Through the 2008 primary election season, two candidates—Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican former governor Mitt Romney—received more media attention about their faith than any of the other candidates combined.

For both, the attention raised concerns about their religious identities and culminated in public speeches delivered at pivotal points in their campaigns.

To better understand the media’s role in raising these concerns, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life closely examined newspaper coverage in the months—and years—leading up to each speech as well as in the weeks that followed.

Using LexisNexis, we traced each candidate’s religion narrative back to earlier days in public office and then tracked the ways in which these narratives ebbed and flowed over time. What we found were two very different trajectories.

Romney’s campaign had hinted for some time that he might give such a speech, but they held out until Mike Huckabee began to surge in the polls and the Iowa caucuses approached. But even before the speech was delivered the press had saddled him with comparisons to John F. Kennedy’s 1961 speech on faith, a comparison that only worked against the former governor. And while the speech was deemed a necessary hurdle, it solidified religious concerns which the once GOP front-runner was ultimately unable to surmount.

The media narrative leading up to Obama’s speech was somewhat more complicated, as it was fraught with racial and ethnic issues that often obscured the religion angle on the story. A sudden one-two punch, with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s semi-endorsement of Obama followed by a media-created event releasing clips of Wright’s sermons, drove Obama to give his speech. But what had been damage-control proved surprisingly successful for the candidate. The JFK comparison that had hung like a millstone on Romney’s image was bestowed on Obama, this time, as a compliment.

But Wright returned to the spotlight for Act Two, this time to clear his name. The story’s re-emergence suggests that Obama’s church, religious affiliations, and even his overall faith background may cast a shadow over his campaign in the general election.

The ties between Barack Obama and Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., now pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, were reported back on April 5, 2004, during Obama’s Illinois Senate race. On that day, the Chicago Sun-Times printed a story that, in various forms and media outlets, would reappear occasionally over the next four years. The piece—a narrative interview with Obama—traced his spiritual journey from conversion experience, answering an altar call at Trinity Church, to finding, in Wright, a close confidant. In 2007 and 2008, Obama’s links to Wright and this historically black church on the south side of Chicago would be revisited much more frequently.

Local press scoops the story

Considering that Obama is—politically—a native of Illinois, it is understandable that city’s two major dailies stayed ahead of the curve in reporting on the hometown presidential candidate, even well before he announced. Even while his intentions were still rumors, on June 29, 2006, the Sun-Times published a remixed version of the April 2004 story. A month later, July 25, 2006, the Sun-Times ran a second story, which focused on Obama’s relationship to Rev. Wright and other prominent African-American church leaders in the Chicago area.

It wasn’t until February of the following year (February 6, 2007) that the Chicago Tribune picked up on the characterization of Obama as caught between two worlds, both religious and racial. Obama had not yet formally entered the presidential race, and his relationship with Wright was not yet framed as a hindrance to his appeal with voters. Instead, the media suggested that Obama would have to work just as hard to win the African-American vote as he would the white vote. “Obama also faces his own challenges in dealing with race as he seeks to frame himself as a candidate who can bridge historic divisions not only of race, but class and religion as well,” reported the Tribune.

As for Rev. Wright, he had been attracting attention for decades—some of it national, but not necessarily negative attention. When Frontline (PBS) interviewed him for a documentary on the state of the black church in 1987, it was to include the voices of prominent leaders in the African-American church community—not to expose a radical fringe element. On April 30, 2007, The New York Times ran a major page-one story entitled “A Candidate, His Minister and the Search for Faith.” And even if Wright was not a household name prior to Obama’s candidacy, his sermons were accessible—the two that were most heavily excerpted and replayed on network and cable television in March 2008 were delivered and recorded in September 2001 and April 2003.

From the start, however, race, ethnicity and religion were all intertwined in the story of Obama’s church background.

