Mormon Media Monitor: Time to grade LDS coverage

As an assistant professor teaching journalism at BYU, I've been spending my holidays grading news reporting, journalistic research and First Amendment legal analysis.

It's now time to issue some grades for the news media's reporting for the past few weeks on Latter-day Saints and their beliefs — most of it prompted by the presidential campaign of Mitt Romney.

"A" Work: I've been critical of reporters who depend solely on sources outside the LDS Church for information. I believe good reporters will not allow others to define LDS beliefs but instead go to genuine, believing church members. The Orange County register did just that with a short article and shorter video version of a Q & A interview with President Weatherford Clayton, president of Newport Beach California Stake. Printed Dec. 28, reporter Bill Cunningham helps cut through the misconceptions and goes to a local source. That's good religion reporting. While some of the reader comments attached to the story suggest Cunningham avoided tough questions, I disagree.

"B" Work: The Economist magazine features the LDS Church in one of its "Christmas Specials." Unbylined, it's a pretty fair and balanced report but I would mark it down for poor sourcing. And of course, we can't forget the stereotypical headline, "From Polygamy to Propriety." So isn't 117 years since polygamy was renounced long enough for copy editors to stop putting it in headlines?

Take the following paragraph, for example: "The Book of Mormon describes how Jesus came to the New World after his resurrection and preached to native Americans. Parts of the text are supposedly a contemporary account of events that took place more than 1,500 years ago. Yet historians note various anachronisms, such as horses, steel and wheat. Neither the archaeological record nor any account besides the Book of Mormon suggests their presence in pre-Colombian America."

The writer never bothers to ask any LDS scholars about this, but simply cites unnamed historians. Several academic articles available on the Web at the Neal A. Maxwell Center for Religious Scholarship at BYU explore this issue and give evidence of pre-Columbian horses. The author easily dismisses the origins of The Book of Abraham by unnamed experts without response.

"C" Work: Vermont Public Radio tried to do a story about Mormons at Joseph Smith's birthplace in Sharon, Vt. Instead of talking about the faith,however, the reporter turns the story into how the church is "mum" about politics and won't give access to missionaries. It was a missed opportunity for the reporter and for the church.

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