WASHINGTON -- As editors take up the challenge of credibility thrown at us by readers and our influential colleagues in the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), one question that lingers on the margin of our media consciousness as we reexamine our values and ethics is this: Are we giving religion its due?
Anyone reading a spate of
articles
in our profession's trade press --
articles in the American
Journalism
Review, the Columbia Journalism
Review, the American Editor,
Quill,
the Nieman Reports -- can't escape
the scrutiny we are being asked
to make of our daily efforts.
Credibility in the media was
written
in large letters across the
proceedings of the 1998 ASNE
convention
in Washington last month, and
the trade press reporting on what
went on there bedevils us to examine
and sharpen our values and ethics.
The related question of how
well
we deal with religion in American life
continues to struggle for a place
on the agenda, however. Even those
committed to increased coverage
of religion can't seem to determine if
news about God is live news or
something for the feature pages.
One can do a survey of on-line
newspaper
archives using the keyword
"God." Such an informal search
will turn up scores of articles, but few
would be considered live national
news stories.
A new ghetto appears to have
arisen
for religion news. Call it style,
living, culture or whatever, our
in-depth analysis and reporting of
religion in the news remains
sporadic
and rare.
For
years small groups of professional journalists have been decrying
the coverage given to religion
by the big media, and pollsters have
been telling us for decades that
religion is "extremely important" in
the lives of Americans.
To be sure, strides have been
made.
Religion news no longer is
ghettoized on the so-called
church
page filled with announcements of
services and weekly meetings.
Newspapers such as the Houston
Chronicle
and the Dallas Morning News
have led the way in devoting
large
sections to stories about religion.
The Los Angeles Times has
consistently
covered religion. Newhouse
several years ago purchased the
languishing Religion News Service and
pushed it to a more nearly
profitable
supplementary news service in the
area of religion, philosophy and
ethics. Scripps-Howard syndicates
writer Terry Mattingly, a former
religion reporter in Denver and
Charlotte, N.C., who writes a
weekly
column called "On Religion" that
is purchased by more than 300
outlets.
AP wisely saw fit not to drop
religion coverage when Charles
Cornell retired and has admirably filled
that beat with David Briggs.
ABC-TV
paved the way in the broadcast
media by hiring Peggy Wehmeyer
to be a full-time religion reporter, and
Bill Moyers, the erstwhile PBS
documentarian -- himself a Southern
Baptist minister -- has steadily
pushed the notion that religion is an
influential and under-reported
aspect of American culture.
Los Angeles Times religion
writer
John Dart has been on a mini crusade
to educate the profession
concerning
religion coverage. His tiny 1995
book, "Deities and Deadlines,"
provides an excellent handbook for
reporters seeking to enter the
specialty beat of religion coverage.
Despite
these gains, however, religion remains a marginal factor in
editorial judgment and analysis
of hard news. Even Dart's approach
leans toward the academic and
doesn't
argue heavily for getting
religion news on to the daily
news
budget. In-depth political and
economic analyses that take
religious
factors into account are almost
non-existent.
Religion, however, crops up on
the
front page in manifold and subtle
ways that often go undetected by
astute editors. In an attempt to show
this, I will limit my discussion
to news reports of the past two weeks.
In that period, obvious
stories
considered part of the religion beat
were reported as they should have
been, in brief:
1) The pope celebrated his
78th
birthday on May 18.
2) Contemporary Christian music
is returning to the airwaves in St. Louis after an eight-month hiatus
(such
music, the Post-Dispatch reports, has been the fastest growing music
industry
segment for the past six years).
3) More than 3 million people are
expected to visit the exhibition of the Shroud of Turin before June 14,
when its first public display in more than 20 years ends.
4) A Gallup poll reveals that
only
four in 10 Americans know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount and
that
67 percent of Americans cannot articulate the meaning of Easter.
5) Members of both the Indiana
Pacers and the New York Knicks joined hands at center court for
post-game
prayer after the Pacers eliminated the Knicks from the NBA playoffs.
6) A joint study of the Gallup
organization and the National Opinion Research Center reveals that
almost
half the Americans who tell polltakers they attend church weekly are
fibbing.
Religion
in the news, however, appears in deeper and significant form
in top news stories. Sadly, it
is rarely reported or analyzed
adequately or thoroughly.
1) When India detonated two
atomic
bombs last week, little attention of
the press focussed on the role
religion in the thinking of Hindu
Nationalists who led the
decision-making.
Analyses of economic
sanctions,
UN power-broking, and the effect the
Indian tests might have on
U.S.-Pakistan
relations flowed freely in the
press, but few addressed the
overtones
of philosophical and religious
factors involved in the decision.
2) A $100 million aid package
for
Cuba was proposed by Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina last week.
Helms
intends the aid to be for
humanitarian purposes to offset
the damage being done by U.S. economic
sanctions.
What went almost unnoticed is
that
Helms' bill calls for channeling the
aid through the Roman Catholic
Church in Cuba.
3) With all the attention
focussed
on a cloned sheep, little attention
was given to a Faith and Genetics
Conference held in Dallas last week
to discuss the philosophical,
religious
and ethical issues that arise
from cloning, and more
importantly,
from treating genetic defects.
As the Dallas Morning News
reported,
"technology is pushing genetic
counselors and pastors
unexpectedly
into each other's territory." Alas,
where are the journalists?
4) Republican Congressman
Frank
Wolf of Virginia has taken up a crusade to help victims of religious
persecution.
Wolf wants the U.S. to
monitor such persecution and take
a stand against those nations that
promote it or tolerate it.
According to Wolf, the Chinese
government,
for example, has destroyed
as many as 5,000 monasteries in
that country, and the Sudanese
government determines who will
be fed largely on the basis of religious
discrimination.
5) The Roman Catholic Cardinal
of
New York City criticized both Major
League Baseball and the Little
League for drawing players and fans away
from church by scheduling games
on Sundays.
In the political and religious
heat
that followed John Cardinal
O'Connor's attacks, little press
attention has focussed on any
theological discussion of Sabbath
rest.
6) In what could be a
blockbuster
religion story in the month of June,
the L.A. Times reported that
leaders
of the Mormon church are
considering changing doctrine and
disavowing some authoritative
documents that link black skin
to the curse of God, thus making Mormon
doctrine consistent with the
church's
1978 decision to admit worthy men
to its priesthood regardless of
race or color.
These
half dozen stories, all of them potential front-page stories,
demonstrate a religious factor
to the news that too often is ignored by
many in the contemporary media.
Such disdain shows in subtle ways as
editors categorize the important
areas of news and coverage. Too often,
religion is not listed.
A profession reexamining its
values
and ethics can hardly afford to
show disdain for areas of life
and thought that form the foundation of
most Americans' values and ethics.