Double standard? Treatment of Boulder suspect's religion raises the question
Weekend Plug-in 🔌
Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” features analysis, fact checking and top headlines from the world of faith. Subscribe now to get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr. at therossnews@gmail.com.
(ANALYSIS) Another week.
Another mass shooting.
Another 21-year-old suspect.
Last week's news coverage of Robert Aaron Long, charged in the deaths of eight people — including six women of Asian descent — at three Atlanta-area spas, focused on his ties to a Southern Baptist congregation.
Long's arrest sparked a barrage of stories and columns on evangelical theology, racism and "purity culture," including a Religion News Service op-ed headlined "Blaming Christians for the Atlanta shootings isn't persecution, it's prosecution."
On the other hand, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa's Muslim background has figured less prominently — so far — in reporting on the suspect in Monday's massacre that claimed 10 lives at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.
In profiling the suspect, some major news organizations haven’t mentioned his religious affiliation at all. RNS has emphasized concerns that Alissa's arrest might ramp up "Islamophobia" and spark hate crimes as Muslims gather in congregational settings. (It’s a familiar storyline, going at least back to 9/11.)
"I think there definitely is a double standard," said Warren Smith, an evangelical who serves as president of the independent charitable giving watchdog MinistryWatch.com.
Smith, a longtime investigative reporter, offers this advice for covering a mass shooting: Stick to the facts. Avoid speculating on the gunman’s motives. Focus on the victims and the helpers.
"The perpetrator’s story will have an opportunity to come out in the legal process,” Smith said. “Let coverage of that process be the place where the perpetrator’s story is told factually, dispassionately, empathetically."
But the facts, not a double standard, are the reason for the different emphases in the Georgia and Colorado cases, said a journalist friend who is reporting on the Boulder massacre.
"The big difference to me is that police investigators brought up the 'sex addiction' question quickly and directly in Atlanta, which led people to seek where that guilt came came, which led to religious background," my friend said. "Here in Boulder, where I am reporting, it's the suspect's friends from high school and one 2017 affidavit re: a different, lesser crime (assault) that have raised any religious questions.
"It seems clear that religious guilt over sex was a big factor in Atanta. It seems like bullying because of Muslim faith isn't yet directly connected in Boulder."
Here at ReligionUnplugged.com, contributor Paul Marshall makes this case: "Enough with the hot takes: Mass shooters have complicated motives."
Finally, I want to turn to Joe Hight, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor who is the Edith Kinney Gaylord Endowed Chair of Journalism Ethics at the University of Central Oklahoma.
News organizations "can play a role in stigmatizing a whole religion or mental health issue by overemphasizing or overplaying that in the coverage," warns Hight, who was my editor at The Oklahoman during our coverage of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
"I tend to think there is too much emphasis on the perpetrators anyway, thus potentially causing copycat behavior,” he added. "It is something that the media have been in denial about for many years and need to reconsider in determining how much coverage is sufficient or even warranted.
"That doesn’t mean not drawing attention to issues that arise when a certain ethnicity or religion is targeted because of the pandemic or mass trauma. It means not sensationalizing perpetrators over an act involving victims, especially in repetitive or overhyped coverage."
I agree, as I’ve mentioned before.
I was especially pleased to see the Denver Post's Wednesday front page give prominent play to pictures of victims while not including a photograph of the suspect.
Read more on best practices for covering victims.
Power Up: The Week’s Best Reads
1. ‘God has sort of been preparing us for this’: An Alabama pastor and his wife await the birth of conjoined twins.
They tell their emotional story — full of faith-filled details — to Carol Robinson of the Alabama Media Group, which includes the Birmingham News.
2. The Atlanta shooter targeted my community. He also came from my former church: This first-person piece by pastor Chul Yoo paints a different portrait of Crabapple First Baptist Church than emerged in much of last week’s news coverage.
“Those who know Crabapple First Baptist only as the church that had posted the baptism and testimony of a young man who went on to kill eight people are bound to have a distorted view,” the former Crabapple pastor writes. “It’s hard for us to imagine him among a congregation full of generous, caring, Christ-centered people, but that’s who I know Crabapple to be. Its members remain my close friends."
