A Question of Rights

In an article entitled “Homosexual Harmony or Violation of Scripture?” the Chicago Tribune posed a question of individual verses corporate rights. Threatened with litigation, eHarmony-an online matchmaking site previously appealing largely to single Christians- created CompatiblePartners.net, a site that matches same-sex individuals. Does eHarmony have the right to gear their service towards a fragmented range of consumers? Do homosexuals have the right to demand that service?
Besides the threat a lawsuit from one offended homosexual customer, potential for eHarmony to actually be charged with discrimination is not made clear in the article. eHarmony is a private business and has the right to discriminate between consumers if for a legitimate reason. One reason provided in the article is that it will be more difficult to pair same-sex couples because eHarmony has not done enough research in this area yet to form a comprehensive and effective customer inventory. Of course the fact that Christian eHarmony users feel as though they have been betrayed with the creation of Compatible Partners was mentioned as well. However, the only source quoted who thought negatively of eHarmony’s expansion was well-known anti-homosexual orator Peter LaBarbera. Christians are generalized throughout the article as sharing the same hurt feelings towards eHarmony, without the sources to back this up.
The article is also very much focused on the Christian eHarmony user’s perspective, with little thought given to the thoughts of users of Compatible Partners. Not a single source is mentioned with a purely positive opinion about the issue, leaving the article leaning unstably to one side.

The Numbers Game

In an article entitled “How Many Muslims Does it Take?”, Chicago Tribune reporter Manya Brachear presented further insight into quantitative mistake reported in the Tribune earlier in the week regarding the number of Muslim individuals in the United States. From the outset of the story, the focus is not made apparent. She begins by talking about the article published in the Tribune containing the mistake, which was about the lack of Muslim representatives in government positions, by asserting that readers were more concerned with miscalculation of the Muslim population than with the actual aim of the piece. She then gives several estimated population numbers of the Muslim community, as reported by private demographic researchers and Muslim institutions as well as one Jewish organization. At this point the focus seems to be on the contradicting numbers reported, and whether or not a national religious census should be issued to provide accurate numbers. She provides a credible source from the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, who said that the Muslim community should be able to report their own numbers. She fails, however, to provide a source with a contrasting perspective on this issue.
The flow of the article is majorly disrupted with an indirect quotation regarding the Union for Reform Judaism. Though Judaism is also a minority religion in the U.S., there is no logical connection between the previous paragraph and this quote: “Mujahid hopes an ongoing dialogue between the Islamic Society of North America and the Union for Reform Judaism will assuage anxiety about numbers. Religious minorities should see each other’s growth as positive, not counter-productive, he said.”
Brachear promptly shifts the focus to England, mentioning that the Muslim community was included in the British census, and reports the numbers. This irrelevant information is used merely for a rocky transition to report that the U.S. constitution restricts religious demographics from being included in a federal census. This information would have been better utilized earlier in the article, while the information regarding the Jewish population and the British Census should have never been included. Brachear ends by posing these questions: “What do you think? Should the U.S. Census settle the numbers question and survey faith? Or should religious groups be trusted to self-report?” These are questions which readers are in no way equipped to answer if given only the information in this article.

Food Bank Bailout

According to the Chicago Tribune, over 3,000 people have signed a petition started by Faithful America, an online community of roughly 80,000 religious individuals, to negotiate government financial aid to bailout failing food banks. Faithful America aims to promote morality in our society and consists of members from varying religious traditions. Though there is no direct quote from any one of the 80,000 members, but Tribune reporter Manya Brachear reports that the group defines morality with several specific goals including “ending poverty, promoting economic security, fostering peace, promoting human rights and diplomacy, preventing the effects of climate change, countering hate speech and misinformation in the media and building inclusive communities for immigrants and people of all faiths.”
Though the success or failure of food banks is not an intrinsically religious issue, religion is often closely linked to moral issues, especially regarding politics and the economy, and churches are often looked to for taking the initiative on solving moral as well as social issues. Brachear reports that the majority of food provision agencies in the Chicago area are faith-based organizations.
Brachear points out a flaw in the well-intentioned petition. Bob Dolgan, spokesman for the Greater Chicago Food Directory, states that Obama’s stimulus package already includes additional funding of $150 million for the Emergency Food Assistance Program. This organization distributes food to banks around the U.S. According to him, it is not this chain of food banks which needs additional funding, but the private faith-based food pantries and soup kitchens which are suffering with the increased demand for food and the decreased supply of funds. The article, therefore, presents both sides of the issue, though a source from Faithful America would have been beneficial asset.

