We’ve been here before, unfortunately. The “here” to which I am referring is a rash of suspicious church fires. We saw it pre-pandemic across France, during the COVID-19 outbreak in this country last summer and now in Canada just as the virus seemingly dissipates amid increased vaccinations.
In all, there have been fires at 10 Canadian churches — mostly Catholic ones — and multiple acts of vandalism this summer.
Why? That’s the question more mainstream journalists should be asking. So why not ask it?
This is how the Catholic news website Aleteia reported on the incidents in a July 9 report:
The incidents followed news that Native Canadians have used ground-penetrating radar in cemeteries on the grounds of former residential schools, which were part of a Canadian program to assimilate indigenous peoples. The existence of the cemeteries had been known, but the news this spring and summer has put the controversy over the residential schools back in the limelight.
Many of the schools, which stretched across Canada and were in operation from the mid-19th to the late-20th centuries, were run by Catholic religious orders. A truth and reconciliation commission several years ago detailed the ways children were forcibly removed from their families to be educated in European traditions at the schools, forbidden to use their native languages and forced to drop elements of their Native culture.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has called for Pope Francis to come to Canada to apologize for the Church’s role in the schools, said last week that he understands the anger behind the church burnings but said it was “not something we should be doing as Canadians.”
The way the indigenous people were treated is certainly a stain on Canada’s history and has been a widely reported news story, as it should be, north of the border as well as the United States. The vandalism churches have suffered stemming from that has been covered as well — but notably absent is any journalistic focus or investigation on who may be responsible for these acts and what motivates them.
Are these church burnings hate crimes, even acts of terrorism? It certainly seems so, in reaction to the way the past mistreatment of indigenous peoples by the church has been covered in the press.
Also missing from the coverage is the issue of religious freedom and the importance that right carries in a democratic society like Canada’s. The cause-and-effect coverage, in some cases, has a “they-had-it-coming” feel as justified retribution. News reporting involves the five Ws, but many are ignoring the who.
Yes, we have been here before. When the burnings happened in France and in this country, there wasn’t a lot of journalistic curiosity over who did it. Again, why?
That’s a good question and one journalists and editors should be asking on this story and every story.
Since June 21, Aleteia reported that five churches — four Catholic and one Anglican — were burned to the ground. The Canadian Broadcasting Corp., the country’s equivalent of the BBC, also reported on the arsons, but no attention was given as to who could be behind such horrible acts across Saskatchewan and British Columbia. Politicians have condemned these brutal acts, but exactly who they are condemning — a lone wolf or a group putting together coordinated attacks — remains a mystery.
Even The New York Times has given the church arsons coverage. This is what the Times reported on June 22, a story that was updated on June 30:
Word of the fires — at Sacred Heart Church on Penticton Indian Band territory and St. Gregory’s Church on territory belonging to the Osoyoos Indian Band — reverberated across Canada at a time when the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples has gripped the consciousness of the country.
Indigenous leaders … expressed shock, disbelief and anger at the churches’ destruction.
The chief of the Penticton Indian Band, Greg Gabriel, stressed that the motive for the fires remained a mystery. He said his community had “mixed feelings” over the burning of Sacred Heart Church on its land, given the history of the Roman Catholic Church in subjugating the Indigenous people, a record made more painful by the discovery in Kamloops.
But Chief Gabriel said some in the community were also upset that a place of worship, comfort and sanctuary, one that had been an integral part of the community’s social fabric for 110 years, had been burned to the ground.
Again, this story made no mention on who may be behind the attacks. Investigators have theorized in some press reports that there could be a few culprits, even the possibility of wildfires, but nothing specific. And by culprits, I mean they focused on the how , like the way these houses of worship were destroyed (such as with accelerants), but not the who.
Are there any inconvenient truths to be uncovered if mainstream news outlets start to delve into who is behind these attacks?
That shouldn’t matter in a journalism that is fair and seeks truth. But news sites that no longer offer such reportage, an increasing number in the Internet age, this can be a concern when it contradicts their own beliefs and narratives.