3. Longing for a shot at the majors, but sitting out the sabbath: “Elie Kligman can do anything on a baseball field, but his strict observance of the Jewish sabbath complicates his future,” as David Waldstein explains in the New York Times.
It’s a “beautifully” told story that will appeal especially to baseball fans.
BONUS: I’ve written about the joy and hope the COVID-19 vaccines have brought to my own friends and family.
On a related note, I love the triumph and jubilation evident in this story by Religion News Service’s Jack Jenkins and Adelle M. Banks.
More Top Reads
• Preachers and their $5,000 sneakers: Why one man started an Instagram account showing churches’ wealth (by Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Washington Post)
• For faith communities, COVID-19 pandemic brought a year of challenge and creativity (by Peter Smith, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
• OKC religious leaders discuss how church forever changed by COVID (by Carla Hinton, The Oklahoman)
• Hospital chaplains embrace new role during the pandemic: caring for caregivers (by Faith E. Pinho, Los Angeles Times)
• George Floyd's death sparks soul-searching by faith leaders (by Jean Hopfensperger, Minneapolis Star-Tribune)
• Satanists go to court seeking right to pray at city meetings (by Erik Larson, Bloomberg)
• How will we worship — whether Catholic, LDS, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim or Protestant — after COVID? (by Peggy Fletcher Stack, Salt Lake Tribune)
• In Coachella Valley migrant community, the COVID-19 death of a beloved priest helps spur vaccinations (by Alejandra Molina, Religion News Service)
• Fear and hope: When Timothy Keller's book met his life (by Kimberly Winston, Publishers Weekly)
• At U.S. seders, vaccinations mean 'hugging is definitely on the menu' (by Barbara Goldberg, Reuters)
• Married 66 years, husband, wife die minutes apart of virus (by Terry Spencer, Associated Press)
• 'God is doing something': Duluth priest's daily Bible podcast tops charts, reaches millions (by Katie Galloto, Minneapolis Star Tribune)
• In federal lawsuit, James Huntsman, of prominent Utah family, accuses Mormon Church of fraud (by Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post)
Inside The Godbeat: Behind The Bylines
The Religion Communicators Council has announced the 20 winners of its annual Wilbur Awards, which “honor excellence by individuals in the secular media for communicating religious issues, values and themes.”
Many of the honorees will be familiar to Weekend Plug-in readers, including The Associated Press’ global religion team, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Peter Smith and Religion News Service’s Adelle M. Banks.
Congratulations to all the winners!
Charging Station: In Case You Missed It
Here is where you can catch up on recent news and opinions from Religion Unplugged.
• This Passover will be a time to recognize tragedies and offer hope for the future (by Samuel L. Boyd)
• Why Catholic news sites are a must-read to understand Cuomo (by Clemente Lisi)
• 5 Catholic books you should read this Easter season (by Clemente Lisi)
• Mozambique blames Islamists for war: Should the West accept that narrative? (by Cyril Zenda)
• If schools nix ‘Mom and Dad,’ is mainstream journalism next? (by Richard Ostling)
• Tricycle’s western Buddhism essay shows how religions adapt to new environs (by Ira Rifkin)
• 3 lessons for the U.S. church from an Asian American ministry leader in Atlanta (by Joash Thomas)
• ‘It Is Well With My Soul’: Hymns that hit home during 2020 (by Terry Mattingly)
• Inspiring Easter feature idea sent aloft by producers at MSNBC (by Richard Ostling)
• Inside the only independent culinary academy for Christian chefs (by Julia Duin)
• A simpler church: Where Christian communities are headed after COVID-19 (by Erik Tryggestad)
• We must protect survivors of mass atrocities like Uighurs from witness intimidation (by Ewelina U. Ochab)
The Final Plug
Who knew TMZ covered religion?
I couldn’t help but smile when reading this lede:
Justin Bieber is back in L.A. after a break in the islands, and one of his first orders of business is telling prisoners about the big man upstairs ... TMZ has learned.
The singer's RV was spotted Tuesday pulling into the California State Prison of L.A. County -- which prompted the question ... what the heck is he doing there, especially on the heels of his Turks and Caicos weekend getaway with the missus???
Have a terrific weekend, everybody!
I’m on vacation next week, but I hope to see you back in this same space in two weeks.
Bobby Ross Jr. is a columnist for Religion Unplugged and editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 15 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.