CHURCH-FIRE FRENZY

Anyone who has followed news events for a number of years knows the term "pack journalism." This is when news organizations jump on a theme or topic or event and cover it ad nauseum, often feeding on each other's reporting in the process. Pack journalism has been described as very similar to watching frenzied fish in a pond that are used to being fed at the same time every day.

While there certainly is news in the fact that a number of churches around the country have been burned down, there is an element of pack journalism in the reporting that has occurred so far. By now anyone who is keeping abreast of the news must have a feeling that there is a planned and calculated conspiracy under way aimed at churches serving African-Americans in the South. This concept has captured the attention of legislators in Congress and policymakers in the White House.

It was at a recent congressional hearing, however, where the fabric of such a widespread conspiracy because to rip. Fire marshals and other arson investigators from a number of states in the South trooped in front of the bright lights of television cameras and soberly recounted the facts about the fires. What they said, generally, was that, yes, there have been several fires at churches, and, yes, some of them were black churches. But, the investigators said, they couldn't see links among the fires, nor could they see any particular assault aimed specifically at blacks. Moreover, investigations into the fires at black churches had resulted in some arrests. The fires appeared to be set by misfits and children for the most part, not hard-core Ku Klux Klan members.

But the had media continued to portray the church fires as part of vicious movement of some sort. Every church fire nowadays becomes front-page headlines, even if it turns out later to have been the result of bad wiring in the basement kitchen. Only in the past week have major news outlets recognized their own feeding frenzy and, as a result, have started trying to put the church fires in some perspective.

The pain and loss of any fire can reach tragic proportions. Fires at churches tend to affect dozens of lives that have become wrapped up over generations in the spiritual core of those churches. Certainly some of the fires may have been racially motivated, and that fact shouldn't be lost in the mass mea culpa of recent news stories.

Efforts to track down the arsonists in each and every fire should be pushed to the limits. It is cause to wonder, however, why the president would make so much of special federal funding to investigate these fires, particularly now that it is fairly obvious the number of fires falls well within normal standards.

Is this an election year?