A New York Post column earlier this week by Kelly Jane Torrance, a member of the newspaper’s editorial board, took aim at the U.S. media’s coverage of the attacks. This is the biggest takeaway from her important piece:
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded in 2015 that at least 3,200 students died, later revising that figure to 4,100. The No. 1 cause of death was tuberculosis; influenza hit hard, too. Far from home, children were often buried on site, their graves marked with wooden crosses, most of which deteriorated and disappeared.
So this year’s “discoveries” are better called “confirmations.” As Assembly of First Nations national chief Perry Bellegarde declared, “While it is not new to find graves at former residential schools in Canada, it’s always crushing to have that chapter’s wounds exposed.”
Yet the US press treated the news as if Canada had been hiding genocidal death camps.
“Discovery of Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Prompts Grief and Questions” ran a Washington Post headline. “‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada” was The New York Times’ headline.
Those headlines were false — according to all three chiefs who made the discoveries. “This is not a mass grave site, this is just unmarked graves,” Cowessess First Nation chief Cadmus Delorme said of the biggest site. Indeed, the remains aren’t even believed to be all of children. A band leader said the site was a community cemetery, including graves of nonindigenous people — unmarked because wooden markers had decomposed.
The Washington Post eventually corrected “mass grave”; the Times’ headline remains.
Why does any of that matter? It’s proper context and it matters because the journalism people read can cause some of them to react. As Torrance observes, the news reports potentially did the following: “Church critics used that framing to justify, and even encourage, the rash of arsons.”
As mentioned, arson and desecration of Catholic churches isn’t new in an ever-secular West. In the French arson cases, the news coverage was almost non-existent in the mainstream press and it certainly lacked proper context when they did cover it. In other words, the whodunnit.
It wasn’t until Real Clear Investigations took a deep dive into the causes of the string of attacks that it came to light. This is what I wrote at the time:
What Richard Bernstein has been able to do here is the kind of reporting that we no longer see. A former foreign correspondent at The New York Times, Bernstein worked as the paper’s Paris bureau chief from 1984 to 1987. His knowledge of the country, the history and factors that may have influenced the events of the past year shows through his reporting. These two paragraphs early on, for example, illustrate the magnitude of the problem — with help from data collected by various French authorities.
In the case of France, the connection was that those who committed were motivated by anti-Christian animus. This is what Bernstein reported:
In all, according to the French Ministry of the Interior (which counted 875 anti-Christian incidents in 2018, slightly less than the tally by the police), the attacks on Christian sites quadrupled between 2008 and 2019. This has stirred a deep alarm among many Catholics and non-Catholics alike, worried that a powerful hostility to Catholicism – what they call “Christianophobia” – is sweeping their country.
Last year’s rash of U.S. church attacks, meanwhile, coincided with BLM protests in the wake of the George Floyd murder.
This is what I wrote last July 22, almost a year ago, when those acts of vandalism weren’t even being reported by the national press in this country, let alone who the perpetrators might have been:
News judgement makes it clear that a series of churches being set on fire and statues defaced isn’t just a series of local stories. This could be a national story. What if the story ends up contradicting the new orthodoxy of these subscribers? What it market research shows them that their readers aren’t religious?
That leaves “conservative” and “religious” media to fill the void, another place where credibility is often an issue. On the church vandalism story, Fox News Channel, Brietbart and CBN decided to cover it — again, look at their viewers — and you start to realize that news judgement isn’t the stuff I learned in college or in the newsroom.
Is that what’s happening again with these church fires in Canada? It’s possible. Consider the bitter and threatening rhetoric on Twitter that’s often not reported by the mainstream press but could be a contributing factor to the motivations of the persons and groups responsible for these attacks.
In a July 3 tweet, for example, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association executive director Harsha Walia tweeted “burn it all down” — a reference to the church arsons. Her comments were not reported by the CBC or the Times. Only one news outlet reported on the tweet: The Western Standard, a Canadian-based independent news and opinion website.
The questions I would continue to ask is who and why? Those are also questions elite newsrooms need to delve into if they want to provide complete coverage on this very important news story.
FIRST IMAGE: Uncredited photo featured at report by Union of Catholic Asian News.
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