On the horns of a dilemma: The Catholic press prepares for the Biden presidency
Jacob Anthony Chansley, who calls himself QAnon Shaman, was arrested following his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Photos courtesy of the FBI.
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(OPINION) Inauguration Day this year comes two weeks after pro-Trump rioters descended on the U.S. Capitol before President-elect Joe Biden’s victory was certified by lawmakers. It was the latest — and most stark — demonstration of how our nation’s media ecosystem is in a state of decay and under attack.
Two weeks removed from that awful day, it’s worth taking stock in where we are, how we got here and, more importantly, what can we expected over the next four years under Biden.
This road, more than a decade in the making, was exasperated by Donald Trump’s presidential run and election in 2016. At the same time, citizens on the left and right have grown increasingly weary of institutions (the press being one of them) and that’s made violence an acceptable means for retribution.
As a result, the political, cultural and religious polarization that has taken place over the past four years, ignited further last year amid a pandemic and the presidential election, can’t be undone. The violence on Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C. is the latest tangible example of where we are as a country. The National Catholic Register made this observation in the wake of the riot:
The United States is troubled today by something deeper: At its core this is a spiritual and cultural crisis, even more than a political one.
The Founding Fathers worried about the same factionalism we saw on full and ugly display at the Capitol. But in the past, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America, shared religious values have provided a glue that allowed for peaceful coexistence in our strikingly individualistic nation, while reminding us that politics was not ultimate.
Today, that is no longer the case. The system of Judeo-Christian values that grounded our political and civic life for more than two centuries has eroded and not been replaced. The ensuing vacuum means our national tendency toward factionalism has no “ballast” to steady the ship of state at turbulent moments, such as this disputed presidential transition.
The events of the last six months and how they have been covered by news organizations — spanning the COVID-19 lockdowns and #BlackLivesMatter protests to the presidential race and the attack on the Capitol — mark an end to an era in press history. It would appear that the American Model of the Press is dead and that reality has become mangled as Americans get their news through a prism of advocacy, partisan media sources.
This journalism earthquake has shaken Catholic media, as well. Hold on, because that’s where we are headed.
In order for a republic like ours to thrive, there needs to be a legacy media that holds people in power — no matter what their political persuasion — to account. I wrote about this very issue in this space just this past June. For constructive civil discourse, citizens and their leaders need SOME trusted news sources that they share in common, providing accurate, balanced news.
However, during the Trump era, “bothsidesism” became a bad word. It is described by Merriam-Webster as when a journalist gives “extra credence to a cause, action or idea that on the surface seems objectionable, thereby establishing a sort of moral equivalence that allows said cause, action, or idea to be weighed seriously.”
Journalism used to be a reflection of a shared reality. We don’t have that any more.
Trump, and his most ardent supporters, live in their own deluded world where he won a “landslide” election but was forced to step aside because it was “rigged.” That’s half the equation.
The mainstream press countered that over the past few years by taking on the role of activist, with many news — not commentary — stars on cable TV openly siding with the Democratic Party. Newspapers, constantly citing anonymous sources, reported on what appeared to be Trump’s imminent impeachment and removal after colluding with Russia to win the election. That began as soon as he was elected. None of that ever came to fruition.
This has unleashed unprecedented hatred for journalism — and journalists — among a large segment of people. This is totally unacceptable behavior and these threats are not sustainable in a liberal democracy.
How did we get here? There are several problems with the current state of the news media that have fueled this polarization. The closing of thousands of local newspapers over the past decade, outlets that are typically not partisan, has not helped. In their place, national newspapers — like the New York Times and Washington Post — and digital startups that increasingly rely on subscriptions to make a profit have abandoned the concept of fair reporting to preach to their internet choir of readers.
At the same time, the 24-hour cable news networks, like Fox News and MSNBC, have adopted political positions and do very little journalism. Even CNN became anti-Trump TV (and by default a cheerleader for progressive policies) just to compete. Instead of doing balanced reporting (which is expensive and doesn’t necessarily get you more viewers), they opted to provide cheap commentary, a never-ending parade of talking heads who reinforce what their viewers believe.
This is why Trump loyalists were given oxygen on Fox News (and then outlets even further to the right) to push evidence-free claims that antifa activists had fueled the Capitol mob violence. On the other hand, CNN’s Anderson Cooper sneering that the mob would be going to the Olive Garden by the end of the day was another example of this country’s cultural divide and another clip in the ongoing culture wars.
A video, posted on Twitter by Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who is also a Catholic, encapsulated the problems that led to the insurrection at the Capitol.
Indeed, none of this would be possible without Big Tech — in the form of social media.