National press and the question of Israel

In early 2007, a new media angle emerged—that of Obama’s ties to Israel and its impact on his Jewish support. This media narrative was tied directly to Rev. Wright and some in the press saw it as an act of media sabotage by Rev. Wright himself. On March 6, 2007, The New York Times reported on the Obama campaign’s “disinvitation” of Rev. Wright to deliver the invocation at Obama’s formal announcement of his candidacy. The Times interviewed Wright for a reaction to the campaign’s move, and he explained himself thus: ““When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, Mr. Wright recalled, “with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.””

The Chicago Sun-Times picked up the story two days later, interpreting the snubbed Wright’s comments to The New York Times as a clever way of retaliating against Obama by name-dropping Farrahkan and Qaddafi, thus inflicting damage to Obama’s image by letting the media carry the story. In reporting on Wright’s quote—and interpreting it—the Sun-Times may have done just that. The Chicago Tribune ran a piece a month later tracing the evolution of a rumor—how it snowballs and can cause lasting damage to a campaign. The case study was Obama, and how Wright’s comment about Qaddafi and the trip to Libya with Farrakhan was taken and misinterpreted by others outside of the media. The piece wrote of how it became a viral Internet scandal, not unlike other Web-based rumors—such as Obama’s secret life as a Muslim—which, while false, take root easily in the netherworld of cyberspace.

The association—even if by two degrees—with Farrakhan would continue to dog Obama, and broke wide open in early 2008 with Richard Cohen’s editorial in The Washington Post entitled “Obama’s Farrakhan Test.” Appearing on January 15, 2008, it raised the issue of exactly how far removed Obama was from Farrakhan, whose anti-semetic remarks in the past had wrankled many. Cohen pointed to the fact that Trinity Church’s magazine, Trumpet, had given its 2007 Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to Farrakhan. The editorial caused a stir in the media, with a splash of reports on January 16 and 17 about the editorial and what Obama should do from that point.

The focus quickly seemed to move from Farrakhan to Wright, however, with the January 18, 2008 edition of the New York Post running a story about “Barack’s Unrighteous Rev” and a Baltimore Sun page-one story focusing on Obama’s relationship with his pastor two days prior.

On February 5, 2008, The Washington Post’s Cohen again editorialized about Obama, but this time, his piece was an endorsement of Obama’s candidacy (even while he reiterated his disapproval of Obama’s “ducking” the issue of Trinity’s Farrakhan award).

On February 24, 2008, however, less than two months after Cohen’s original editorial about the Farrakhan connection, Farrakhan himself gave an address to members of the Nation of Islam in Chicago, at their annual convention. The Chicago Tribune, on the following day, was the first to cover the event, in which Farrakhan all but endorsed Obama. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page touched on the issue (February 25, 2008), but also noted that technically, Farrakhan did not endorse Obama. Within days, however, the media quickly began calling it an endorsement (February 27, Washington Post and the New York Daily News).

On Tuesday, February 26, 2008, Obama and Clinton held a debate that drew intense media coverage. Although health care, trade and the war in Iraq made most newspaper headlines the next day, this was also the famous “reject and denounce” debate, in which Clinton challenged Obama to more strongly distance himself from Farrakhan. And on February 28, 2008, the issue of Israel came up again. “Two controversial Chicago figures—Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Obama’s church—have figured prominently in the criticism of Obama,” reported The Washington Post.

The “inflammatory” videos of Rev. Wright’s sermon clips were first broadcast by ABC News and Fox News Channel on March 13, 2008. The excerpted and edited clips would appear all over the Web and other broadcast and cable news outlets in what was referred to by the press as a “constant loop.” Contained in them were some of Wright’s more controversial statements from the pulpit, where he used strong rhetoric to critique America’s treatment of race. Suddenly, the candidate found himself the target of questions about his faith background and also found himself sharing the stage with his former pastor.

Judging from most news accounts, the decision for Obama to give the speech was made quickly and in reaction to the dissemination of the Rev. Wright videos. On Monday, March 17, 2008, Obama spoke to reporters about how he needed to address the race issue (USA Today, March 18, 2008). The following day, he would deliver the address. The Boston Herald depicted the candidate in a rushed and reactive state: “The issue had the Democratic front-runner on the defensive over the weekend, and he reportedly was up until early yesterday morning working on today’s speech.” (March 18, 2008).

