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C H A P T E R 5 Their Own Little World In this chapter, I turn our attention to these questions: Did print journalists provide a more accurate, less inflammatory picture of Newdow? Did they leap as readily as their broadcast colleagues into the role of “guard dog?” What central storylines emerged from their coverage of the controversy? Did print reporters go beyond simply portraying Newdow as a scapegoat? Did they continue to use the frames discussed in chapter 3 (holy war, hands over hearts, still under attack, ceremonial deism, and outside the mainstream)? Did new frames emerge? Holy War Like broadcast journalists, print reporters struggled to make sense of the Ninth Circuit’s ruling, at least in part because Newdow snuck up on them. One reporter whom I interviewed recalled writing a profile of Newdow that focused on family law claims in his suit, but for the most part, print reporters did not see “a significant legal controversy” (B. Egelko, e-mail interview, June 27, 2004) until the Ninth Circuit ruled on June 26, 2002. This may explain why print coverage of the decision, while much more detailed than broadcast coverage, still suffered from some of the misconceptions discussed earlier. For example, Evelyn Nieves (2002a) of the New York Times wrote on June 27 that the decision came from “the nation’s most liberal appeals court,” which we’ve learned isn’t exactly accurate. Rather than suggest that Newdow’s claims might have merit, Nieves, like many of her colleagues, assured readers that the ruling “will certainly be appealed.” And consider the Times headline: “Judges Ban Pledge of 77 Allegiance From Schools, Citing ‘Under God.’” This reads like the court had created an instant educational crisis in the nation’s schools. It is not an accurate characterization of the court’s ruling, as Judge Goodwin pointed out in an interview. Framing the story in this way also creates a smokescreen for the real problems plaguing public schools: lack of funding and overemphasis on testing, just to name two. To be fair, the urgency in the Times headline comes from the realization by journalists that Newdow’s victory was now a significant news story—a “big deal,” in the words of a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle (B. Egelko, personal interview, July 1, 2004). Warren Richey (2004), a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, said his coverage of the suit began once it became clear that the Supreme Court might take the case. Claire Cooper of the Sacramento Bee, the newspaper that serves Newdow’s hometown and Elk Grove, California, said the Ninth Circuit’s ruling “might have been the lead story even if the parties were from Timbuktu ” (e-mail interview, July 2, 2004). And when journalists made this determination, they began to frame the story as a conflict between Newdow and angry public officials devoted to protecting American citizens from his dangerous intrusion into their lives. The conflict did not quite reach the level of a “holy war,” as was seen in early broadcast coverage, but Newdow’s victory was cast as a struggle to sustain America’s values. And there were tinges of anticipated feelings of victimization on the part of Christian conservatives. Lyle Denniston of the Boston Globe observed that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling “is expected to open a new front in the ongoing cultural war over religious expressions in public life” (2002, p. A2). USA Today quoted Reverend Louis Sheldon, who heads the Traditional Values Coalition, a conservative Christian lobbying group, as saying that if the Pledge is unconstitutional, “so then also is the Declaration of Independence. It has many references to God and the Scriptures” (Vanden Brook, 2002, p. 4A). The New York Times’ Nieves quoted a law professor who said the Ninth Circuit panel had issued “a well-reasoned opinion that is certain to enrage the Christian right” (2002a, p. A1). But there was not the sense of the helplessness that marked early broadcast coverage, especially the coverage provided by CNN. Instead, Nieves, like most of her print colleagues, focused on the range of reaction to the ruling. Negative reaction to the ruling was swift, and came from folks “across the political spectrum” (Nieves, 2002a, p. A1). We learned that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling was both “stunning” (“Appeals Court Rules,” 2002) and “baffling” (Hayward, 2002, p. 6; Holland, 2002) to the nation’s politicians. It unleashed “a flurry of denunciations by public 78 Taking on the Pledge of Allegiance...

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