#Julie Roys

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Darrell Lucus at Loud, Liberal, and Christian:

That priority is a big reason why I haven’t hesitated to put people on blast even when I agree with them or support what they do in principle. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. In the last few years, I’ve experienced this with Christian investigative journalist Julie Roys. She is indisputably doing this country a public service by calling out waste, fraud, and abuse in the church—and doing so in a way that can’t be dismissed as anti-Christian bias. When I first learned about her in 2020, I found myself sharing her work almost on sight. But in the last few years, it has become increasingly apparent that she has glaring moral blind spots—and they’re glaring enough that I have not been able to unequivocally support her. I see a number of parallels between Roys and another outlet whose undeniably good work was obscured by serious ethical lapses. Namely, Gawker.

I first stumbled on Roys by accident in December 2020, when she reported that one of the titans of the evangelical world, John MacArthur, was covering up a potential COVID-19 outbreak at his San Fernando Valley megachurch, Grace Community Church. Just before Christmas, Roys spoke with a member of GCC’s leadership team who revealed several members had COVID. However, MacArthur and the rest of GCC’s leadership didn’t report it to Los Angeles County authorities even though they were required to do so. A week later, Roys unearthed evidence that proved not just beyond reasonable doubt, but ALL doubt, that GCC was in the throes of a COVID outbreak. At least two fellowship groups had COVID clusters, and several staffers had caught it after a Christmas party. As outrageous as this was in and of itself, it was even more so because MacArthur had spent the summer of 2020 holding a full schedule of services with no masking of social distancing whatsoever. To pile obscenity on top of insult and injury, Southern California’s hospitals were being stretched to their breaking point during the worst of the winter 2020 COVID surge.

While sounding the alarm on Daily Kos here and here, I decided to look more into Roys—and was impressed. For instance, her reporting was largely responsible for bringing down another evangelical titan, James MacDonald. This was a local story for Roys, since MacDonald was the founding pastor of Harvest Bible Chapel in Rolling Meadows, Illinois, a Chicago suburb; Roys is a Chicago girl. Roys’ reporting from 2018 to 2019 revealed a long-standing pattern of bullying, corruption, and almost Trumpian lying by MacDonald and other church leaders. Harvest fired Macdonald in February 2019 after he was caught on tape degrading Roys and joking about framing the CEO of Christianity Today for possessing child sex abuse material. I also noticed that Roys turned the hot lights on abusive and corrupt behavior from the likes of John Piper and Mark Driscoll.

Seeing this made me want to stand up and applaud. Whenever the mainstream media or liberal bloggers called out the religious right or their heroes, invariably we get charged with anti-Christian bias. That’s been true long before Trump. However, that excuse didn’t fly when Roys turned the hot lights on them. In an era when this country has become dangerously polarized, Roys seemed to be providing a public service. I was especially pleased since at the start of 2021, I joined Daily Kos’ community contributors team in part because Daily Kos’ staffers saw me as someone who could show there was such a thing as a Christian left. There’s been a good deal of hostility toward people of faith among much of the Daily Kos constituency, in part because of the religious right’s outrages. I saw part of my mandate as highlighting people like Roys, since she was an example of Christians cleaning their own house.

[...] Every time I think about how Roys handled this, I find myself thinking back to the moment that cost Gawker any chance of survival when it was forced to cough up $140 million to Hulk Hogan for posting a sex tape of Hogan—a lawsuit bankrolled by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. In 2015, just before that verdict was handed down, the irreverent gossip blog ran an article that claimed Conde Nast Chief Financial Officer David Geithner, the brother of President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, was being extorted by a gay porn star and male escort. As the story goes, when Geithner reneged on a deal to meet up with the porn star on a trip to Chicago, the escort went to Gawker’s Jordan Sargent and offered to tell all. He supplied copies of text exchanges between himself and Geithner and a selfie that Geithner supposedly sent him.

