have helped nonreligious Americans understand why abortion was such a sticking point for conservative legislators.

Neugebauer claimed he was referring to the health care bill, not Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who had opposed the bill because of its funding for abortions, but changed his mind and was speaking when “Baby Killer!” was heard throughout the room. Either way, Neugebauer's outburst immediately became the most newsworthy thing to come from the health care debate that day, judging by the flood of coverage devoted solely to Neugebauer's poorly timed exclamation.

Within hours, news sites and TV stations were knee deep in a whodunit-style investigation to uncover whose voice had sent the words flying across the floor of the legislature. Never mind why they were shouted. USA Today headlined its story with the revelation that Neugebauer was behind the unfolding scandal. The Associated Press and the Houston Chronicle both dissected the political consequences. And Diana Butler Bass, writing for the Huffington Post, focused on the morality of using the words “Baby Killer” as a personal insult. (Bass did, however, include an insightful paragraph about mainstream Christian beliefs regarding “any sort of intentional violence against human beings”—including abortion.)

Even before Neugebauer's infamous flare-up on March 21, news outlets were doing a poor job of explaining why abortion was being viewed as a deal-breaker. On the previous day, the Washington Post astutely declared that the health-care vote “may hinge on abortion issues,” but did not explain why.

The New York Times came up with an interesting story about progressive Catholic nuns who backed the health-care legislation in spite of the abortion controversy. The piece at least included a few quotes that addressed why abortion was so controversial, but did not go much further in providing a significant explanation of the outrage with which many religious Americans viewed the abortion issue.

Such reactive coverage of an important issue illustrates why journalists should be ready to provide analysis—and indeed should consider analysis one of their most important duties.

In this case, a few quick sentences below the nut graph would have improved virtually every story about Neugebauer's outburst. It could have been as simple as this: “Christian taxpayers detest the idea of their money being used to fund what they consider to be state-sanctioned murder.” And then a quote from any number of pro-life groups that can be counted on to provide sound bites on short notice.

That kind of context would have served as a splendid explanation of why Neugebauer shouted “Baby Killer!” But, unfortunately, it was the last thing that journalists seemed to care about as the political and popular spin picked up the story and carried it far beyond its religious origins.

Unless journalists get serious about including analysis with their news coverage, when a big story with religious implications breaks, readers may find themselves knowing the story without understanding it.

Tom Pfingsten is a journalist living in Southern California and studying foreign policy in the Specialized Journalism program at USC. Before grad school, he spent five years as a daily city reporter for the North County Times in San Diego, and he is currently working on a book about World War II veterans, Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death March.

by Don Lattin

Writing a memoir is shameless act of self-indulgence – an admission that, yes, ladies and gentlemen, we do think the entire world revolves around us. It's an even trickier task when we're working on a “spiritual memoir,” which, judging by the best-seller lists in recent years, has become a popular and occasionally profitable means of self-expression.

“Spirituality” in its fullest form involves the realization that – this just in – we are more than our little skin-encapsulated egotistical selves. That's why the best spiritual memoirs rise above navel gazing and self-obsession and are as much about the other as they are about the self. They are social as well as spiritual, and they explore the all the territory in between.

Some of the best religion writing, dare I say religion “reporting,” these days comes to us in the form of spiritual memoir. In recent reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle, I have praised Jacob Needleman's What is God and Sarah Miles' Jesus Freak. But the work that completely blew me away is The Bread of Angels by Stephanie Saldaña. It's the story of one woman's interior (and exterior) adventures during a year in Damascus. She's there on a Fulbright, supposedly to polish her Arabic and study the role of Jesus in Islam, but, of course, the real work takes place in her own heart and soul.

This book is about so much more than Stephanie Saldaña. It explores the real personal and political stories of interfaith relations in the Middle East, along with the fine line between madness and mysticism. Most of all, Saldana is a great writer and a soulful thinker.

Maybe I was set up to love this book. After all, I did read it in Damascus while visiting a step-daughter who's spending a year there polishing her Arabic. The subtitle, “A Journey to Love and Faith,” combined with the word “angels” in the title, would normally cause me to turn away from “a book like this.” Yes, there is a breathless love story included in these pages, but I am so glad that the folks at Doubleday did not fall into the trap of promoting this book as “in the tradition of Eat, Pray, Love.” Stephanie Saldaña can write circles around Elizabeth Gilbert, and she has much more to say. I am also so glad that I didn't mindlessly write this off as “a woman's book,” but decided to open the cover and started reading.

Once I did, I couldn't put it down.

