Faith
and the Media
Gartner asked Rabbi Reuven Bulka how he felt about a statement made
at a previous session by Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic, suggesting the media
should try to report things from a Christian perspective. In the seconds
before Rabbi Bulka made his reply I thought to myself: she's purposely
misrepresenting the Cardinal's meaning and trying to get the rabbi to condemn
him for being non-inclusive. The media isn't learning anything from this
conference. Will they ever get it right?
I unclutched the arms of my seat as Rabbi Bulka gave his answer without
taking the bait. The Cardinal was off the hook this time, but I wondered
if this incident would now be edited out before final broadcast.
Get it right. Be accurate. Be fair and balanced. These are the highest
principles of journalistic ethics. We implicitly expect the news media
to uphold them, and they promise, usually implicitly, to do so.
When I started journalism school two years ago, I held the same expectation
of the media and committed myself to the same promise. Today, as I navigate
an uncertain path toward an as-yet-unrealized career in this field, I wonder
how I ever thought it could be so simple. Despite their ongoing dedication
to these ideals I was taught in school, journalists don't seem to be well
liked, or even well respected, by media outsiders. Everyone, including
– or especially – the dedicated and devout Christian, is a critic.
An Angus Reid poll conducted for the Faith and the Media conference
showed that 65 percent of weekly churchgoers feel "the media do a poor
job of covering faith and religion." The churchgoer tends to believe that
faith issues receive less media coverage than they should (55 percent of
them think so), and that if the media ever express favouritism, it is directed
toward corporate Canada, not toward the church.
The anti-media feeling among the religious might run even deeper than
this, according to Angus Reid's Andrew Grenville. He says a 1996 study
showed regular churchgoers exhibiting less confidence in the media than
non- churchgoers, but about the same level of confidence in government,
business and labour as everyone else.
"This is a group that feels they are misunderstood," he said at the
Faith and Media conference when the latest poll was released. Of course,
just because you believe yourself to be misunderstood doesn't mean you
are. Lois Sweet, former religion and ethics reporter for the Toronto Star,
says she sometimes feels that her interview subjects maintain an unnecessary
sense of suspicion about her and are too willing to assume her an enemy
of their faith. Making an enemy of the media doesn't do a faith group much
good and may even hurt the group's image, she says.
However, in some cases suspicion of the media may be justified. In one
instance, a Christian minister rudely and angrily turned Sweet away because
of what another Star writer had said in a recent column. After reading
the offending column, she recognized that if such statements had been made
about any other group, "the column wouldn't have hit the pages of the paper"
because it would have been recognized as being offensive.
Sweet is hardly an ideologue – she doesn't think the media participates
in some "liberal" conspiracy to discredit Christianity – but her example
reminds me of the oft-heard lament that Christians are the only people
the press can ridicule with impunity.
Outright ridicule of Christianity in the media is pretty limited; maybe
a columnist or talk-show host will make a few dumb remarks once in a while,
but making fun of church is not a day-to-day concern. However, the day-to-day
treatment of religion by the media manages to sell Christianity short in
other ways, and regular churchgoers are right to believe something is missing
in the type of coverage it receives.
As many participants at the Ottawa conference pointed out, religion,
as practiced and known by millions of Canadians, hardly would be known
at all if we depended on news reports.
There are generally two types of faith stories, says Marianne Meed Ward,
editor of Faith Today magazine and a participant at the conference.
She says the media does a decent job with stories that have an explicit
tie to a specific religious organization, institution or hierarchy. These
include stories of religious scandal along with noteworthy actions taken
by major religious leaders (e.g. a papal tour, a Billy Graham crusade).
But when it comes to stories exploring religious motivation or clarifying
a faith-based world view, the secular media is usually a no-show.
"There are times, I would say, that the media acknowledge an aspect
of faith motivation, but they don't probe it deeply enough, and other times
they completely miss it."
How does this shallow approach to religion affect our perception of
the fairness of the media?
"One of the things that annoys religious people, and they have a point,
is that the only time they get covered is when something terrible is happening"
says Meed Ward. Stories depicting a constructive role for religion tend
to get overlooked because the media doesn't understand the intricacies
of religious motivation.
There are, of course, alternative avenues for Canadians who want to
see stories that explore religious motivation and the intersection between
ancient faith and modern life. Christian television, Christian radio, Christian
magazines like Faith Today and The Canadian Baptist, are
set apart from the mainstream media and offer an antidote to the secular
barrage. And to some, such segregation is a satisfactory arrangement.
Shut out of a job with CBS Sports for making controversial statements
about homosexuals, American Baptist preacher and former NFL star Reggie
Smith has suggested that Christians take a stronger hand in establishing
their own media. He points out that the largest church in South Korea publishes
its own daily newspaper.