Columnist Dana Milbank described the Jeremiah Wright scandal as if Wright’s inflammatory rhetoric from the pulpit had been somehow intended to remain a secret: “Obama is in trouble because his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was caught on tape preaching such gospel as “God damn America” and accusing Israel of “state terrorism against the Palestinians” (The Washington Post, March 18, 2008, from “The audacity of chutzpah”).

Although the Jeremiah Wright media scandal had been buzzing for days, it wasn’t until March 18 that newspapers reported on Obama’s speech. There was no prior notice. But weeks before that, there were calls for Obama to address his relationship to Wright. The “reject and denounce” moment in the debate against Clinton drew attention to Obama’s relationships with controversial religious figures. The Obama campaign had known, at least since he formally entered the race for president, that Wright could be a political problem. Perhaps he had anticipated giving a speech for some time. But there is no denying the impact that the circulation of the Wright videos had on Obama’s timing.
Obama delivered his speech in Philadelphia on March 18, 2008, at the Constitution Center. Thirty-seven minutes in length, the address was given before a small audience and broadcast live.

Although Obama’s speech addressed issues of religion by explaining the black church tradition, his campaign billed it from the start as focusing primarily on issues of race. USA Today reported on March 18, 2008, that “Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will deliver what his campaign is billing as “a major address on race and politics” today…He told reporters Monday that he now wants to address “the larger issue of race in this campaign, which has ramped up over the last couple of weeks.” A number of other major papers that day reported on either Obama’s major “speech on race” (The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune) or “speech on race and politics” (Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, San Diego Union-Tribune, Rocky Mountain News, The Charlotte Observer).

A handful of papers did described the speech as one dealing with race and religion, including the Detroit Free Press, which reported the day after the speech (March 19, 2008) from the angle of Detroit area ministers reacting to the event. Other instances in which the address was described as dealing with “race and religion” include The New York Times (March 21, 2008), The Washington Post (March 23, 2008), The Oregonian (March 23, 2008), The Houston Chronicle (March 26, 2008), and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (April 23, 2008).

Comparisons to Romney’s December 2007 speech on religion appeared immediately. The Boston Globe quoted Ken Smukler, a democratic consultant, in a March 18, 2008, story on the speech. Smukler said, “This is what campaigns do when problems arise that do not go away. They give major speeches. To me, it’s Mitt Romney on religion: he had to give the big speech to frame the issue.”
The day after Obama’s speech, the analysis began to roll in. Tim Rutten wrote an editorial on March 19, 2008 for the Los Angeles Times entitled “Obama’s Lincoln Moment,” comparing Obama’s performance with Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech. In the same editorial, however, Rutten made as many comparisons to JFK’s 1960 speech on religion.

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Footnote
1. http://www.gallup.com/poll/106945/Gallup-Daily-Clinton-49-Obama-45.aspx

Mitt Romney’s conflicts with the Kennedy family go back well before comparisons of his religious speech to John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech in Dallas, where he addressed a group of Baptists on the topic of church and state. In the early 1990s, when Romney challenged Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy for his Senate seat, the issue of religion came up. The Boston Globe ran a piece on November 14, 1993—introducing Romney the politician to Massachusetts. His Mormon faith received only cursory attention within a larger biographical context. But as the Senate race heated up, Romney’s faith received increasing notice, and the first of many comparisons to the senator’s brother, John Fitzgerald, appeared in the press. In a May 22, 1994, Boston Globe article, John Aloysius Farrell discussed “The Mormon factor; Like JFK three decades ago, Mitt Romney has to overcome religious prejudice.” Another story appeared in the Globe on the same day by Frank Phillips and Don Aucoin.

The 1994 Senate race provided a window into some of the challenges Romney would face in the 2008 presidential campaign. Back then, the press was largely sympathetic to Romney’s dilemma as a Mormon candidate in a politically liberal state—reporters cast him as part of a religious minority and took exception to some of the blistering remarks by Ted Kennedy’s campaign surrogates and tactics that painted him as a zealous adherent of a nefarious sect. Yet it was the press that, even while defending Romney, were reminding voters of an aspect of Romney’s personal life he may have wished would stay relegated to offstage.
 
