The Revealer: NYT on Evangelical Power: Don't Ask, Don't Tell

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NYT on Evangelical Power: Don't Ask, Don't Tell

09 August 2005

NYT "conservative beat" reporter David Kirkpatrick sprinkles some skepticism into yesterday's story on a Midland, Texas-based evangelical group that uses its geographic connection to President Bush to leverage itself an international influence. Next to the "abstinence promotion" booth at a Christian rock festival sponsored by Midland Ministerial Alliance, he notes, is a genocide booth, featuring a real live former North Korean prisoner, Kang Chol Hwan. Kang's happy to help and to be helped, though he seems a bit perplexed by the group's replica gas chamber. "He had never seen such a thing," writes Kirkpatrick, who notes that an evangelical "helped Mr. Kang write a speech emphasizing 'the love of Jesus Christ' and quoting the biblical 'commission' to 'make disciples of all the nations.'"

Kirkpatrick takes the story one more step toward transparencey by noting that its leader, who hosts the Sudanese ambassador in her home and frequently travels to Washington to lobby foreign leaders (a possible violation of the Logan Act, which forbids diplomacy by private citizens), is funded by her Texas oilman husband. Say, doesn't Sudan have oil? Maybe so, maybe not, but Kirkpatrick's too coy -- excuse us, too objective -- to ask about the coincidence.

The NYT calls this new attitude "respect." A few months ago, the editors declared that they needed to reach out to the red states and to the religious, and that they would do this by doing more sensitive reporting about matters of faith. This, apparently, is what they meant, a compromise that should please no one. Kirkpatrick's story is snarky, which certainly isn't respectful. And it doesn't take its evangelical subjects seriously enough to ask hard questions about beliefs, goals, means -- which is even less respectful.

Instead, the NYT continues to play too many evangelical stories as quirky, human interest puff pieces. Here's a powerful political movement with connections to the president and to the senate (Sen. Sam Brownback, Republican hopeful from Kansas, traveled to Midland for the festival), and the Times reports it as the equivalent of a "last man in town who can whittle worth a damn" story.