Proposal to require ‘institutional voice’ in PCUSA stories defeated
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, September 30, 2002
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The General Assembly Council has rejected a staff proposal that would have required the Presbyterian News Service to include the denomination’s “institutional voice” in its news stories.
The issue was settled by the narrowest of margins – a tie-breaking vote by its vice chairman that made the outcome 22-21 on the afternoon of the closing plenary session of a four-day meeting in Louisville on Sept. 25-28.
The vice chairman, Vernon Carroll of Frenchtown, Mont., was presiding over the session when it defeated the original wording of the proposal and a modified version that would have been less demanding of the news bureau. He cast the deciding vote on the latter.
Gary Luhr, director of communications for the Presbyterian Church (USA), who has oversight responsibility for the news bureau, introduced the proposed policy. He focused on what the proposal meant in its requirement that the news bureau “strive to include the institutional voice of the PCUSA consistently in its reporting.”
“The institutional voice? It’s not Cliff Kirkpatrick, John Detterick or Gary Luhr’s spin on the church,” he said. Rather, he added, in the reporting of issues about which Presbyterians disagree, the policy would require including “the church’s official voice.”
Later, however, in trying to provide a practical example of how the policy might work, he said the news bureau might very well quote Detterick, who, as executive director of the General Assembly Council, is the denomination’s chief administrator.
Two journalists on the council – former General Assembly Moderator Marge Carpenter and Associated Press employee John Bolt – spoke against Luhr’s proposal.
“The more I read it, the more scarier it got,” Carpenter said. “In my experience, I have had some real fears regarding some of our leadership in regards to freedom of the press.”
Commending the news service for its coverage of the denomination, Carpenter added, “If we tie their hands too much, I guarantee Presbyterians will find something else to read.”
She proposed an alternative policy – which changed the tense of the verbs so that a statement saying that the news service “should consistently present these [the institutional voice] as part of its reporting” became “the news service consistently presents …”
“As a journalist, I worry about the implications … about a different administration in a different time,” Bolt said. “There have already been instances when a lead was changed because it didn’t exactly sound right to some administrator.”
Bolt asked council member Neal Presa of San Francisco, who was serving as parliamentarian during the debate, how to kill the staff proposal. Presa said the council would have to vote against both Carpenter’s and the original proposal – which it did.
The proposed policy change was an outgrowth of a new service story in 2000 that touched off a firestorm in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
“The Rev. Dirk Ficca of Chicago, a featured [peacemaking] conference speaker, espoused a radical brand of ecumenism, calling into question the common Christian assumption that Jesus is the only way to salvation,” that story said. It continued by quoting Ficca’s rhetorical question: “What’s the big deal about Jesus?”
After protests by thousands of Presbyterians, the General Assembly Council tried to control damage by adopting its own statement on the saving work of Jesus Christ – but that backfired, too, because the council was simply asserting that Jesus was their Lord.
The 2001 General Assembly tried to douse the fire with another statement, but it didn’t work either. That statement called Jesus “unique” – not the only Lord and Savior for the world.
Finally, the Office of Theology and Worship wrote a statement that said bluntly that there is salvation in none other than Jesus Christ. The General Assembly Council and the 2002 General Assembly both signed on to what has always been orthodox Biblical and Reformed teaching.
During the early debate over the news service’s coverage of the Ficca speech, several denominational leaders pressured the news service to “correct” its original story. But the news service did not change its story, although it did publish lengthy defenses of Ficca’s remarks by peacemaking leaders.
Recently, the stated clerk’s office, which has been strongly criticized for not aggressively enforcing the PCUSA Constitution, hired its own communications director. The Division of Worldwide Ministries, which drew criticism for reducing its worldwide mission force by 10 percent, also has employed a communications director.