What the heck? The job of a journalist is not to tell you what you want to hear. I’m sorry if some Mormons didn’t want to hear unpleasant things about their leader, but if they were true then they were news
In a way, that's kinda what the article is about. In a different perspective, the author is saying that journalists these days are just telling us what we want to hear, or whatever controversy sells.
The idea that the leader of the Mormon church is a misogynist and a homophobe, that he stood in the way of LGBT rights, well, that's a story that sells these days. That goes against my own moral values, but that's not the be-all end-all.
This is a man who lived until he was 90, and accomplished Amazing Things within his niche social institutions and also in how that social institution impacted the world around it. Ninety Years of life and accomplishments, and yet his obituary by the New York Times was minimized into the social controversy of the past five years.
I would stand totally opposed to this dude on a moral level, but I can't help but think that's kind of sad.
The author's issue isn't about the fact that the news covered this controversy. The author's issue is that this man's obituary spoke nothing about his actual life, but only the controversy.
It'd be like if Elon Musk, in the years before he died, came out as a raging racist homophobic misogynist, or whatever people think is controversial in that future. And his obituary in the NYT talked about how he was a shitty controversial person, instead of talking about SpaceX, or Tesla, or any of his actual accomplishments in his Life.
If you accomplished great, impactful things that changed the world for the better, should that be absolutely invalidated if you were an asshole by the social/cultural/moral standards of the time period in which you died?
> The idea that the leader of the Mormon church is a misogynist and a homophobe, that he stood in the way of LGBT rights, well, that's a story that sells these days.
This isn't just an idea: it's a core aspect of Thomas S. Monson's (and every LDS leader's) legacy.
We have a significant number of LGBTQ+ children committing suicide over the LDS Church's doctrines of homophobia.
The LDS Church likes to tout its $40 million per year charitable donations while hoarding $100 billion in a tax exempt investment fund.
The LDS Church is very successful in creating a positive image that is extremely misleading. It's no surprise to me that an active member sees an honest accounting of Monson's life as misleading, because he himself has been so thoroughly misled. I know because I have been in his shoes.
At the risk of overkill, not sure if this is going out of line, but the above is stated strongly and I think other info could provide some balance. Corrections/questions welcome, and there is an email address at my site below if that is helpful.
Church members are repeatedly and strongly taught to love and serve everyone regardless of agreement or disagreement, and that every human being is a precious child of God who should be treated with courtesy. The Church has encouraged legislative action to protect LGBT people from discrimination in housing, employment, etc, while simultaneously protecting religious rights (the "utah compromise" etc, such as maybe at
https://www.npr.org/2016/06/01/480247305/how-the-utah-compro... ).
Here is some alternative info (a Church-owned media outlet) on the finances:
Working to curtail the civil rights of LGBT Californians was unloving and discourteous. Working to exclude LGBT and nonreligious people from the Boy Scouts was unloving and discourteous.
Civil rights groups endorsed the Utah compromise because it was the best bill that could passed in Utah at the time. They don't consider it a model for the rest of the country.[1]
I don't think that's a complete definition of what's "news." Imagine if Trump died tomorrow and the NYT posted an obituary saying "Donald Trump, the real-estate developer who built a successful resort in Florida but struggled to keep a casino in Atlantic City alive, died at age 73 in Washington, DC, where he was traveling for work." Nothing in this sentence is untrue, but it would be fair to criticize it. (And it wouldn't be fair to say "Republicans are criticizing it because they don't like hearing that he wasn't that successful in real estate.")
The job of a journalist is to say what's important for people to know. This story is alleging that the NYT obituary for Monson did not successfully focus on the most important things, not simply that it told things that weren't favorable. (That said, another comment here fro 'lalaland1125 argues that, in fact, the LDS Church's attitudes towards women and towards same-sex marriage had an influence on America and the world beyond anything that Monson did within his religion, and so the NYT did focus on the important things, which I think is a fair counterpoint. But that's different from saying that the obituary is fine simply because it's true.)
If you look at the original obituary, it seems most of the negative stuff is at the beginning of the article, with the positive stuff left for later on in the article. Monson did a lot of things that most would agree are "good" that impacted many inside and outside the church, yet we don't get any of that until the last half of the article, and many of the things covered in the first few paragraphs only affect members of the church, and thus aren't particularly notable for those outside the church. Also, many of the things in the article relate to activities of the church that don't really have anything to do with the life of the person in question. For example, did Monson have anything to do with polygamy? Yet coverage of polygamy was multiple paragraphs, with the relevant portion being Monson's efforts to increase transparency of church history. If anything, polygamy should be a casual mention here.
The author of this piece isn't saying the article should or shouldn't have mentioned something for fairness, the author is arguing that the obituary was lazy at best or intentionally negative at worst. I expect journalists to be able to learn enough about a subject to give a fair report that covers multiple important viewpoints and to stay on topic, yet this obituary felt like it shoehorned negativity where it didn't really belong, almost like the author had a bone to pick, but tried to stay somewhat objective. Events should be given emphasis to the degree that they are relevant to the subject matter and hand, and I felt this article didn't do a good job at that.
I'm getting tired of trying to figure out when a journalist actually knows enough about a subject to make reading their articles worthwhile. In this case it's fairly unimportant (the man is dead afterall), but it leaves me wondering if they're going to do the same thing on other topics, like Trump's impeachment or election news. Why should I subscribe to a news source that doesn't actually dig in to the subjects it covers?
Exactly, I'm surprised this post is even being upvoted here on HN. It sounds like NYT did their job, and did it well (considering so many people got pissed off).
We can not tolerate tiptoeing around subjects simply because someone's "faith" might be offended.
You don’t have to tip-toe around a sensitive subject in order to give the reader a meaningful look at what’s going on. The article does a good job listing information that was important to help understand Monson in context. You can do that and also address the issues the obituary talked about. But judging everything in terms of a narrow set of political issues doesn’t educate the reader. It’s not good journalism. (I’d love to read the New York Times obituary of the founder of Bangladesh. I wonder what it would be like, viewed through the narrow political lens of a liberal New Yorker. Would it lead with his views on abortion?)
I had the same knee jerk reaction as you. But I think the question is not “should we tiptoe around subjects”.
The question is about framing and notability.
Pretend you have to make your own headline about the life of this guy. How do you frame his life?
You could focus on his achievements and his significance to Mormons and not mention the controversy until later in the article.
You could do what the Times did, which is mention only his controversies and say nothing of his significance to your average Mormon.
You could do a mix of the two (“celebrated within the Church, but mired in controversy without it”).
Either way you go, you are making a big decision on how to frame this guy’s life.
Which one is more fair? Which one is more profitable? Which panders the most to your readership? Which one is the least/most controversial? These are all questions the editor has to consider.
I have no small amount of distaste for the Mormon Church and Mormonism. I would prefer that any headline about Monson’s death mention the controversies that the Times mentions. But I also agree with the author that the Times’ headline is an extremely one dimensional view that just reinforced my already former opinion about Mormonism rather than giving me an alternative perspective from which to see it.
