Stop the Press
Page 23
Utah officials largely view the federal government as the enemy, and this attitude is on display in the Utah Legislature and by even those elected to federal office. The state clings tenaciously to Hill Air Force Base, yet refuses federal help for the poor, ill, and elderly, many of them Mormon families. The legislature has turned down almost a billion dollars in federal Medicaid money that would serve the less fortunate, especially those without access to the church welfare program. A majority of Utahns polled favored expansion of the Medicaid program but were ignored.26
The Utah Legislature and the congressional delegation are adamantly against the establishment of any new national parks or monuments in Utah, yet Utah's “Mighty Five” national parks are major contributors to the $8 billion spent in Utah by tourists. Tourism is the state's largest export industry.27
The church comes under intense criticism on gay issues.
The Tribune regularly runs articles on gay members of the church and how they face discrimination. Still on the law books are statutes preventing the “advocacy of homosexuality” by teachers who may be confronted by vulnerable LGBT youth undergoing internal pain as they reach a crossroad of life. Utah's LGBT teens are three times more likely than their heterosexual peers to commit suicide.28
The church has lobbyists at the Utah Legislature and in Congress, yet it is mum, claiming it takes no role in politics. “The church is very selective regarding the legislation they engage in. This is due to the fact that because most of Utah's legislators are LDS members, the majority of legislation already aligns with the LDS Church position without their influence,” wrote Carl Wimmer, a formerly faithful Mormon who served three terms in the Utah House of Representatives.29
ELDERLY LEADERSHIP FACES MODERN CHALLENGES
Fundamentalist churches will continue to attack Mormonism as being non-Christian. Polygamy will continue to make headlines, and the mainstream LDS Church will fight the perception that it still practices polygamy. Mormon politics will always be under fire. Questions of separation of church and state will continue to be contentious.
The church also must find ways to rationalize emerging DNA findings that indicate that indigenous Americans came from eastern Asia, not from Israel and the Middle East. This is in conflict with the gospel in the Book of Mormon.
Proselytizing by its young missionaries is anathema to many cultures, and while boys in suits on bicycles remind the world that Mormonism is everywhere, missionaries are also seemingly intrusive, expensive, and becoming less effective. The ratio of converts to missionary is slipping.30 The Mormon Church's claim to being the fast-growing faith is being challenged by the explosive growth of Seventh-day Adventists, Assemblies of God, and Pentecostal groups.
The church will continue to have trouble with the retention of its newly baptized members, especially in countries where strong family ties may call the Mormon back to his or her original religion.
The creation stories of Joseph Smith's finding and translating of the golden plates will dog the church. It is a story that can make the prospective member—or the existing member—wary or disillusioned.
Many Mormons would like to know how their tithing is spent, but the church books are closed to the membership. From the website MormonLeaks, pay stubs indicating the salaries of Mormonism's general authorities were posted by the Tribune in January 2016. In 2014 the “base living allowance” for all Mormon general authorities was being raised from $116,400 to $120,000, certainly not excessive. However, other perquisites were not included in the leaks.31
Perhaps the greatest pressure on the church will come from women members, many of whom want to hold the priesthood, or at least have greater say in decisions made by the church. Ordain Women's Kate Kelly was excommunicated for speaking out on behalf of women in the church in 2014. Dissident women within the church are gathering in numbers and in strength of voice.32 Many will be censured, and more will be excommunicated as they speak out. The treatment of dissidents has not changed in almost two hundred years.
One Mormon female student at Brigham Young University, Madi Barney, was named the Tribune's Utahn of the Year 2016 for speaking out against the school's onerous policy of punishing victims of rape. Women victims of rape were examined under the school's Honor Code to determine if they had “asked for it.” She was questioned about the kind of clothing she was wearing, if a male was the only other person at the scene, if alcohol or drugs were involved, and about curfew adherence and chastity. After she reported being raped in September 2015, Barney was placed under investigation and refused enrollment while an inquiry took place. At a rape awareness forum at the school in April 2016, she took the microphone and confronted BYU's Title IX coordinator. The dam of silence broke. She was surprised at the supportive applause of fellow students and at the effectiveness of a petition that more than 117,000 people signed. It seemed that many assailants had explicitly used the threat of the Honor Code system to discourage victims from reporting. A few months later BYU announced sweeping changes on how it will respond to students who report sexual assault.33
On April 10, 2017, the Tribune staff was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for its coverage of BYU's treatment of rape victims.34
And who will be shaping the theological decisions and public statements on the difficult questions facing Mormonism?