Tech platforms have altered the distribution methods of the news. Facebook and Twitter, two of the biggest, have made it easier for dangerous conspiracy theories like QAnon to spread, often gaining traction in hyper-partisan news outlets such as Newsmax, a right-wing news site which has seen an increase in viewers after Biden’s victory.
Hitching your wagon to a politician or political party may seem like a money-making business model, but as Fox News has learned in recent days, it can also be damaging. For too many in journalism, ideology, preset narratives have replaced facts and reality. Social media has fanned those flames with bogus algorithms.
Here’s how Kyle Pope at Columbia Journalism Review put into focus the news media’s relationship with the president since he descended from the Trump Tower escalator in 2015 and announced his candidacy:
Recall the glib dismissal of Trump in newspapers and on cable shows. Remember the rallies at which the arrival of Trump’s airplane was carried live on multiple channels, with the gleeful excitement of the Beatles landing at JFK. Consider, too, how journalists equated his lies with the questions surrounding Hillary Clinton’s email servers. “People want to see Donald Trump. You want to watch him,” Don Lemon told CNN viewers the day after Trump announced his candidacy. “At least there’s someone interesting in the race.” In 2016, Trump got so much free media airtime—more than two billion dollars, according to an accounting in the New York Times—that he could run a national presidential campaign with a fraction of the ad budget of his competitors. From the start, amplifying Trump has not merely been a Fox News problem.
By the time the 2020 election rolled around, America’s media had centered Trump with a singular obsession. Trump’s Twitter account became a disinformation drip mainlined by newsrooms across the country; cable networks broke in with chyrons quoting even his most nonsensical claims. Outlets aired his rallies, unedited, as he spouted racist vitriol. Newspapers sent reporters to hear from Trump’s fans, who had internalized his distorted picture of the world, and repeated it back. “Fact checking” operations proved futile in addressing the greater crisis at hand: Trump’s dismantling of truth itself. Drawing attention to everything he said, in a manner disproportionate to the news value of Trump’s comments, did, at least, keep people interested: over the past four years, TV news viewership has soared; ditto for subscriptions to the Times and the Washington Post.
What happens now? With just hours before Trump’s term comes to an end and Biden is inaugurated, how will the media — and specifically the Catholic press — cover this administration?
The Catholic press hasn’t been immune to the tectonic partisan shifts that has taken over the journalism business model.
Catholics are divided by doctrine, as well as politics. The Trump years, overlapping with Francis’ papacy, has made Catholic news publications and websites proxies in this ongoing doctrinal battle — primarily over moral theology and liturgical issues — that has dominated the church since the Second Vatican Council. Again, Trump and the internet has inflamed this battle further over the past four years.
Catholic news sites on the doctrinal right became increasingly sympathetic to Trump supporters over the last four years. That happened primarily because of Trump’s anti-abortion stance, support for religious liberty and appointment of federal judges who support those positions. On the other side of the doctrinal spectrum, news organizations have been critical of Trump and largely supportive of Biden, who’s brand of Catholicism and progressive politics appears to mirror their own.
The coverage of the past week offers a glimpse of how the Catholic media ecosystem, not immune to political polarization, will cover the Biden years.
Church Militant, a right-wing site critical of Francis and U.S. church hierarchy, bemoaned the end of traditional values. It was a not-so-subtle attack on the doctrinal logic of Biden’s political agenda. Michael Voris, in a video editorial on Jan. 8, said the following:
People should be free to speak truth, and they should be free to discover the truthful religion (this freedom should be promoted by a government committed to the proper understanding of fraternity, liberty and equality). But without the Catholic lens, the interpretations of fraternity, liberty and equality can easily go astray, as we see playing out in front of us.
All you would need is the removal of the Catholic lens and its replacement with a humanist lens and, voila, you get communism. Sooner or later, that's where you arrive. Divorced from God, which ultimately results in a divorce from objective morality, these Catholic principles become distorted beyond all recognition.
The first one to become deformed is liberty, which gets mangled to produce virtually unfettered freedom to do whatever someone wants. And paired with freedom of speech, it becomes a vehicle to promote lies. Every single institution on the Left, which has been taken over by the Marxists, has seen wild success in this area.
From universities to the media, this has resulted in a culture of lies dominating people's daily lives. The concept of equality has been so distorted without its mooring to Catholic truth that, now, actions (not people) are all treated as equal and acceptable, regardless of their morality or immorality.
Voris not only attacked those institutions — in the same style and language as right-wing political sites would, but he also previewed what Church Militant is planning for 2021.
Note: No mention here of Catholic social teaching. Instead, we get hyperbole and comparisons to the fall of the Roman empire.