In the lead-up to Romney’s formal announcement for president, the press was already vetting him. Just one month after the Globe reported that Romney had acknowledged he was thinking about running for president, an article appeared in the same paper on July 21, 2005, entitled “Are we ready for a Mormon president?” Like much of the coverage from the 1994 race, the article defended Romney and critiqued attacks by liberals on the controversial or “exotic” elements of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

On February 13, 2007, when he entered the race, a spate of stories addressed the issue of his faith head-on. USA Today ran a page-one story that day entitled “Will Mormon faith hurt bid for White House? Mitt Romney says his religion isn’t a factor, but some voters say it is.” However on the day after his announcement, a number of major national and regional papers ran stories focusing more on the challenge Romney would face in convincing the party faithful of his conservative credentials than of the orthodoxy of the LDS church, although almost all dealt with the latter subject, framing it as more an obstacle than a boon to his candidacy. On February 14, 2007, Dallas Morning News columnist Carl Leubsdorf asked “Can Romney win? About-face on social issues may be his biggest hurdle.” On the same day, The Star Ledger (Newark, NJ) ran a story about his announcement that only once briefly mentioned his Mormon faith and did not even address the challenge his faith would pose to voters. If there was any heavy scrutiny toward Romney’s religion on the day after he announced, it was more likely to be found in the pages of the international press than domestic (one notable exception being The New York Daily News, whose headline read “Romney Sez: Make Me 1st Mormon Prez”).

In choosing the Dearborn, MI, location for his announcement speech, flanked by his spouse and children, and in framing his candidacy as an entrepreneur seeking to change Washington politics, Romney was able to stave off the questions about his faith for the moment. But on February 15, 2007, the editorial pages began to sound off: Los Angeles Times writer Zev Chafets denounced anyone who would attack Romney on the basis of his religion: “His opponents need to make that case, however, without relying on spurious charges of bigotry by association or ugly whispers about his religious affiliation. That sort of thing was supposed to have been settled by the election of John F. Kennedy back in 1960.”

Robert Novak, while not the first journalist to discuss a Romney speech on faith akin to JFK’s 1960 address, did argue that it was wise for Romney to avoid such an address in a Chicago Sun-Times editorial on April 27, 2006: “Romney wisely has no intention of lecturing America on Mormon theology. Rather, he cites the 1838 speech in Springfield, Ill., by the young Abraham Lincoln, in which he said, “Let reverence for the laws . . . become the political religion of the nation.” In other words, religion should not make that much difference in America.” But Novak, in a prescient if ominous prediction, warned that Romney would be forced to give just such a speech down the road: “The intense reaction Romney will meet almost surely will require a stronger response than he now envisions. He has supporters who believe that he must go before the public and declare that the imposition of a religious test on U.S. politics is unfair, unreasonable and un-American.”

Days later (May 3, 2006), the Boston Herald printed a page-two article on a story first picked up by US News & World Report, “Mormon Mitt must faith facts; Eyes JFK-style speech on his religious beliefs.” In it, while not directly quoting Romney as saying he would have to give a speech, the story implies that on May 2—he made just such a statement. The US News article appeared in the May 8 edition, but was printed earlier and actually broke the story. Its author made the link to Kennedy in a not-so-subtle way: “Now, 46 years later, Massachusetts has coughed up another presidential hopeful who belongs to what some see as a weird religion—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And the candidate, Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, plans to copy, almost exactly, JFK’s winning approach.” Both the Sun-Times and the US News & World Report stories appeared within days of each other, and were the first papers to report on a possible Kennedy-esque speech on religion. The Orlando Sentinel also picked up the story the next day, May 4.

