Barriers to Faith Coverage (1): What faith groups wish the media knew about faith

What faith groups wish the media knew

A workshop at the June 7-9, 1998 Faith and the Media Conference  Panelists:  Mary-Francis Denis, Public Relations Director, United Church of Canada John Farrington, publisher, Cornwall Standard Freeholder and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Dennis Gruending, former English-language Communications Director for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops Guru Fatha Singh Khalsa, minister and senior member, Sikh Temple

The perspective I bring is a conviction that the gap that people believe exists between faith groups and the media is neither unique to the religion beat, nor is it an insurmountable obstacle to the coverage of faith and spirituality in Canadian society. Without a doubt, every faith group who has ever enjoyed their 15 minutes of fame in the public media could point to instances where reporters have mangled and maimed their brand of belief.

Sometimes the culprit is incompetence, sometimes it's laziness, and, very occasionally, outright bias. But more often the injuries are inflicted because a reporter has failed to appreciate the unique and complex nature of the religion beat and failed to understand that there are differences between faith groups that are not limited to theology, but include history, structure, language and process. So, in an effort to synthesize what I've learned after more than a decade of media encounters, here are my top ten pieces of advice for reporters who are covering the religion beat.

Number 10: Check your assumptions. And please, if the religion beat is new territory for you, don't underestimate the importance of recognizing and compensating for the limits of your own knowledge.

Number 9: Recognize the limitations of your medium when reporting on complex issues of faith, and diligently watch over over-simplification in your news stories. It's essential that reporters recognize that the more limited they are in terms of space and time in reporting on faith issues, the more careful they must be to ensure that their news stories are accurate. Realizing that subtlety and nuance are almost impossible to capture in a thirty-second sound bite or in a six-line news story will go a long way to improving the quality of reporting on matters of faith and religion.

Number 8: Don't presume that because you went to synagogue as a child or attended Sunday school or were an altar boy, that your understanding of faith is as up to date as you think it may be. If your spiritual development dates back to your childhood, remember not to rely on personal knowledge as a reliable source of expertise. No one can truthfully say that they enjoy what's so often called 'bad press,' but if reporting is accurate, fair and balanced, that's all I personally believe that faith groups can expect of the media. How individuals define what is accurate, fair and balanced is often open for debate. After all, the media can also be easy targets for people who want to shoot the messenger. That doesn't relieve, however, the media of its own obligation to report responsibly.

This is particularly important because of what I call the snowball effect. This can happen any time, summer, winter, fall and spring, and it can happen in a variety of ways. For example, the original news story may have been accurate but, like the childhood game of telephone, something gets lost in the translation. Bill Phipps not only says Jesus is not God, he has also said that Jesus is not the Son of God or, worse yet, there is no God. How does this happen? Usually it's simply out-and-out ignorance or, in other words, not recognizing when you don't know something or at least realizing that you may be distorting the original meaning of the news story in your own re-write.

Now, I'm not saying this happens all the time, but when it does, the havoc that is created is significant. The fact that news stories are picked up from one media source to another and then archived, never to be forgotten--well, you can see how a small error can snowball to a new story as the news story crosses the wire services and on to other media, with little hope of people like myself ever being able to adequately stem the tide of the erroneous story.

Which brings me to number 7. Always assume that you're on shaky ground when you think you know more than you actually do. This is particularly important when other reporters are relying on you as their source--especially if you're drawing conclusions about something about which you have no depth of understanding.

Number 6. Never assume that another media source has got the story right. Check it out and don't worry about asking a seemingly stupid question. We'd rather you ask the question so that you get the story right, rather than have to clean up the mess afterwards.

Number 5. Unless you're really sure about what you're talking about, try to tone down the catastrophic conclusions and the not-so astute analysis. A case in point might be our own experience within the United Church. Every time there's any sort of controversy brewing in the United Church, the doom and gloom sayers are usually out in force, heralding the demise of Canada's largest Protestant denomination. It's important that reporters, especially if you're unfamiliar with the territory, try to keep the rhetoric in perspective. The debate may be heated, there may be genuine upset in various quarters of the church, but, nevertheless, it may be too soon to sign the death certificate.

Number 4. Remember that when you are reporting on matters of faith you are dealing with people whose views are not based solely on intellect. Be mindful of the trap of trying to simplify complex ideas to the point of trivializing significant belief. It's no wonder that reporters are sometimes viewed as callous or cavalier, especially if they haven't fully comprehended the significance of convictions that are rooted in religious faith.

Number 3. It's equally important not to sensationalize religious news. Don't try to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the news media for bigger, better, odder, worse, etc., etc.