Here at Church Militant, our core vehicle for advancing truth is video. Knowledge is king, and, in the 21st century, video is the vehicle for knowledge. Beginning next month, Church Militant will be airing our daily evening newscast — Church Militant Evening News (which we will be unveiling in early February). We’ve beefed up staff (thanks to your generosity) as well as production capability and skill level. Our political coverage of the past year as well as our long track record of covering affairs of the Faith have placed us in an extremely unique position to speak to both patriots as well as faithful Catholics.
Frankly, no Catholic apostolate is in a better position to deliver what we deliver than Church Militant, and we are privileged and blessed to be able to be here. When the Roman Empire in the West fell apart 1600 years ago, a large portion of the empire was Catholic, and, of course, loyal to the empire. To them, it seemed like the end of the world, and, in some ways, for them, it was. The collapse was the impetus for St. Augustine's writing The City of God, wherein he reassured his fellow imperial citizens that whatever happens on earth, we must never forget that we do not, in the end, belong to the city of man, but the city of God.
That vision, born from the fall of the empire, went on to become the seedbed for Western civilization, brought into existence on the rubble of the empire by the Catholic Church. This is where we are now. An empire has collapsed. Mourn it. Lament over it. Accept its passing, and grieve. But realize the tremendous opportunity we now have to erect a civilization of truth and justice built on a Catholic understanding of fraternity, liberty and equality.
About 75 to 80 million people were at least dimly aware of all this on Nov. 3, and they voted accordingly. This moment is a tremendous opportunity to build anew (in the face of ferocious opposition, yes). But so what? The Church baptized the barbarian hordes after much suffering. What we knew has passed. What we now embrace is what matters.
This will be a prelude for what’s to come from the right over the next four years.
Meanwhile, The Pillar, a Substack newsletter, news site and podcast run by JD Flynn and Ed Condon, also hopes to shine a spotlight on Catholicism during the Biden years. Flynn and Condon were top editors with the EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency, one of the largest and most influential center-right sites on the traditional Catholic spectrum.
Both men left CNA effective Dec. 31. Flynn, in his new endeavor, wrote the following regarding what his new digital playform hopes to accomplish:
I love the Church. I am, and will always want to be, a man of the Church – a loving son, a faithful servant.
Being a Catholic is who I am — the part of my identity that shapes all the rest. Being Catholic is what shapes my work as a journalist, too. Journalism is, or has turned out to be, a means by which I can serve the Church, in the way that God has called all laypeople to serve.
Good reporting assumes that people deserve the facts, unvarnished and without spin, in order to make judgments about real things that matter in their lives.
That premise, it seems to me, is predicated on fundamentally Catholic ideas: that telling the truth matters; that people, and their intelligence are worthy of respect; and that facing reality is a necessary precondition to asking the Lord for transformation or renewal.
The Pillar aims to serve the Gospel through investigative journalism, taking a long, measured look into the issues facing the institutions, bureaucracies, and leadership figures within the Church. Along the way, we’ll offer analysis, insight, and context into the Church’s day-to-day challenges, but much of our time will be spent away from the news cycle, diving deep into issues that matter. It’s our belief that this kind of reporting is a way to help the Church and her members face real challenges, and offer them to Christ for transformation.
That sounds like a news site devoted to the ideals of the American press model with an emphasis on reporting about the church.
Is there a market for the truth? That old school model would be refreshing in today’s world. How the site covers Biden and his policies will be something worth watching.
Flynn, in a news analysis piece, gave readers a glimpse of where Catholic fall at the intersection of faith and politics in these tempestuous times:
Wednesday’s political violence is symptomatic of a dismal constellation of problems plaguing not only American political, cultural, and economic life, but plaguing individual American hearts across the ideological spectrum. We are, as a people, facing a pandemic of some deep sickness that none of us has yet fully understood.
There is a group of people — Catholics included — who after yesterday’s events took to social media to point out that riots across America this summer did more damage than did yesterday’s incursion, and to condemn those who spoke out against the Trumpist violence without first decrying the violence of BLM, antifa, and the CHAZ.
It is true that we have faced a year of shocking political violence across America. But in that light, the message that “they started it” seems both unhelpful and symptomatic of the same disease.
And Catholics have no better diagnosed the American disease than has anyone else, and in fact, vast swaths of the Church seem infected by it.
This is manifest in several iterations: One is the kind of relativistic Catholicism embodied by incoming President Joe Biden, which takes up some of the symbols and shibboleths of the faith as a kind of tribal identity, while comfortably rejecting Catholic doctrine on abortion as a means to power.