Increasingly, the press began to speculate about Romney giving a Kennedy-style speech. The speculation was coupled with reports of Romney’s meetings with key evangelical representatives and other efforts to appease a critical group that could be skeptical of a Mormon in the White House (The Christian Science Monitor, January 22, 2007, The New York Times, February 8, 2007 and the Arizona Republic, February 28, 2007). The Christian Science Monitor’s January 22 edition asserted in an editorial that “Just as John Kennedy had to allay public fears of his relationship to the Roman Catholic Church, so Romney is being encouraged to give a speech about his relationship with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” A tough analogy for any candidate to live up to, Kennedy’s 1960 speech had been held up as the gold standard—a brilliant piece of presidential campaigning that would be hard for anyone to eclipse. But clearly, by this time, the pressure was on for Romney to address the nation in a similar fashion.

 By July, papers were quoting Romney directly on the possibility of such a speech. “I have thought about that,” Romney told the Associated Press on Thursday, July 26, 2007. “I haven’t made a final decision, but it’s probably more likely than not.” But over time, the media would report more frequently that “advisers” and “observers” were making the case that he should give such a speech. The Philadelphia Daily News editorialized that “strategists have reached for the obvious analogy. Romney, they say, should make a speech confronting the questions about his religion like the one Kennedy made to Baptist ministers in Houston soon after he won the Democratic nomination.” The same piece was one of the first to speculate on the crucial differences, though, between Kennedy’s speech and what Romney’s might look like: “If they (Romney’s advisers) were to read that speech again, they might reconsider. Kennedy arranged his talk around the rhetorical device of “the America I believe in,” but his America is substantially different from the one that Mitt Romney and his would-be constituency has been working to establish.”

Finally, after months of speculation and little direct confirmation by either Romney or his campaign, a story broke in The Boston Globe (February 27, 2007) after the paper obtained a 77-slide PowerPoint presentation prepared by his strategists. The presentation addressed how Romney’s Mormon faith could pose a problem for the campaign: “It (the presentation) also suggests Romney might soon need to address the issue head-on, perhaps as John F. Kennedy did in a 1960 speech amid concerns about his relationship to the Catholic Church” reported the Globe. The slideshow was dated from December 11, 2006. The Houston Chronicle picked up the story the following day, also mentioning the potential site for a potential speech, as did the Hartford Courant the following week, on March 4, 2007.

On October 4, 2007, evangelical leader James Dobson announced that he, along with a group of other prominent evangelicals, may resort to supporting a minor third-party candidate if the GOP failed to nominate one conservative enough. The Boston Globe, in a front-page article the following day, quoted Richard Land, who said he’d advised Romney in 2006 to give a JFK-style speech. “Land said he told Romney: “You can close that deal. You need to do what John Kennedy did, you need to defend the right to run.””

The calls for Romney to deliver a speech started to snowball, to the point where, in the following week, The Boston Globe reported on a National Journal survey of prominent Republicans, 59% of whom agreed that Romney should give a speech addressing his faith. By early November, the Los Angeles Times was reporting that “Romney has mused about making such a speech, and most analysts expect him to do so at some point.” Even so, Romney himself had meant it when he said he wasn’t decided on what to do. On Nov. 11, 2007, Newsday quoted Romney as saying “The political advisers tell me no, no, no—it’s not a good idea. It draws too much attention to that issue alone.” Back and forth it went, though, and like many other editorials, the Dallas Morning News on November 30, 2007 declared that it was “Time to Channel JFK: Romney would be wise to give speech on his faith.” Three days later, The Washington Post reported that the Romney campaign had officially decided he would give a speech entitled “Faith in America.” The article was a brief piece of straight reporting, appearing on Page 4. There were a number of news reports on December 3, 2008, about the Romney’s decision. From the statement prepared by his campaign, the speech would be framed as a defense of religious and civil liberty.

“This speech is an opportunity for Governor Romney to share his views on religious liberty, the grand tradition religious tolerance has played in the progress of our nation and how the governor’s own faith would inform his Presidency if he were elected,” according to the statement. “Governor Romney understands that faith is an important issue to many Americans, and he personally feels this moment is the right moment for him to share his views with the nation,” read the statement.