Number 2. Don't underestimate public interest in faith and spirituality. And remember not to limit your religious coverage to seasonal stereotypes--Easter, Christmas, Hanukkah, etc. Faith, morals, ethics, spirituality do not simply stand alone. They're integral parts of the fabric of everyday life and the reporter needs only to look to see that.

And number 1. Never fear. Despite the fact that people like myself encourage specialty beats, and we do value the full-time religion reporters that we develop a relationship with over the long term, you can do a credible job of covering religion using the same skills that you have cultivated reporting on the myriad of other stories from politics to education to finance.

In closing, the message I'd like to bring is one of hope. I believe that there is room for improvement in our skill as the church communicating with the media, but also as the media reporting on faith in religion. I believe that the relationship between the church and the media will always be just a little bit awkward, but that's not surprising. There's something about being scrutinized for public consumption that leaves people feeling vulnerable and that leads to uneasiness. I can't imagine that there's any institution anywhere that is 100 percent at ease when the media calls. It's the love-hate relationship that so many people have with the media that colours our response when a reporter is on your doorstep. And depending on whether your most recent experience was a positive or a negative one may well affect how you respond the next time the media calls.

Good and bad experiences happen. Individual reporters and the media they represent are as individual as the people and institutions about whom they are reporting. So while sometimes the experience may be a painful one, there is much to be gained at working at developing a rapport with the media so the message the churches have to bring is heard by the public.

I believe that if we are able to leave this conference, both the media and the church, with a renewed commitment to work together, recognizing that when our worlds intersect for moments of time, we must each be prepared to learn that there is much to discover about the other before we can be completely comfortable in how we relate to one another.

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John Farrington, publisher, Cornwall Standard Freeholder and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, has generally a pretty good relationship with the media, I think.

It's not always been that way. The persecution that took place in the early days and continued long after the assassination of Joseph Smith in a jail in Carthage, Illinois in 1844 was no doubt the main reason why the Mormons shied away from publicity probably for about 150 years. When you throw in polygamy and the priesthood, which was not open to black men until 1977, and the belief by some that women are persuaded to give up careers and stay at home with their children, these are all areas that have caused the church some publicity that has been negative and even unfair. Just last month there was a story in the Ottawa Citizen about Brigham Young and polygamy.

We're often referred to as a cult, and other religious groups, I think, fuel this by saying that we're not a Christian organization, we don't believe in Jesus Christ, even though a couple of years ago we changed our logo to double, even triple, the size of the two words, Jesus Christ, in the logo.

But I'm not going to be negative with the media nor with other religions. I can tell you that over the past ten years the church has been increasingly more interested in getting publicity and has been very successful in attempting to get all its members involved with media events and trying to understand the media. Perhaps, also, a number of our top leaders have come from careers in the media and we've learned from them how to handle ourselves and to get our message across. Then, again, we believe our prophet is in direct contact with our heavenly Father and the master's hand, no doubt, has helped us to develop the image of his church in these last few years.

There are two stories I want to tell you about today which I believe the hands of deity touched.

Mormon temples are sacred buildings where Mormons are married and where baptisms for the dead take place. There are only two in Canada, one in Toronto and the other in Cardston, Alberta, and there are about 50 around the world. When a new one is opening, you would think that it would merit some major publicity. While publisher of the daily newspaper on Vancouver Island, I was involved with the committee that was planning publicity for the opening of the Seattle temple in Washington state in 1980. We just couldn't seem to get the media excited about it in Seattle. We had had some coverage because the angel, Moroni, who stands with trumpet in hand at the top of the spires of each of our temples, just happened to be in the flight path of a suburban airport in Seattle. A number of two-hour dedication ceremonies usually take place over three or four days so that all members within the area served by the temple have a chance to be a part of what has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Mormons. Even right up to the night before the first dedicatory meeting there had been limited publicity in the Seattle media, and as it moved out of Seattle north as far as Alaska, east to the Alberta border and south as far as Portland, there had been virtually no message at all there.

On the morning of the first day when our members started lining up to get a good seat for the temple dedication ceremonies, a group of persons who called themselves Ex-Mormons for Jesus handcuffed themselves to the perimeter fencing. And it rained. It made great TV, it made terrific newspaper pictures--drenched wretches, handcuffed to the fence of a temple. It was the main news item on the news pretty well at every station in that geographical area of the great northwest. In fact, it made national news as well and newspapers carried front a page picture and, in many cases, a front page lead story about this incident. It went on, the second day, the third day. These people chained themselves to the fence, it poured rain, and the media just ate that up.

We could have been upset, I suppose, with that kind of coverage that was provided in those first few days. But after that what happened was the media then began to ask questions. Why are these people chaining themselves to the fence? What is the Mormon church? What are their beliefs? So it turned from what was a very negative story, at least in our eyes, to a very positive one.