Bread of Angels is full of memorable characters Saldaña encounters during her year in Damascus:

Today at the mosque it is raining, and still the light remains. Children are sliding on the wet stones, with their pants rolled up to their knees. I take their pictures.

A group of four young boys run up to me. “Take our photos!” they call out. “Here! Here!” I do, over and over, capturing the ridiculous beauty of them, wet and messy and laughing at the rain, playing hide-and-seek among the red marble pillars of the mosque.

One of them approaches me. He must be nine years old, and he is absolutely arresting, with blue jeans, a denim shirt, and a look of innocence in his eyes I have rarely seen in anything, human or animal. He sits down beside me, like I have known him all his life.

“Are you a Muslim?” he asks.

“No. I'm a Christian.”

“Then why are you here?”

What ensues is a conversation, simple and profound, a ray of hope that there may one day be a way out of the intractable political and religious mess in this corner of the world where Syria, Lebanon and Israel collide. In the “real world” of news, the Syrian prime minister has been assassination, possibly by the Syrians. George Bush and the Israelis are rattling their swords, and it looks like the war in Iraq might suddenly spill into Syria. All hell is about to break loose, as it always is here, but Saldana finds the rest of the story: a little bit of heaven among a band of rain-soaked nine-year-olds playing at the mosque.

Now that's religion reporting.

Don Lattin will be talking about his new book, The Harvard Psychedelic Club, at three readings in Southern California the week of April 5-9. Here are the details:

Mon. April 5, 7:00 pm
Book Soup
8818 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA

Wed. April 7, 6:00 pm
Latitude 33 Bookshop
311 Ocean Ave.
Laguna Beach, CA

Thurs, April 8, 7:00 pm
The Book Works
2670 Via De La Valle
Del Mar, CA

 

by Zain Shauk

The Roman Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI have been under the media microscope this month, and it's not because Easter is on the horizon.

Revelations and allegations about sexual abuse scandals are bubbling to the surface across the globe, first from Ireland, then Brazil and Germany, followed by Wisconsin and Italy.

Most recently, amid the firestorm of coverage on the scandals, was an acknowledgement from a Roman Catholic order that its founder, a prominent Mexican priest, had committed “grave acts,” reported to include adultery, fathering at least one child, molesting boys and participating in other misconduct before he died in 2008.

The National Catholic Reporter reacted to the string of troubling news with questions about the Pope: “The focus now is on Benedict. What did he know? When did he know it? How did he act once he knew?”

The revelations and rampant media coverage prompted USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman to ask readers “What's enough?” when it comes to media scrutiny and attention to the church's crises.

“If Pope Benedict called and fired a raft of bishops who failed to protect young people from known abusers, would this end the crisis in your mind?” she asked readers.

Grossman compared coverage of the sexual abuse scandals involving clergy to the public disclosure of the actions of Enron executives who committed accounting fraud and were subsequently berated by editorial boards and television pundits.

“Something about reaction to the news coverage reminds me of how the American public just loved seeing the alleged bad boys of that financial scandal arrested and led off in handcuffs,” Grossman said. “There was something satisfying about the 'perp walk.' No matter how the cases were later resolved, there was no doubt those men were being publicly humiliated.”

Grossman's analogy, which focuses on media scrutiny of perpetrators rather than the experience of victims, seems to suggest that suffering sexual abuse is about as traumatizing as losing your life savings.  That's a delicate and definitely arguable notion, to be sure.

But more to the point: Is the media coverage of the Church's alleged sexual abuse scandals a result of journalists' overblown pursuit of the ultimate “Gotcha!” moment, or is the current flurry of coverage simply a consequence of dutifully muck-racking journalists' encroaching on the hierarchy of the world's largest religious institution?

More than Enron, Toyota and other multinational corporations that have come under intense public scrutiny in recent years, the Church has a sweeping influence on people worldwide. The Vatican's more than 408,000 priests are enjoined to direct and minister to its 1.1 billion followers. That makes news of clerical misconduct that was allegedly known to high-level clergy and hidden from the public a matter of serious concern to people who trust the institution to act in their best interests.

While ongoing media coverage of the Church's response to the crisis might make some Catholics uncomfortable, the scrutiny is also an example of journalists doing what they're supposed to do; that is, they're probing the integrity of institutions that people depend on to do the right thing.

Considering the power of the Church and the gravity of the allegations against many of its clergy, it seems that most of the journalists covering the scandals have yet to cross the line that divides serving the public good from pandering to prurient interests. Stay tuned.

Zain Shauk is a Los Angeles-based journalist and a graduate of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.