[...] It’s my considered opinion that the Geithner fiasco scared off any potential buyers. After all, even if the Hogan suit hadn’t driven Gawker out of business, any lawsuit by Geithner certainly would have done so. Geithner would have had an infinitely stronger case than Hogan. Not only did it invade his privacy, but more seriously, it made itself complicit in a ham-handed attempt to extort him. It’s sad, because Gawker indisputably did a lot of good work. It turned the hot lights on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s substance abuse, and revealed that a Texas Internet programmer was actually a notorious Reddit troll linked to a tranche of racist and obscene posts. According to Folkenflik, Gawker was “rarely in better form” when it revealed Bill O’Reilly used his influence to start an investigation of his ex-wife’s boyfriend. As Folkenflik put it, it was a classic case of Gawker “bird-dogg(ing) the powerful who bullied other people with less stature and fewer resources.”

But all of that got obscured by a culture in which it was acceptable to publish something just because it was true. Granted, Roys hasn’t veered into potentially criminal conduct like Gawker did here. But the mentality was too similar for comfort. And it was such that I cannot unequivocally support her. It really stings because Roys is undeniably doing good work. She not only did a good measure of the heavy lifting exposing Bickle’s depravity, but is also largely responsible for showing that the rot at Gateway Church extended way beyond Robert Morris. But the way she handled Hatmaker’s divorce still leaves a rancid taste in my mouth.

[...] On paper, calling Roys would have been at the top of my list. But I couldn’t do so in good conscience given her disturbing ethical lapse with Hatmaker’s divorce. Some may think it’s purity trolling. But giving Roys a pass for this would be no different from how right-wing evangelicals who are willing to overlook Donald Trump’s depravities. They may be willing to excuse outrageous and unacceptable behavior just because someone does what they like. I am not. And neither are a lot of Christian Dems or right-leaning Christians who are never-Trumpers. Roys is fulfilling an important niche—calling out waste and fraud in the church. But this episode proves that we need more journalists who are willing to do so—while upholding basic standards of integrity. We’re in a line of work where how you get the story matters as much as getting the story. And that goes quadruple for Christian journalists.

Darrell Lucus is correct: While Julie Roys is doing a valuable service exposing the misdeeds of Christian conservatives, she does so in a way that compromises ethics.

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

[elloras]

[fangirl-k8ee-ladyknight]

Can we talk about how Roy was 100% the person who came up with and choreographed the good bye dance for Beard and Ted in the final episode?

And the reason they lose their shit so hard when the coaches praise them for it is because they all got up and practiced the choreography at four am for a week to keep Ted and Beard in the dark about it and they’re all exhausted 😴

[smoothshine]

𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚕𝚎𝚝 𝚖𝚎 𝚒𝚗

[thensson]

Hiraeth

Mythology, Natasha Trethewey || Succession Intro || Margaux Paul || Nickie Zimov || Jody Chan || Marlena, Julie Buntin

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

[elloras]

Ted Lasso: Carol of the Bells

[farahsamboolents]

[suspiria76]

THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES

UK/Hong Kong

1974

Directed by Roy Ward Baker

[theglitterdome]

Remembering Roy Rogers

Died on this day - July 6, 1998

[loveakii]

succession, miranda july, mary oliver, hanya yanagihara, min yoongi, james baldwin, phoebe bridgers

[askarsjustsoswedish]

Alexander Skarsgård, Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook – Succession 4.05, Kill List – Lukas Matsson, Kendall Roy, Roman Roy, Shiv Roy – HBO Max, Sky Atlantic.

[weirdlookindog]

The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974) - British quad

[laiqualaurelote]

all the men and women merely players

a Ted Lasso Station Eleven AU

"So let me get this straight. You, an American whose career highlights consisted mainly of appearing on Saturday Night Live, decide in the wake of the apocalypse to lead a touring Shakespeare company across the ruins of England."

"Oh, I know. Heck, I said as much to Rebecca when she suggested it. I said, 'You could fill two Internets with what I don’t know about directing Shakespeare.' And she said, 'Ted, the Internet doesn’t exist any more.'"

Trent Crimm meets Ted Lasso by chance at a Shakespeare play. Five years and the end of the world later, they meet again at another. A Station Eleven post-apocalyptic theatre AU.

[brevoorthistoryofcomics]

BHOC: SUPERMAN FAMILY #195

DC’s Dollar Comics program didn’t wind up being the industry game-changer that new publisher Jenette Kahn had hoped it would, but it was a format that the company pursued for several years and resulted in some decently-crafted anthologies. Case in point is SUPERMAN FAMILY, which was never a great comic book but which was a steady and regular purchase of mine all the way to the end of its run. It…