📰 ‘Our Job Is Not To Cover Up Sin’: Reporter Jerry Mitchell On Faith And Journalism 🔌
Weekend Plug-in 🔌
Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” meets readers at the intersection of faith and news. Click to join nearly 10,000 subscribers who get this column delivered straight to their inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr.
PEARL, Miss. — Jerry Mitchell is a legendary investigative reporter — and a devoted Christian who characterizes his secular job as both a calling and a ministry.
In a journalism career that stretches back 50 years to his high school days, Mitchell has earned dozens of the profession’s top awards.
His stories played a major role in putting four Klansmen and a serial killer behind bars and helped free two people from death row. In 2009, his intrepid reporting earned him a $500,000 “genius grant” — a fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
I first met Mitchell 20 years ago on a trip to Mississippi. My family and I worshipped at Mitchell’s home congregation, the Skyway Hills Church of Christ in the Jackson suburb of Pearl, and then enjoyed Sunday lunch with him at a Cracker Barrel (where else?).
At the time, just a few weeks had passed since the June 21, 2005, conviction of reputed Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen in the “Mississippi Burning” killings of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.
The Killen verdict was returned on the 41st anniversary of the June 21, 1964, slayings. Only a God who loves justice could have arranged that timing, Mitchell told me then.
“God’s timing is not man’s timing. It never is,” said the journalist, who taped Jeremiah 32:27 to his computer: “I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?”
Mitchell worked for three decades for the Clarion-Ledger, the daily newspaper in Jackson. He left in 2019 and founded the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. Now an investigative reporter for Mississippi Today, he is the author of the 2020 memoir “Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era.”
Mitchell recently accepted an invitation to join the national board of trustees for The Christian Chronicle, the Oklahoma City-based publication where I serve as editor-in-chief.
In a podcast hosted by the Chronicle’s B.T. Irwin, Mitchell talked about faith and journalism. I found his perspective compelling. These highlights from the interview have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity:
• On investigative reporting and journalism
“It’s about trying to find the truth. I think that’s a Christian cause as well. We should be about the truth, not about whether our side wins or doesn’t win. And I don’t mean that in Christian terms — I just mean politically, socially, whatever box you want to put that in.
“We’ve still got to be about the truth. We’ve got to have truth in order to have justice. And if you don’t have truth, you can’t get justice. And that’s what I see a whole lot of right now — there’s a whole lot of muddying of the waters and lots of lies not just from politicians but from plenty of others. And it just … makes it hard for people to sort out.”
• On Jesus and politics
“Jesus didn’t seem to weigh much into politics. In fact, he had opportunities over and over again, and they kept almost trying to bait him into making political statements. And he kept refusing. You know, ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.’
“He would just resist it. And I think we’ve got to be careful about getting sucked into those dramas about what this politician said today or this one didn’t. I just think it’s endless, and I’m not sure it benefits God’s kingdom.”
Jerry Mitchell, third from left, poses for a photo with Audrey Jackson, Erik Tryggestad and Bobby Ross Jr. during a 2022 visit to The Christian Chronicle’s office in Oklahoma City. (Photo by Tonya Patton)
• On journalists striving to report the facts
“I think that’s a good thing. You know, they always want to kill the messenger. That’s age-old — the messenger is always the first one to go.
“But I think it’s important. We need to know these things. Because here’s the downside: If you don’t know the truth, you can’t make wise decisions. … You’ve got to know what the truth is or at least as close as we can get to the truth.”
• On Christians covering up scandals and sins
“We’re supposed to confess our sins, right, one to another? … We’re not about covering up sin. That’s what the devil wants us to do. He wants us to cover up sin. I mean, it’s the old ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.’
“It’s like we don’t want to talk about our sins; we want to conceal our sins. But God gives us a way out. We confess our sins, and when you confess your sins — as someone who’s done that — it’s freeing. God is trying to free us from the shackles of sin, and we have the exact wrong mindset on this.
“We think, ‘Oh, this might be bad publicity or might reflect badly on the church.’ The church is supposed to take care of sin. We’re not supposed to wink at it or cover it up. We should be the person out there going, ‘Hey, look, this has happened. Here’s what we’re doing about it.’
“Our job is not to cover up sin. Our job is to expose it. … Does the Bible just say King David was a great guy? No, we have the faults of David all laid out. So sometimes I think there’s a disconnect between what we read in the Bible and what we think should be done here.”
• On the biblical example for ‘bad’ news
“Here’s a very simple parallel: Does the Bible have any bad news? In fact, I’d say, in terms of the gospel, you kind of have to know what the bad news is before you can understand and accept the Good News.
“We call it bad news. It’s not really bad news. It’s the reality. There is going to be a judgment day one day. We’ll stand before God, and heaven or hell awaits. That’s the reality.
“Now you can ignore that. You can go on with your life and do whatever you choose to do. But that’s the reality. So in my mind, the truth is the truth.”
• Why he sees his secular job as a ministry
“I don’t view what I do as separate from being a Christian or somehow different from being a Christian. My faith informs what I do and how I act.
“What we do is godly in the sense that we are trying to get the truth, and God loves truth. God loves justice.
“When I started off (in journalism), I didn’t make that link. I kind of thought, ‘My job’s over here. My church is over here.’ You have these compartments of life, so to speak. But that’s not what God intended.”
• On how his career has changed him as a disciple of Jesus
“Interestingly, it’s strengthened my faith. Do I have more faith in people? Probably not. I have less faith in people because I know too much.
“But I think from a faith perspective, it’s strengthened my faith. This is going to come off egotistically, and I mean zero ego in this. But I look back on my own career — four Klansmen and a serial killer going off to prison as a result of this reporting — and I think to myself, ‘I’m not that talented.’
“This is not something I did. This is something God did. But God loves justice. It’s just that simple.”
Inside The Godbeat
My column last week on hitting 35 years in full-time journalism drew some nice responses from two Godbeat pros with even more experience than me.
Richard N. Ostling, retired longtime religion writer at Time and The Associated Press who still writes a column for Religion Unplugged, sent me this note
Nostalgia! Scary to think my first real job was way back in 1963 as a copyreader “on the rim” at the then two Wilmington DE dailies in era of typewriter and “hot lead” technology. (After solid experience on U-Michigan campus daily.) Tough to get any job outta college then since all us guys were subject to military draft. After Army hitch I fell into news job at C.T., then based in D.C. and a nerve center of evangelicalism, (Russ Chandler was an intern), got an M.A. in religion, then lucked out with the “Time” hire — 56 years ago!
Was privileged to know personally most of the great pioneers on our beat, Cassels and Cornell among them.
AP religion writer Peter Smith commented on LinkedIn:
We’re both celebrating career anniversaries this summer. Forty years ago, I drove to my first job at my hometown newspaper in my stickshift 1981 Pontiac T-1000, which came to resemble the Bluesmobile after it fell apart at the end of the movie.
Thank you, friends!
The Final Plug
I traveled to Green Bay, Wisconsin (perhaps you’ve heard of it?) to report on a church’s outreach to the fast-growing Hispanic population.
My story was published this week.
Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.
Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged and serves as 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 18 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.