Media Uses Kid Gloves On Mainstream Religion

By: Alicia Mundy The Pack Rat Column

It is never easy to cover the religious angle of a terrible tragedy. No reporter wants to be branded "elitist" for asking questions about the impact of religious belief on someone's behavior. I'm not talking about clerical pedophilia. However, in the wake of stories about Andrea Yates, John Walker Lindh, and, now, the death of a toddler left in a van for seven hours by her family to die in agony from the heat, it's time the press developed a new paradigm for covering the possible fallout of religious beliefs.

The first story in The Washington Post on Frances Kelly appeared May 31. A 21-month-old girl had been forgotten in the family van in their driveway in Manassas, Va. She was noticed by a neighbor seven hours later. Her father was hanging out with the other kids; her mother was away. Frances was the youngest of 13 children. Clearly, the father had trouble keeping track of them.

Some friends from the "large protective Catholic community" quickly volunteered testimonials to the Post about the "deeply religious" Kelly family. There were references to Catholic values and the children's excellent grades at a Catholic school. When Kevin C. Kelly was indicted for involuntary manslaughter, more than 50 fellow parishioners came to court to support him and denounce the indictment. Then came the incongruous banner headline in the Post on June 10: "Death Mars a Flattering Family Portrait." Well, yes.

The story began: "Everybody at All Saints Catholic Church and the Seton School in Manassas knows who the Kellys are: They occupy the third pew from the front at the daily early-morning Mass." However, hidden in four separate Post stories were clues to an unflattering family picture painted by their neighbors: Some reported seeing little Kelly kids playing in vehicles previously. In April, a police officer found Frances running down the street, alone. In February, the father left his 3-year-old son at a video store where the boy stayed for hours until police called the Kelly home to ask if anyone had noticed they were missing a child. And the oldest girl had to skip high school for a while her senior year to care for the other children.

I believe that if the religion involved here weren't one of the mainstream Judeo-Christian sects, editors and reporters might have raised some serious questions: Did the family priest not notice any problems -- or urge the couple to reconcile their religious views on birth control with their ability to handle so many children? What of the wide impact of having so many kids on the other Kelly children? Stories indicated the older children were being used as a built-in baby-sitting service while the parents continued to produce more kids than they could handle.

Finally, did an editor consider asking a Catholic theologian for a quote? Another Catholic might have noted that, according to Jesus in the New Testament, there's more to being "religious" than going to church every day.

As the Post grappled with this complex story, The Washington Times dove right in -- trashing, in an editorial, the indictment against the father, who is already suffering because of what he called "a tragic accident." Hold on! "Accident" is when your toddler suddenly bolts into the street and is hit by a car. This was an accident waiting to happen.

After years of reading opinion pieces in The Washington Times, I believe that if the situation involved a single African-American mom in the District of Columbia with even six kids (let alone 13) who'd lost track of one, there'd be a call for forced sterilization and demands that Social Services take her children away. You can't convince me that the connection to a mainstream conservative parish doesn't affect the coverage to some degree.

It seems that papers are more willing to find voices to question how religion can be hurtful when it's nontraditional. We rip Jehovah's Witnesses who deny modern medicine to their children. We quote moderate imams to disparage oppressive and murderous fundamental Muslim practices. The press had a field day with the parents of John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban." We hashed over their "California lifestyle," their "New Age" dabbling. And it took a while for us to begin asking whether some self-anointed "Christian" counselor led Andrea Yates' husband to force babies on his unstable wife.

I have no easy answers on how to cover tragedies where mainstream religion is part of the background noise. But I think that if the "deeply religious" shield had not been thrown up by Kelly's fellow parishioners, the Post stories of Frances Kelly's death (particularly on June 10) would have focused more on the dilapidated home and police reports on the forgotten kid -- and writers would have asked more demanding questions of their priest. That's what I've seen in other stories on children's deaths.

Meanwhile, the Post, according to sources, has received complaints from Catholics who don't think the Kellys' religion should have been mentioned at all. Until we come up with a better way to filter "deeply religious," I agree.