A religion journalist comes out

Last updated on: September 30, 2016 at 2:17 pm by Deacon Greg Kandra

A religion journalist comes out 2016-09-30T14:17:12-04:00 Deacon Greg Kandra

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NCR has this interesting nugget from Sister Maureen Fiedler:

This week on “Interfaith Voices,” I had a personal interview with Kevin Eckstrom, who this week is leaving his post as editor-in-chief of Religion News Service. He has taken a position as chief communications officer at the Washington National Cathedral.

As you probably know, professional journalists covering news are supposed to be publicly neutral about controversies they cover. They can have their own views (and usually do), but they are supposed to suppress their biases in print or on the air and give fair coverage to all sides in a dispute in whatever medium they use to report.

Eckstrom was impeccable about keeping such ethics. But some stories, he noted, posed special challenges. Eckstrom is gay and is married to his husband, Grant. They have two children. I had known about Eckstrom and his marriage for a long time and had always wanted to ask how it affected his reporting on the religion beat, if at all. LGBT issues, as we all know, come up frequently in religious journalism.

Eckstrom said he never “outed” himself professionally when covering a story because some conservatives on LGBT issues might have made an issue of his sexual orientation no matter how he reported a story. But, he said, there were personally awkward moments. Someone might ask him if he was married, and, of course, he said, “Yes.” But then they might ask a question about his wife, and he had to answer in a very vague way. He never lied, he said; he just changed the subject.

There’s more at the link.

It’s worth noting, though, that Eckstrom’s departure comes with some interesting context, as reported last month:

The editor of Religion News Service has denied that a grant from a wealthy LGBT advocacy funder has biased its coverage of traditional religion, which includes a recent controversial story on Cardinal Raymond Burke.

The Arcus Foundation dispenses millions of dollars in grants every year to support LGBT activism. Its 2014 grants included $120,000 to the Religion Newswriters Foundation, the owner of the widely syndicated Religion News Service.

The Arcus Foundation’s grant listing said the one year of support was intended “to recruit and equip LGBT supportive leaders and advocates to counter rejection and antagonism within traditionally conservative Christian churches.”

The foundation’s Sept. 23, 2014, announcement said the grant aimed at “fostering a culture of LGBT understanding through the media” by funding the production of feature stories and blog posts “about religion and LGBT peoples of color.”

Kevin Eckstrom, RNS editor in chief, told CNA that receiving money from the advocacy group did not influence editorial choices.

“All editorial decisions about coverage of the LGBT community, or any other issue, are made independent of any foundation support, including Arcus,” he said, adding that RNS welcomes support “from any individual or foundation that supports our aim of informing and challenging our readers.”

The question, of course, becomes: if the Arcus grant didn’t slant their coverage…did something else? Did Eckstrom’s own background and biases lead to a more sympathetic treatment of gay issues? Did RNS writers and editors skew their reports to favorably impress the boss? (A not-unheard-of phenomenon in any newsroom, by the way.) Was there an agenda — spoken or unspoken — being pushed?

Eckstrom, I’m sure, would say no, and deny that he had any editorial bias over how gay issues were covered at the news service.

Indeed, Sister Maureen Fiedler writes:

What was truly difficult, he said, was listening to the religious conservatives who criticized gays and lesbians for being intrinsically disordered, dangerous around children, or for harming society — all charges he knew were not true. But in spite of it all, he kept his cool and reported the charges in news stories as one side of the ongoing public debate.

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about this. Maybe it’s all a big coincidence.

But now that Kevin Eckstrom is out of the closet, so are a lot of questions about the stories RNS chose to cover—including how they covered them, and why.

Photo via RNS website

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