Goodbye GetReligion

And God bless you. 

GetReligion is no more.  Terry Mattingly, journalist and journalism professor and founder of the site, has called it quits.  I didn't visit it like I used to.  In fact, in later years I seldom visited at all.  

A big issue I had in the olden days was the premise.  Beyond looking at how religious stories were covered in the print media, the premise of the site was that journalism is truly the noble profession.   No matter how bad the mauling of a story, the contributors and Mr. Mattingly would insist most reporters and press rooms were filled with honest journalists just following the facts wherever they go.  Which  accounted for the website's most common question: Why do these press rooms keep making the same mistakes over and over again? 

When I pointed out why, for instance, the NYT always erred on one side, which was the same as the Los Angeles Times, or Chicago Tribune, or New Yorker, I often got smacked down, including by Mr. Mattingly himself.  I mean, I understood.  He was  journalist.  You don't want to admit the truth about selling cars if you're a car salesman (though my dad, who sold cars a few times in his younger days, was more than happy to do so - the Hollywood meme is true, when a salesman goes to 'talk about a better deal', they're just shooting the breeze).  But still. Over the years, the denial of the obvious just got under my skin. 

I don't know what happened and when, but looking at this announcement of the site's finish, it seems he has come around to admitting the obvious.  Leaning heavily on 'both sides are guilty', he appears to concede that journalism in the classic sense is no more.  Or at least a rare breed.  He appears to concede that news agencies are basically about furthering their goals and narratives full stop.  Journalists, therefore, are to find only that which aids the cause, and ignore or attack that which does not. 

Now, the above is my paraphrase.  But I don't see in that lengthy post, or the final one, anything to suggest otherwise. It's not that he wasn't aware of what was happening in the day.  He knew there were stories whose errors or choices were clearly bias driven.  He just maintained that it was the exception to the rule.  It looks, from what I can tell, that he concedes it is now the rule. 

Despite its foibles, I appreciated Mr. Mattingly and the staff over the years.  I learned much about the nitty-gritty of journalism.  For instance, they taught me to ignore headlines, because headlines are often written by some editor, not the reporter who got the story. And they are the part of a story most easily able to drive an agenda at the expense of the facts.  

One story I recall them focusing on as an example was a story where the headline read 'Mitt Romney Defends Mormon Faith.'  That was back when the press was trying to hamstring Romney by pitting his Mormonism against the religious conversative base of the GOP.  The problem with the headline?  The only time Mormonism was mentioned at all in the entire article was one sentence that read 'When asked to defend his Mormon faith, Mitt Romney responded that he is running for president, not pastor.' 

That still sticks in my mind.  The good folks at GetReligion were brutal at times in eviscerating the press for the obvious, as in that case.  Mostly it did this when it pertained to religion news, but not always.  During the Proposition 8 whirlwind back in the day, they conceded that, even out of the sphere of religion, the press had taken on the part of marketing and propaganda organ for the Left rather than coming close to being objective. 

Nonetheless, for the longest time, they would circle around and insist that journalism was still the pure faith, and most news rooms and journalists were simply wanting to find the truth and report accordingly.  What happened, and when it happened, I don't know.  And I don't want to put words in Mr. Mattingly's mouth or assume more than he might have intended.  But it isn't hard to read the announcement, or subsequent posts, and not conclude that at least to some degree he has finally conceded what so many have known.  That the press has devolved beyond merely advancing agendas despite the truth, to actively suppressing and even attacking the truth in service of its agendas.