ABC-57 reporter Alyssa Marino\u2019s editor sends her on a half-hour drive southwest of their South Bend studio, to the small town of Walkerton (Pop. ~2,300). According to Alyssa\u2019s own account on Twitter, she \u201cjust walked into their shop [Memories Pizza] and asked how they feel\u201d about Indiana\u2019s new Religious Freedom Restoration Act.<\/p>\n
Owner Crystal O\u2019Connor says she\u2019s in favor of it, noting that while anyone can eat in her family restaurant, if the business were asked to cater a gay wedding, they would not do it. It conflicts with their biblical beliefs. Alyssa\u2019s tweet mentions that the O\u2019Connors have \u201cnever been asked to cater a same-sex wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n
What we have here is \u2014 as we called in journalism school jargon \u2014 \u201cno story.\u201d Nothing happened. Nothing was about to happen.<\/p>\n
If I were forced to mark out a story line, it would be this: A nice lady in a small town tries to be helpful and polite to a lovely young reporter from \u201cthe big city.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, Memories Pizza didn\u2019t blast out a news release. They didn\u2019t contact the media, nor make a stink on Twitter or Facebook. They didn\u2019t even post a sign in the window rejecting gay-wedding catering jobs. They merely answered questions from a novice reporter who strolled into their restaurant one day \u2013 who was sent on a mission by an irresponsible news organization.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So I’m gonna make sure I tune in “On the Media” this weekendand, to see by what logically torturous path they find this behavior by the media justified.<\/p>\n
I don’t know how they’ll do it.<\/p>\n
I only know that they will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you listen over the weekends to American Public Media is “On The Media”, heard on NPR stations nationwide, you’ll hear the hosts, Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield, sniffling and shuffling about the state of the modern media. Periodically, the subject turns to “journalistic ethics”. Most media organizations will point to something called the “Code […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52346,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52345\/revisions\/52346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}