M
mlchance
Guest
More from Richard John Neuhaus (March 2005):
I still comment from time to time on the strange world of the New York Times. Old habits die hard. The issue that carried the above two reports also has a long puff piece on an Episcopal rector in Connecticut. His conscientious support for “gay rights” has led him to declare that his small parish will perform no marriages at all until the Episcopal Church officially approves same-sex marriages. The parish, it says here, has in the past had as many as five marriages a year. There is yet another story on the same day about a Conservative rabbi who says she is being punished for performing gay marriages, but whose colleagues say she is in trouble only for serving in a non-Conservative synagogue.
That is four religion stories in one day; four out of four being about gay advocacy. With respect to what is happening in religion in America, that is “all the news that’s fit to print.” To be accurate, this edition of the Times is not atypical. To be fair, the reports on the ELCA task force and Episcopal bishops are eminently newsworthy, bearing as they do on the future of a sizeable Lutheran communion and the much smaller but more culturally potent Episcopal Church.
The religion news in that edition of the Times is balanced by a full-page advertisement with the heading “A Call for Peacemaking.” It is sponsored by a new organization called “Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah” and features familiar names such as Sister Joan Chittester, Bob Edgar of the National Council of Churches, Jim Wallis of Sojourners, Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center, and the perhaps not so familiar Sayyid Muhammad Syeed of the Islamic Society of North America. The call is for the U.S. to pull out of Iraq, for the UN to arrange for an elected government in that country, and for a “comprehensive peace conference” including the UN, the European Union, and Russia to put things to rights in the Middle East.
So it is not as though the readers of the Times get a one-sided view of what is happening in religion in America. The cutting edge developments include both the promotion of gay rights and opposition to the policies of the Bush administration.
For the Times, this way of covering religion is a cozy deal, both ideologically and economically. For a full-page advertisement, I am told the Times charges about $100,000. In addition to the ad being supportive of the paper’s line on the Bush administration, it more than amply pays for the reporting and printing of the day’s stories on the battles between religious progressives pushing for sexual inclusiveness and the reactionaries who oppose them.
Of course the Times sometimes carries full-page ads advocating conservative positions. This gives more naïve readers the impression that the Times is more or less balanced. The nice thing is that this burnishing of the paper’s image is handsomely paid for by those who despise the paper. Coming or going, the Times wins. One has to admire the way in which everyone cooperates in upholding the belief that to be is to be in the Times.
The Times is in the ontological reassurance business. Here is another full-pager purchased by citizens of the Republic of Iceland (population 279,384 and 96 percent Lutheran) who want us to know that most of them do not agree with their government’s support for U.S. policy in Iraq. It’s good to have that cleared up. And maybe it’s worth every third Icelander kicking in a dollar to the Times to let the world know they’re still there. The 1972 chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky was a long time ago. Not for nothing is the Times known as a profit-leader in what is aptly called the news industry.
I still comment from time to time on the strange world of the New York Times. Old habits die hard. The issue that carried the above two reports also has a long puff piece on an Episcopal rector in Connecticut. His conscientious support for “gay rights” has led him to declare that his small parish will perform no marriages at all until the Episcopal Church officially approves same-sex marriages. The parish, it says here, has in the past had as many as five marriages a year. There is yet another story on the same day about a Conservative rabbi who says she is being punished for performing gay marriages, but whose colleagues say she is in trouble only for serving in a non-Conservative synagogue.
That is four religion stories in one day; four out of four being about gay advocacy. With respect to what is happening in religion in America, that is “all the news that’s fit to print.” To be accurate, this edition of the Times is not atypical. To be fair, the reports on the ELCA task force and Episcopal bishops are eminently newsworthy, bearing as they do on the future of a sizeable Lutheran communion and the much smaller but more culturally potent Episcopal Church.
The religion news in that edition of the Times is balanced by a full-page advertisement with the heading “A Call for Peacemaking.” It is sponsored by a new organization called “Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah” and features familiar names such as Sister Joan Chittester, Bob Edgar of the National Council of Churches, Jim Wallis of Sojourners, Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center, and the perhaps not so familiar Sayyid Muhammad Syeed of the Islamic Society of North America. The call is for the U.S. to pull out of Iraq, for the UN to arrange for an elected government in that country, and for a “comprehensive peace conference” including the UN, the European Union, and Russia to put things to rights in the Middle East.
So it is not as though the readers of the Times get a one-sided view of what is happening in religion in America. The cutting edge developments include both the promotion of gay rights and opposition to the policies of the Bush administration.
For the Times, this way of covering religion is a cozy deal, both ideologically and economically. For a full-page advertisement, I am told the Times charges about $100,000. In addition to the ad being supportive of the paper’s line on the Bush administration, it more than amply pays for the reporting and printing of the day’s stories on the battles between religious progressives pushing for sexual inclusiveness and the reactionaries who oppose them.
Of course the Times sometimes carries full-page ads advocating conservative positions. This gives more naïve readers the impression that the Times is more or less balanced. The nice thing is that this burnishing of the paper’s image is handsomely paid for by those who despise the paper. Coming or going, the Times wins. One has to admire the way in which everyone cooperates in upholding the belief that to be is to be in the Times.
The Times is in the ontological reassurance business. Here is another full-pager purchased by citizens of the Republic of Iceland (population 279,384 and 96 percent Lutheran) who want us to know that most of them do not agree with their government’s support for U.S. policy in Iraq. It’s good to have that cleared up. And maybe it’s worth every third Icelander kicking in a dollar to the Times to let the world know they’re still there. The 1972 chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky was a long time ago. Not for nothing is the Times known as a profit-leader in what is aptly called the news industry.