At the time of this writing, the average age of the top fifteen leaders of the LDS Church is eighty years. “The LDS Church has never had an older First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles,” wrote Peggy Fletcher Stack.35
Thomas H. Monson, the president of the church, turned ninety in 2017. The office usually falls to the longest-serving member of the faith's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which means Russell M. Nelson is next in line to replace President Monson.36 Nelson turned ninety-three in 2017. There is no such thing as retirement, even in the case of ill health.37
The church seems to take pride in this ossification. Many of its flock do not. It was not until 1978—115 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation—that African Americans were allowed to become fully churched and hold the priesthood.38
With older men in charge, they resist the changes that might make the church more welcoming and loving, as is now being witnessed in its revelation banning baptism of any children of same-sex couple unions unless the child renounces the parents’ lifestyle. The child must be at least eighteen and must get approval to be baptized by a high authority.39
Some ask of this policy, “Is it discrimination? Or is it abuse?” These are families too.
Insularity besets the leadership, which also lacks diversity. The vast majority are white men, even those general authorities who come from outside the United States.
In an interesting study compiled by a researcher for the blog Nearing Kolob, data clearly show a lack of diversity among the leadership of the LDS Church: “[W]e find, of the 103 General Authorities, there are 18 with MBAs (masters of business administration), 20 with JDs (juris doctors, i.e. lawyers), 25 with Masters (not MBAs), 9 with medical degrees (either doctors or dentists) and 9 with Doctorates.”40
Listed are the degrees held by the First Presidency, the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, the Presidency of the Seventy, the First Quorum of the Seventy, and the Second Quorum of the Seventy. Not a single theological or Bible studies degree is held among the general authorities. As for sciences, there are four engineering degrees, one in physics, one in zoology, two in biology, and one in mathematics; “the majority of this small group went on to business or medical school.”41
If accurate, the study paints a monochromatic picture of an institution operated in a bubble of successful business and professional men. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt wrote, “In moral and political matters we are often groupish, rather than selfish. We deploy our reasoning skills to support our team, and to demonstrate commitment to our team.”42 Joan of Arc's judges fed off one another's self-righteousness until, of course, Joan had to be burned.
Because of
the precedents within the prophetic flow of its history, the church is trussed to itself. The presidents of the church receive word from God; therefore they cannot be wrong. Mormon doctrine moves forward on wheels constructed in the nineteenth century.
The church's utterances will continue to be the source of its self-inflicted wounds into the foreseeable future. As would happen so often in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the church leaders ignore the implications that follow their acts of suppression. And when the criticism flows, the leaders say, “Persecution is proof of our righteousness.”
Change will come to Mormonism slowly. The church will tweak its Book of Mormon and its other guiding sources to neutralize criticisms, and will in turn be criticized for doing so. “The word of God outranks the word of law” is a statement that will continue to be useful whenever the church disagrees.
And the end will justify the means.
As Will Bagley has written, frontier Mormonism feared dissent as much as it valued unity.43
To the membership, faith will be the key to happiness.
It was summer and moonlight and we had lemonade to drink, and we held the cold glasses in our hands, and Dad read the stereo-newspapers inserted into the special hat you put on your head and which turned the microscopic page in front of the magnifying lens if you blinked three times in succession.
—Ray Bradbury
Newspapers everywhere are struggling to survive. Readers are fewer and older. The daily papers are managing decline. They downsize, try paywalls, and have bloggers and affinity programming with radio and television stations. They involve themselves in social media. Their reporters carry video cameras. They are trying many routes to readership and to increasing profitability. At this writing, no newspaper seems to have found the silver bullet.
The Salt Lake Tribune could find a special niche and thrive, suggested Pat Bagley, the Tribune's cartoonist and former editorial board member. “The Washington Post owns politics; the New York Times owns culture; the Wall Street Journal owns business. The Salt Lake Tribune is perfectly positioned to own outdoor recreation and travel,” said Bagley.1
It is conceivable that the Tribune could capitalize on its geography and become the go-to website/newspaper for western travel, possibly even international travel, thanks to the cosmopolitan aspects of the Mormon Church and its far-flung members and missionaries.
However, editor Jennifer Napier-Pearce's thinking is more in line with that of Warren Buffett.2
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in 2013 acquired twenty-eight daily newspapers for $344 million.3 In Buffett's 2013 annual shareholder letter he explained why newspapers were important and why he believed they will survive and thrive. It is an interesting view:
Over the years, almost all cities became one newspaper towns (or harbored two competing papers that joined forces to operate as a single economic unit). Contraction was inevitable because most people wished to read and pay for only one paper….
Now the world has changed. Stock market quotes and the details of national sports events are old news long before the presses begin to roll. The Internet offers extensive information about both available jobs and homes. Television bombards viewers with political, national and international news. In one area of interest after another, newspapers have therefore lost their “primacy.” And, as their audiences have fallen, so has advertising. (Revenues from “help wanted” classified ads—long a huge source of income for newspapers—have plunged more than 90% in the past 12 years.)
Newspapers continue to reign supreme, however, in the delivery of local news. If you want to know what's going on in your town—whether the news is about the mayor or taxes or high school football—there is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job.4
Buffett went on to say that newspapers delivering comprehensive and reliable information to a tightly bound community and having a sensible internet strategy will remain viable for a long time.