Past, Present, and Future

Manya Brachear wrote an inspiring and well evidenced article about the opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. She began by quoting Rev. Scott Matheney, chaplain at Elmhurst College. Matheney was one of about 100 clergy members who toured the Museum one Friday afternoon soon after the museum’s opening. The Reverend leads the reader to adopt a spiritual perspective about the historical museum. This perspective is continued by the museum’s executive director Rick Hirschhaut who said that the goal of the exhibit is to take visitors on a journey of self-evaluation in light of the events of the past, highlighting the acts of heroism amidst acts of terror and celebrating the possibilities of human who act with integrity.
Brachear then turns the focus from the past and present towards the future, by highlighting events that will occur as a response to the opening of the museum. Youth United for Darfur, one of 40 Chicago student groups raising money for young Sudanese victims of violence, predicted at a rally at the celebration of the opening of the museum, that together they will be able to raise $15,000.
With all of these components, the article commemorates the past with a present event while asking readers to look to the future. The single weakness of the sobering article is that, despite opening with a quote from Rev. Matheney, there is not much of a religious focus so much as a focus on social justice. Brachear does end however with a quote from Eboo Patel, the executive director of Interfaith Youth Core. Speaking of the Holocaust Museum, Eboo quotes Martin Luther King Jr. in saying, “Because of this institution, there will be a generation of righteous people.” This quote again draws on the past by reminding readers of a movement of great social change while inspiring them to continue this tradition of promoting justice in the future.

Lincoln's Death a Mark of the Divine?

Manya Brachear challenges Chicago Tribune readers to observe the “religious overtones” in current national politics. Although this is an interesting thought provoker, it does not serve as a solid basis for a news article without some concrete facts. The single news peg and focus of the article (“Lincoln’s Death Had Sacred Significance”) is a suggestion made by Harold Holzer, co-chair of the U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, that because Lincoln’s death occurred on Good Friday it was his fate to be "sacrificed on the altar of freedom and died for the nation’s sins” like Jesus died for the sins of his followers. This colossal claim is not backed by any additional evidence or endorsed, at least not in the article, by any other sources. The specifics of how Lincoln was paying for the sins of the nation are not addressed any further and leaves a great deal up to the imagination as to how this actually makes logical sense.
Holzer is a credible source, but the only one that is used for this article. There have been plenty of other, usually light-hearted, articles which present an interesting, far out claim, but there are almost never the focus of an article, but used as an entertaining quote or thought provoking ending. And though Lincoln is regarded by many Americans as a man of integrity and held in great esteem, it may be a bit too much of a stretch to imply that he had a divine nature. Also, though the fact that the article was posted during Easter weekend, the focus of the article is on an event that occurred in 1865 with one mention of Barak Obama’s “messianic qualities” (again, a bit of a stretch) in an attempt to make the story relevant.

Reader Contributes What Journalist Does Not

The Chicago Tribune printed an article entitled “How Should Catholic Hospitals Balance Faith and Family?” in which Manya Brachear addressed the decision of hospitals affiliated with the Catholic Church to decline requests for in-vitro fertilization, commonly abbreviated IVF. IVF throughout the U.S. offer this non-surgical procedure, which has been largely simplified and increased in efficiency since it was first completed successfully in 1978. The process consists of retrieving oocytes (unfertilized eggs) from the female’s ovary, which are fertilized with the male’s sperm and some of which form pre-embryos. One of the pre-embryos is then placed in the woman’s uterus where it will hopefully develop into a newborn.
This procedure requires to surgery or even anesthesia and has helped many infertile couples become pregnant. However, the controversial question that one must ask is what is done with the extra fertilized pre-embryos? According to the Georgia Reproductive Specialists, IVF centers leave that decision up to the parents. They have the option to freeze the fertilized embryo for later use, or simply to “dispose” of them. This question is one of the defining factors in the Catholic Church’s stance against IVF. It is strange then, that this question is not even addressed in the Tribune article.
Instead, the Brachear attributes the negative view of this procedure by Catholic Hospitals to the experimental nature of the procedure, and then quickly cuts down that argument saying, “the process is hardly experimental anymore”. The viewpoints of several physicians at Loyola University are given addressing how patients inquiring about IVF are responded, but the reason for their refusal to perform the procedure is not mentioned whatsoever. This personally offended one Tribune reader who commented on the mishandling and misrepresentation of facts on the Tribune’s religion blog, The Seeker. She explained her understanding of the Catholic Church’s stance on the procedure and the reasoning behind it, something that should have been made known in the article.