The other is the kind of political messianism espoused by Archbishop Carlo Vigano, which jumbles temporal political aims and far-reaching conspiracy theories with Christian identity, confusing partisanship with membership in the mystical body of Christ.
On the Catholic doctrinal left, meanwhile, Biden has been elevated to superstar status — with little regard for the content of the Catechism of the Catholic Church — at least on issues of moral theology.
Only the second Catholic president in U.S. history following John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960, sites such as Commonweal have not held back in their disdain for Trump. In an opinion piece posted a day after the riots, Timothy Snyder, a Yale history professor, framed the post-election results this way:
What, then, is the moral meaning of a vote for Donald Trump on November 3? To vote for Trump is to traduce the meaning of voting, which is a normal part of the transition to authoritarianism. Because the collective effect of votes for Trump is to create background plausibility for a coup, each vote for Trump is participation in a plot to end the American republic. It is to vote for a future in which voting does not matter. It is a choice by Americans to no longer make choices as Americans. It transforms individuals with interests and values into elements of a spectacle that legitimates an authoritarian regime change. If Trump stays in power, elections will continue to take place, but they will be meaningless. Soon we will not bother to speak of fraud, because voting will be a joke.
In that dark scenario, the joke is on the Trump voter, because a vote for Trump is a vote for spiritual self-annihilation. If Trump stays in power in 2021, a Trump voter will enjoy the quick hit of “winning,” a spasm of joy that distracts from a profound moral loss. It is no victory to vote for never voting again, to beg for voicelessness. It is submission. Joe Biden is not a perfect candidate, but he is a candidate who supports democracy: the American dignity of representing oneself, and the American aspiration to see our values and interests prevail in our government. If our democracy dies, a Biden voter will be able to say to herself that she did the right thing, did what was possible, did not give in. A Biden voter can speak proudly about America’s past as a democracy, will preserve the moral resources to resist authoritarianism, and might at some later point contribute to a resurrection of the republic.
As you would expect, America magazine, in an editorial, called for Trump to be impeached and barred from ever again holding a federal office.
The National Catholic Reporter, meanwhile, offered a commentary piece by Tia Noelle Pratt, president and director of research at TNPratt & Associates, an inclusion and diversity consulting firm in Philadelphia/ She focused her piece on what Biden can do on the issue of race relations in his first 100 days and beyond.
Systemic racism cannot be dismantled with one-off gestures that only placate those who benefit from systemic oppression in the United States. Such actions do not end systemic racism and their placating nature are at the foundation of what we saw on Jan. 6. The next presidency must take concrete action by canceling student loan debt, ensuring just wages and access to equitable health care, commuting Draconian, nonviolent prison sentences and working to create policies that offer protections from further destruction due to climate change.
This means thinking about all of these issues in new ways that benefit the whole of society. If we do that, we'll find that healthy people with good-paying jobs contribute to a tax base for schools and infrastructure. Freedom from the yoke of student loan debt increases spending potential and can lead to increased home ownership which is the primary way people in our society build wealth. A focus on climate change will address air and water quality, the needs of coastal communities, increasingly intensifying wildfires, and so much more.
These policies are a manifestation of the principles of Catholic social teaching. Seeing a Catholic president doing comprehensive anti-racism work while creating an understanding of systemic racism that is nuanced and transformative will force white people to understand the collective weight they bear for the damage systemic racism has done, and their collective responsibility to repair that damage. White Catholics in particular will see a president who shares their religious tradition but does not perpetuate the white supremacy that plagues our church. Rather, they will see a Catholic president who shatters it!
Yes, there’s the key phrase: “a Catholic president.”
That will certainly be a major talking point across the Catholic media spectrum. Don’t expect unity to come so easily among Catholics, as well as ordinary Americans. Biden, a centrist with a history of making compromises across the aisle, will find that healing a nation this divided won’t be so easy within the current context of American politics. He has many promises to keep on the cultural and religious left.
There’s no way a Church Militant reader and one who regularly visits the National Catholic Reporter agree on most of those issues.
Readers of those sites may both identify as Catholic, but they live in different worlds on the internet and increasingly geographically along blue and red gerrymandered borders. The media narratives that spurred the events of the past six months and what happened last week in Washington are certainly tangible proof of it all.
As a symbolic footnote, the most listened to podcast thus far in 2021 is The Bible in a Year. The podcast hosted by Mike Schmitz, a Catholic priest who directs the young adult ministry in the Diocese of Duluth, Minn., has surpassed The Daily by The New York Times and The Ben Shapiro Show. It may be a sign that more than a few people are shunning news and commentary in favor of Scripture. That’s something all Catholics can — we can hope — rally around in these turbulent times.
This post originally appeared at GetReligion.