I'm sure you're all familiar with our young missionaries, clean-cut missionaries who you see walking the streets, who give up two years of their lives to serve the Lord and at their own expense. They put school and relationships on hold to go out into all corners of the earth. When one young man told his companion he was giving up his mission and going home early and left to catch a plane, the young companion who was being left behind called Calgary airport and reported a bomb on the plane. The young man was charged by the police and was fined, I believe, somewhere in the neighbourhood of $50,000.

The story made front page headlines in Calgary and throughout the rest of Canada, and brought publicity to the church. When the young man's parents came to Calgary, there was more publicity, and a story like this, of course, produces fodder for many, many weeks. The church reacted positively throughout the early days of this Calgary story when it must have been very difficult to respond at all. But then things turned around and the media moved away from the actual news story and began wanting feature stories. They asked: What is the bond between missionaries that makes a young man call in a bomb scare? And then came all the positive items about the church and about the beliefs of the church and its members. The Calgary Herald devoted a couple of pages to it and the following weeks gave a cover story in its colour magazine in those days to Mormon missionaries. Without the reporting about the bomb scare, perhaps there wouldn't have been any story about Mormon missionaries.

I agree more could be done than is being done and I wish that sometimes bygones could be bygones, but we must learn to react to many situations, I believe, like our Savior would react. And in the modern vernacular, that means making lemonade when faced with lemons. The news media is always looking for something to entertain and intrigue the majority of their readers. The Mormons did that with their public service announcements and I'm sure you're familiar with those. They were very positive and were non-threatening in that they didn't jam religion down your throat. We're a church that's growing very quickly. I think not even our members realize the speed with which we're growing, let alone the media, and we're building a chapel every one and a half days in the world.

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Dennis Gruending, former English-language Communications Director for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops
For four years, beginning in 1990, I was the English sector director of information for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, and for about 20 years before that I was a journalist.

I found in the four years at the Bishops Conference that most Canadian journalists and editors paid very little attention to what we were doing and, beyond that, I believe that they showed not too much curiosity towards faith groups in general. It's worth mentioning here, though, that several Canadian newspapers do have specialists who cover religion and ethics, but television and radio are another matter. Peter Steinfels, who is the chief religion correspondent for the New York Times, once described American television as a wasteland as far as religion specialists go, and I think this description surely applies in English Canada as well. The flip side of it, journalists might tell us that we do a poor job of communicating out of faith groups and I'm sure there are many stories to tell there.

This lack of informed faith coverage, I think, raises several questions. Why is it so? Does it matter? And will the situation likely change? This panel was instructed to ask: What is it that faith groups wish the media knew about covering faith? This implies that the problem is a lack of knowledge or expertise on the part of the media. I think you've heard at the Conference that some of the journalists here are feeling a little bit hurt that you were implying that they didn't care, and they said that the problem is a lack of knowledge. Actually, I'm not so sure that it is.

What if most journalists just don't care about faith or faith coverage? What if they think it's not important? What if they hold people of faith in at least mild contempt? What if owners and managers of media outlets think that faith is not news and won't sell? I'm convinced that the problem is not primarily a lack of knowledge, although that is a problem, but I think the better question to ask might be why the media assigns such a low priority to faith coverage.

There is a wide-spread belief in Canadian society, and among journalists, I believe, that Canada is a secular country where religious values and institutions really don't hold very much sway. Yet in the 1991 census it was found that 87 percent of Canadians claimed to belong to a religious group of one sort or another and only about percent said they had no religious affiliation. An Angus Reid survey in 1992 found that 8 of 10 Canadians believe in God and there were some other indices there as well.

The pollster, Angus Reid, found these results surprising. One might have assumed, he said, "that a lot of Canadians are either atheists or agnostics on the basis of reading the secular press." In fact, we find the incidence of that quite low, and that a lot of Canadians believe in the divinity of Christ. He went on to say that "the so-called elite have a lower incidence of religious belief perhaps than people of an everyday working level." So he's saying the Canadian elite take faith less seriously than do ordinary people and journalists, particularly at the national level, are part of the elite and, arguably, they take faith less seriously as well.

The media as an institution, I believe, by and large, with some exceptions, reinforces establishment values and I was much reminded of this when I saw footage of the funeral service for the late John Bassett. His social circle was that of prime ministers and the industrial and commercial elite.

One might say churches are also part of the establishment, and that is so, but less so than it used to be. I think they've lost a lot of influence and my own experience in the pew is that, in their concern for the poor and for social concerns, churches are actually a drag and a brake on the neo-liberal ideology that surrounds us. In their concerns for victims, for example, churches have been a thorn in the side of the current Ontario government. So there's a problem in coverage.

