The Plain Dealer Good Friday Fiasco
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It's fairly common for newspapers to run special religious news stories during Christmas and Easter seasons. On Good Friday, April 21, 2000, the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a reasonably balanced story about the attempts of gay people to participate fully in faith communities, and about the conflicts that sometimes result. The story ran on Page One, and was titled "Gay issues divide faithful". As I understand it, the plan was to run a small picture on the front page of a gay man participating in a traditional Passover Seder (the ritual Passover dinner), but at the last minute, an editor decided to run an "informational" box instead. The box - on the front page of the paper - was titled "What the Bible says about homosexuality", and it quoted three Biblical passages that are commonly (mis)used to castigate homosexuality. I deal with those Scriptural passages elsewhere; the point here is to tell the story about the newspaper story!
My initial reaction to that front page "information box" was that the newspaper had crossed the line from reporting to preaching - and was using Page One to preach a harsh, inaccurate, and biased message. After all, they didn't say "here are some passages used to criticize homosexuality"; they said "Here's what the Bible says". I immediately began contacting gay-supportive organizations in Cleveland, and ministers and rabbis that that knew or knew of. Within a few days, I sent a letter to the editor of the Plain Dealer with 16 signatures - Four from the leaders of the prominent gay or gay-supportive organizations in Cleveland, and 12 from clergy members. We picked up support from several other churches within a few days. The editor replied promptly and politely, and accepted our invitation to meet The meeting was held a few days later at the Plain Dealer. Twelve of us came, and met with the PD's editor, managing editor, and editorial page editor, and the writer of the story in question. The key issue from our point of view (as stated by the letter) was that the Plain Dealer had crossed the line from reporting to advocacy by declaring that three apparently harsh, condemnatory statements represent "What the Bible says about homosexuality." We also asserted that by doing so on Page One, they had made such a strong point of their inaccurate assertion that an explicit retraction was called for. Fortunately, just before the meeting, I consulted with a corporate media relations officer who advised me that by suggesting that the Plain Dealer had engaged in advocacy on Page One I would be accusing them of one of the worst sins a newspaper could commit, so I toned down the rhetoric a bit. They wound up defending their "information box" as simple, literally correct reporting ("after all, the Bible does contain these statements"), and refused to consider anything close to a retraction. But they did agree to print an op-ed piece, which, unfortunately, never came together. But still, I think that it is accurate to say that for the next year or so, the paper's coverage was much more even-handed, so though we didn't get the retraction that we wanted, I believe that we did have some effect. |
Robin Richmond - www.robinrichmond.com
PFLAG Cleveland - www.pflagcleveland.org
November, 2002