Some journalists, he said, don’t think that religion matters. Thus, many editors get sweaty palms when it comes time to dedicate time, ink and money to the subject. Few seek out trained, experienced religion-beat reporters.
“The prevailing ethos among most of our editors is that the public square is the province of the secular and not a place for … religious messages to be seen or heard,” said [William] Burleigh in an interview for my chapter in “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion.” Oxford University Press will publish this book, produced by my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life, late this fall.
“As a result,” Burleigh said, “lots of editors automatically think religion is out of place in a public newspaper. That’s what we are up against.”
The key is that this is a journalism problem. Any effort to improve coverage will fail if journalists are, as commentator Bill Moyers likes to put it, “tone deaf” to the music of religion in public life.
In today’s news, the Telegraph fired Jonathan Petre, an excellent reporter on things Anglican and Episcopal, without any desire to replace him.
There are many parallels between ‘old media’ such as newspapers and mainline churches–dwindling finances and adherents, and frantic searches for ‘the next new thing’.
When you pull off the front section of our local paper, you get a section of local news. That seems to be a common organization. When we moved here in 1966, the local section said, in big letters: RELIGION. And that’s what the first pages of that section covered. Today, “Faith and Spirit” is buried in the “Living” section, which used to be “Women’s News”, although they put it in the Sunday Opinion section for awhile, and most recently bury it in the local section. Typically, it’s one wire service article, or maybe a column by the religion editor, a liberal Baptist.
I read GetReligion fairly regularly, and what I see there confirms what I see in our local religion reporting. There is a systemic decline in quantity and the framework has shifted. Typically, Christianity is addressed critically, often with reference to the socially popular hot-button issues. If the story is positive, great care is taken to include perspectives to “balance” the picture. Islam, pagan variants, liberal protestant (and Catholic) religious perspectives, and, usually, Judaism are dealt with in a more positive manner. I’m painting in broad strokes, obviously, and there are obvious exceptions. But they are exceptions.
The first mistake most editors make is to assume that what interest them about religion interests their readers, who, statistics bare out, will invariably be more religious than most editors/journalists.
Next, I note with amusement the lack of principle in this matter. It varies greatly by the religiousness of geographic area. What must be done to fly in Arkansas will not be done in NYC. So, it’s not editorial or journalistic integrity but market that drives amount and content.
Finally, the media tends much more to make news than report it when it comes to religion.
I agree substantially with you, Words Matter, #2. Usually when religion is covered by the secular media, the journalist (or emcee of an interview program, like Larry King) is trying to push a specific agenda. (To be fair to Larry King, he has often seated John MacArthur at the table, but has not really given him much of a chance to explain his position.) There is a place for good reporting on religion; it would be nice if the journalist were actually informed about the topic on the front end, and asked better questions in the process of formulating his/her story.
Whoops I hit the wrong key.
The laundering of opinion to equal truth reminds me again of a favorite saying where we find the “…fiends that lie like truth..” Nuff said!