But regardless of how the campaign tried to frame the speech, the press already had their story, even before it was delivered. On December 4, 2007, The Globe ran a piece entitled “JFK’s words were a turning point,” that analyzed—from hindsight—the ways in which this was true, and applied the Kennedy principle to Romney.

By and large, the media viewed Romney’s timing as a response to his competitor Mike Huckabee’s rise in the polls, and the challenge he would face among evangelical voters in the upcoming Iowa caucuses. The Tampa Tribune on December 5, 2007, attributed the speech timing to Huckabee’s recent appeal among conservative voters. The Grand Rapids Press on December 3, 2007, did too: “The decision, made after months of debate at his Boston headquarters over whether to make a public address about his religion, comes as the former Massachusetts governor’s bid is threatened in Iowa by underdog Mike Huckabee. The ex-governor of Arkansas and one-time Southern Baptist minister has rallied influential Christian conservatives to erase Romney’s months-long lead and turn the race into a deadheat.” A poll released in The Des Moines Register also on the 3rd showed Huckabee surpassing Romney for the first time, and on the eve of the Iowa caucuses.

Some of the first news reporting following Romney’s December 6 speech was deeply sympathetic: “It’s hard not to be impressed with the speech former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney gave Thursday on faith and religion,” reported USA Today on December 7, 2007. Marc Caputo of the Miami Herald praised the speech in an analysis on the same day, “If giving the speech were like singing in a choir, then Romney hit all the right notes.” A few other outlets, including the New York Post (“Failed Bid to put the Religion Issue to Rest”) were not as kind. In the weeks that followed, some papers—especially in their op-ed pages—used the Kennedy comparison to critique Romney (see Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column, “Mitt’s no JFK”, from December 9, 2007).

While there was no consensus among the media on what Romney’s speech accomplished, in general, more questions were raised than were put to rest. On January 3, 2008, Huckabee won soundly in Iowa, a surprising victory that marked the beginning of the end for Romney, who exited the race in February. For Democrats, though, Iowa had its share of surprises as well, with Obama demonstrating that he was a strong competitor for the nomination even then.

As if to hand off the baton, a January 9, 2008 editorial in the New York Times entitled “A Tale of Two Speeches,” compared Obama’s post-Iowa victory speech with Romney’s speech in Texas the month before. “Obama’s, which (referenced race), was a success, while Romney’s was decidedly not,” wrote Tim Rutten. Within a few months, the attention would be placed on Obama again, also for a speech—one that would draw more attention to his faith, race and ethnicity than had occurred in the campaign to date.

This analysis examines newspaper coverage of Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s speeches on religion and public life in 2007 and 2008. It looked at national, regional and local newspaper stories archived in the LexisNexis database.

For the section on Barack Obama, the time period examined began with the earliest we found linking him with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and went through the month following his March 2008 speech on race and religion. Thus, the search parameters were April 1, 2004-April 30, 2008—a period of 4 years and one month.

For the section on Mitt Romney, the etymology begins with the earliest reference we found to him and John F. Kennedy and goes through the month following his December 2007 speech on religion and civil liberties. The resulting dates were November 1, 1993-January 30, 2008—a period of 14 years and three months.

We searched, through LexisNexis, the top 50 U.S. newspapers in circulation according to Editor & Publisher Year Book.
To gauge the coverage for each candidate and the lead-up to his speech, PEJ paired the full names of each candidate (“Barack Obama” and “Mitt Romney”) with a number of search phrases. With Obama, we searched for “Jeremiah Wright;” “Jeremiah Wright” AND “speech;” and “speech” AND “religion.” With Romney, we searched for “JFK” OR “John F. Kennedy;” “JFK” OR “John F. Kennedy” AND “speech;” “speech” AND “religion;” and “speech” AND “Mormon.”
The stories that appeared in the Nexis search were culled through, and those that marked pivotal moments in the press narrative, were instances of a breaking story, or provided illustrative examples of a reporting phenomenon were pulled and analyzed in the report.