In each case, editors either assigned a brief article or skipped the story altogether.
The longer he worked in journalism, the more he saw proof that the divide was deep, and he made the case in columns, lectures and eventually blogs. He reported on a 1980s study by S. Robert Lichter of George Washington University and Stanley Rothman of Smith College which showed that, while more than 40 percent of Americans attended worship services regularly, just 8 percent of journalists did, and that even though 85 percent of Americans saw adultery as morally wrong, only 15 percent of journalists did.
The gap persists.
"If you think the fact that 95 percent of American journalists are pro-abortion rights doesn't affect abortion coverage, I've got some land in Louisiana to sell you dirt cheap," says Mattingly, a registered Democrat who is against abortion.
For the record, Mattingly doesn't think the media, so often accused of leftist bias, "hates" religious people as much as it feels discomfited by them.
"It's not like [the editor] is sitting in the newsroom thinking, 'God, I hate Christians. Let's avoid all those stories.' It's more like [he or she] would say, 'Look, there's 30 people in my newsroom who went to that [pro-choice] march. It's all I heard them talking about for weeks! I don't know anyone who went to that [pro-life] march.'
"At worst, it might be, 'Man, who are these wackos? They make my palms sweat.' But in general, those who decide what is news demonstrably have little empathy for religion."
A chat with Mattingly ranges over a wild array of subjects, from football (the influence of NFL coach Mike Singletary, a born-again Christian, on Ray Lewis) to pop music (he plays a vintage Santa Cruz guitar) to baseball (he strictly avoided Orioles games until they restored the word "Baltimore" to the road jerseys), movies and literature.
"How strong is the Greek Orthodox religion of Nick Markakis?" he says, glancing up from a vegetarian burrito. "I'd love to read that story."
That's probably the slightest among the ones the mainstream media might have covered, in their fullest context, but didn't, at least until they had boiled over.
"How about the Catholic sex scandals? Is that a story?" he asks. "How about the Branch Davidian massacre? Was 9/11 interesting? And how about, like, the last three presidential elections, with their emphasis on" values?