The advantage of this approach is that it allows Christians not to play
the media game by secular rules. In his book Telling the Truth, World magazine
editor Marvin Olasky decries some of the secular principles of fairness
that I learned in my journalism classes.
"Christian reporters should give equal space to a variety of perspectives
only when the Bible is unclear," he writes. "A solidly Christian news publication
should not be balanced."
However, I doubt Christian media will ever seriously compete with the
mainstream, even among Christians, if they take this approach. Too many
of us would rather play by the journalistic rules; we are suspicious of
overt bias, even in our favour, and suspect we're missing something if
we don't hear a neutral – or balanced – account.
Neutrality, a common goal for most journalists, is supposed to be achieved
through balanced coverage, granting a say to all sides in any particular
issue. Opinion crops up on editorial pages or in special commentaries,
and space is provided for counterbalancing opinions through letters to
the editor or guest commentaries.
But the neutrality of the media in covering religion is undermined in
several subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Granting little or no coverage of
religion when it's not connected to hard news events is one way. Less obviously,
the media demonstrates its bias by the prominence it gives a story. The
placement of a story on page one or near the beginning of a broadcast suggests
it is of utmost importance. Since the media seldom give this prominence
to religion stories, we must believe that politics, economics, opinion
polls, scientific studies, and even sports (when featured prominently)
are more important to them than religion.
The resources a media outlet assigns to any given beat also indicates
its importance to them. It may be telling that the most popular 6 p.m.
television newscast in the Toronto area has a fashion reporter who does
a daily segment, but has no specialized religion reporter.
More subtly, neutrality can be affected by the treatment given to a
story. Is it comprehensive? Serious? Edgy? Frivolous? Entertaining? No
tone is values-free, and if religion stories are not covered in diverse
styles, the typical treatment will reveal a non-neutral attitude towards
religion.
Sweet says there is a secularist bias in the media and notes that faith
stories are usually confined to the "religious ghetto," the weekly religion
page at a daily newspaper, unless they are connected to breaking news.
She says religion page stories often seem sterile and uninspired, especially
to those outside the featured faith community, but that they should be
challenging and thought-provoking to lead all readers to an increased understanding
of others around them.
"A good faith story should lead to increased understanding about whatever
the issue is that you're writing about. Not only does it opens new questions,
but you also gain some insight into the issue."
Ultimately, Sweet is right. It is important that religion be covered
well by the media, not just for the benefit of the religious, but also
for the general enlightenment of society.
Bob Harvey, religion reporter for the Ottawa Citizen and one
of only a handful of full-time religion specialists at Canadian media outlets,
says he sees signs of hope. His newspaper has disbanded its former religion
section in order to give faith stories greater prominence throughout the
paper. After the change, the number of front page stories written by Harvey
increased from five the previous year to 45 in the first nine months. He
says other newspapers, such as the Hamilton Spectator, have made
similar changes following the success of front-page faith at the Citizen.
And religion reporting seems to be gaining its own level of prestige. "You
look south of the border and [see that] religion writing is becoming not
only an acknowledged specialty but something many reporters actually want
to do," said Harvey. "In the past, nobody wanted to do this because it
was considered a bum assignment for a very little-known reporter. It's
no longer that."
It seemed a wonderfully touching moment in the sometimes tense relationship
between religion and the news media. Award-winning American journalist
and broadcaster Peggy Wehmeyer, full-time religion reporter for ABC's World
News Tonight, was showing a clip of her work at June's Faith and the Media
conference in Ottawa. Expectation filled the air, as audience members realized
that the credibility of Wehmeyer's message rested on what could be seen
in her work.
She had been saying that the religious or faith angle of many ordinary
news stories is often the most compelling and dramatic, and that covering
it is good for ratings. The clip, the story of American quintuplets born
alive to Christian parents who had refused the "selective birth" option
(a procedure that aborts some of the fetuses to ensure the live birth of
the others) could hardly have been more potentially divisive for a widely
mixed audience of religious liberals and conservatives.
But there was drama in the story of these births, and the questions
raised were compelling. Was it indeed the hand of God who brought all five
quints safely into this world against all expectations? What about the
heartbreaking experiences of other Christian parents who had not been so
blessed in similar situations, despite their many prayers? Could not choosing
"selective birth" and giving birth to healthy babies give false hope to
other parents facing a similar decision?
When the clip ended, the lecture hall erupted with unanimous, sustained
applause. And in the minute or so that it took for the clapping to die
down, I congratulated Ms. Wehmeyer in my mind: Yes, I thought, that's the
way I would like to see it done. If only we could get it like that every
time.
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