Last March, I started receiving an almost daily newsletter in my email inbox, unsolicited. Nothing new there, except this one purported to be a newsletter about things Baptist. That got my attention.
That first email said: “The Baptist Report curates Baptist news and opinions from across the web, along with publishing original content from time to time. Join us for a jolly good ol’ time.”
Mark Wingfield
No names were given, no publisher was listed, no funding was identified. The entire enterprise was — and remains four months later — anonymous. I contacted a few folks I thought could be behind this effort, and they swore it was not them.
Then I waited and watched. At first, The Baptist Report republished or linked to some BNG content, as well as other news sites. Then whoever is behind this started publishing unsigned opinion pieces.
That caught my attention because it is a violation of journalistic ethics. People who read opinion pieces should know who wrote them — whether an individual or an editorial board. The Baptist Report gives no such information.
“People who read opinion pieces should know who wrote them — whether an individual or an editorial board.”
The reader has no idea who is behind The Baptist Report. Is it someone inside the Southern Baptist Convention? Is it a denominational leader? Is it someone with an agenda?
And how is it funded? Is this a paid campaign to sway people to a certain viewpoint?
We don’t know the answers to any of these questions because The Baptist Report remains an anonymous blog devoid of basic journalistic ethics.
And the content has gotten progressively more rightwing. As evidence, see the July 5 post accusing Atlanta pastor Andy Stanley of being “woke” because he said it’s possible for Christians to be Democrats.
Whoever is behind The Baptist Report clearly doesn’t think that’s possible. The first tell of their partisanship is a subhead that says, “Does Christianity and the Democrat Party Mix?” The only people who call the Democratic Party “the Democrat Party” are partisan Republicans. It’s not only bad grammar, it’s an intended political jab.
Then the article quotes the Washington Examiner, a far-right political online publication. The unnamed author of The Baptist Report article commends this drivel: “Parker Miller, writing for the Washington Examiner, makes great points in the commentary, ‘Why Christianity is incompatible with the Democratic Party.’”
Those “great points” include an assertion that the Democratic Party “has shifted its values and beliefs towards narcissism, casting out any Christian elements it may have once had.”
Just ponder the irony of that line. Folks who are fawning over the sickest narcissist ever to enter American politics claim the Democratic Party has become narcissistic. Do they even know what the word means?
“We have no idea who at The Baptist Report is pushing such mind-bending viewpoints because this article — like every article they publish — is anonymous.”
Once again, though, we have no idea who at The Baptist Report is pushing such mind-bending viewpoints because this article — like every article they publish — is anonymous.
Then today, The Baptist Report quotes BNG in an article with this headline: “Project 2025 seeks to dismantle the ‘deep state’ and give advice to the next president; Democrats want to use it as a tool against frontrunner Donald Trump.”
That article begins: “An initiative to reduce government overreach and eliminate the influential ‘deep state’ is coming under fire by Democrats who plan to use it against former President Donald Trump in the final stretch of the 2024 election campaign.”
If you’ve read anything about Project 2025, you’ll immediately recognize how this article mischaracterizes it from the get-go. Reducing “government overreach” and eliminating the “deep state” is about as partisan as you can get in describing this massive, draconian agenda to reshape the federal government in the image of libertarian conservative evangelical Christian nationalists.
The article correctly quotes from our BNG analysis but otherwise lacks context and makes Project 2025 look as innocent as calling January 6 a regular tourist visit to the U.S. Capitol.
The Baptist Report has every right to publish its opinions. That’s not what troubles me. The 4,000 people who receive these emails every day ought to demand to know who is speaking.
It’s time for The Baptist Report to pull back the curtain and take responsibility for what it publishes.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves and Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality. His brand-new book is Troubling the Truth and Other Tales from the News.