There will always be a hard-core readership for newspapers; it may even grow. In the 2016 elections, disinformation, “alternative news,” and fabricated reality flooded the internet and television channels. It is possible that a portion of the public will want reliable news sources, and newspapers that separate opinion from news can offer it. Newspapers still produce the vast majority of original news gathering.5
There is also a case to be made for printed newspapers. “[B]y its very nature, print is an artisanal product,” said Kathleen Kingsbury of the Boston Globe.6 The Tribune conceivably could dedicate part of its newsroom to putting out a separate premium product with the kind of quality that attracts upscale readers and advertisers.
The Salt Lake Tribune is forced to turn print dollars into digital dimes. And it's starting from deep in the hole, since its resources were starved by the church for nearly four years.
The Huntsmans may have to subsidize it for quite a while; the LDS Church was probably doing this with the Deseret News for a hundred years prior to the 1952 JOA. In slashing budgets to meet Alden's continuous demands for economy, Orme had cut one section out of the Monday and Tuesday editions.
To repair some of the damage, Napier-Pearce, in a column written on November 20, 2016, announced that one of those sections would return to the paper on Tuesdays. She also wrote that more staff would be added and that a 5 percent increase in salary would be given to all employees.7 In January 2017, the paper added a columnist who is a lesbian mother, married to another woman, recognizing a lifestyle that is anathema to the LDS Church.8
Meanwhile, assuming that Huntsman, Napier-Pearce, and the Tribune staff will create a website that is user-friendly and personalized, the internet could be used for drilling down to get more substance from the shorter stories that run in print, a suggestion mused upon by Jay Shelledy.9
Napier-Pearce is also redefining the paper's mission and determining ways to involve readers in real time. She has beefed up business coverage and plans to amplify the paper's coverage of outdoor recreation. “No newspaper has yet found the magic solution. We may have to deal with issues of frequency and delivery of our product,” said Napier-Pearce.10
Long-time readers will not see the return of the New York Times's syndication services, including columnists Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman, Gail Collins, and Maureen Dowd. Paul Huntsman, when offered a bargain-basement price to resume syndication services of the New York Times, turned it down.11
The Mountain Meadows Massacre story continues, and the Salt Lake Tribune will be covering it in the near future.
In 2015 California-based archeologist Everett Bassett announced he had found the two rock graves constructed by the US Army about twenty months after the 1857 massacre. He had used old army records to locate the mass graves, which were described as mounds of rocks. They were in a ravine on the Old Spanish Trail approximately a thousand feet from the monuments that the LDS Church erected. They were on land the church does not own.12
“The [LDS] church is trying to buy the land, but we think the management of this new site should consist of a consortium of interested parties, and not the church alone,” said Bassett. “As one elderly descendent of the massacre explained to me, it would be ‘like a Holocaust survivor going to the Auschwitz Museum and discovering it was run by Nazis.’ I appreciate that the distrust of the LDS Church runs deep among many massacre descendants,” said Bassett.13
Bassett intends to publish his findings in a peer-reviewed journal.
In 2020 the joint operating agreement will be up for renegotiation. Will the Tribune desire to do business with an unfaithful partner? Because of economics and past meddling it may be forced to stay in a deceitful marriage.
The church and its various organizations and individuals relevant to this work, including the Deseret News, largely rejected the author's inquiries or requests for interviews. Those inside the church who willingly discussed with the author the conflict between the Tribune and the LDS Church asked for anonymity.
It's the nature of the LD
S Church, when under questioning, to erect barriers of silence. It protects a relatively young organization that is still forming itself, struggling with contradictions of nineteenth-century beliefs in a twenty-first-century world.
Mormonism is my tribe. Like Jews, once a Mormon, always a Mormon. I love the Mormon people, and I count my best friends among the faithful. Many of my devout relatives expressed their love for me regardless of my criticisms. They epitomize the basic goodness of Mormon members.
I am also grateful for the many non-Mormons who I count among my closest friends.
For those who chafe under Utah's exceptionalism, I beg you to view our cultural caprices as theater, with good-hearted players and spectacular props that include everything from alpine mountains to biblical red-rock badlands.
—J. W. U., Salt Lake City, 2017
Jan O'Brien provided her valuable time in helping me understand the tricky spaghetti bowl of legal maneuverings both during the 2013–2016 events and the actions and aftermath of the sale of the Tribune in 1997. Were it not for your Utah Newspaper Project/Citizens for Two Voices this book would never have been possible. Joanie, your wisdom and persistence were marvelous. Any errors in interpretation of the legal ramifications are mine, not Joan's.
Karra Porter, thank you for your time and insights as to the legal maneuverings as well as some insights into the role of the Department of Justice. Your lawyering gave this work a happy ending.