I believe that a lot of people believe that religion is private. It's not social, it's not public. And if you're a journalist or a media manager, then how do you cover faith? If it's private, it's very difficult to get at. If its public manifestation is not something that you believe churches should be involved in, then you don't cover that whole aspect and you're not left with nearly as much to go on. So there is a problem and I sympathize with it, but I believe that it's not so much a lack of knowledge but the fact that there is a question of priorities. So for a variety of reasons I believe that there is a lack of enthusiasm toward faith understood in its broadest terms.

Now, there's a widespread belief among faith leaders that the media are anti-religious and that they have a liberal bias particularly in matters relating to sexuality and to family values. Peter Steinfels again refers to what he calls a para-ideology at work in newsrooms which he says isn't necessarily liberal but it is a debunking attitude towards authority and ideals. He says that the newsrooms are caught up in cultural wars, a society where one view sees traditional morality as enshrining a legacy of wisdom of how we should live together and therefore sees challenges to that legacy as deserving of a skeptical or jaundiced examination, and another media view of the world looks on traditional morality as enshrining a host of prejudices from which we need to be liberated, and these different ways of viewing the world cause a great deal of tension. In fact, the late Malcolm Muggeridge was quoted as saying he didn't believe that there was a possible reconciliation between media and faith. Actually, that overlooks, I think, the whole reality that most people are informed by the media, no matter whether they're people of faith or not, so we can't ignore it and I think the inevitable conclusion is that churches have to be more proficient at placing themselves into that world.

In conclusion, rather than telling the media what we would like them to know about covering faith, I would like to provide my own brief list of what the faith groups might sensibly ask of the media, four or five points. One, take faith seriously. See it as a key to understanding much of what is important in society and to individual people. Two, assign good reporters and producers to faith coverage. Three, give these people resources to do their work. Four, and this gets at the lack of information, give them some training. The range and complexity of Canada's faith groups, I would say, is much greater than the range and complexity of political parties, so faith coverage demands knowledge and maturity. Finally, give these reporters and producers a format, that is, somewhere to broadcast or to print their work.

This is all a deceptively simple solution in its description, but I think it will take a significant change of heart and a shift of priorities to carry it out. And if you ask me, am I optimistic? In the short term, only somewhat, and in the long term, for reasons we might discuss later, a lot more so.

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Guru Fatha Singh Kahlsa, minister and senior member, Sikh Temple
A person's faith is simply what they believe and what they trust in. We have grown to accept the bias that faith is only invoked when there are fantastic, irrational and ordinarily unbelievable claims at play, belief in unseen forces or predictions of what is ordinarily unpredictable, belief in such things as a supreme being or salvation or eternal love or the existence of angels or heaven and hell.

We tend to forget that in day to day, mundane reality, the kind that is ordinarily depicted by the media, there is also a fair bit of faith and some of it is quite blind.

There is a belief that if a person just has enough money, if they buy all the right stuff and take all the right vitamins, they will be happy.

There is a huge faith in technology; if there is a disease or an inconvenience of any kind or a discomfort, a great many people believe that in time it can be fixed up through new technology and that the world will inevitably become a better place for it. Well, that's their belief.

There is a faith that God does not have any part to play in the workings of the universe large and small, that things have independent existences, that at most they may be subject to the rules and conditions of their ecosystem, the particular class or species, and if there is an act of God, it is inevitably a huge and messy and violent natural disaster.

Many people also believe that they will never grow old and there are others who are convinced and they base their lives on models of beauty that is merely skin deep. When we speak of a model in this media culture, inevitably we speak of a model of physical attractiveness. So there's a powerful belief in the paramount importance of the beauty of the flesh.

There is also a belief that whatever it is, if you can do it faster, it will be better, that time is money and more is somehow always better and there is never enough.

There is also a belief that if you don't mention death, you don't show it on TV or ever talk about it, it will just go away. Many people spend their whole lives in a fantastic state of denial, believing that, in fact, they will never die.

People believe in all sorts of things. They believe in public transit, in hockey teams, in the justice system, in banks and in trust companies. They believe in spouses and lucky numbers and normality. They believe in the media and in love at first sight and a whole myriad of things which can never be proven. Sometimes they cannot be disproved either. Other times their mistaken beliefs can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt and religious faith is certainly no more farfetched or idealistic than some of these beliefs.

So everyone has faith. Personally, I'm skeptical about many things, but I believe in many others. For instance, I believe that if I take this ball and I let go of it, it will come toward the earth. It's a faith of mine, but it's a faith not unlike any others. Shall we try? There it goes again; but you never know. So everybody has a faith in something. We believe by nature, we believe in different things. Some believe their vote makes a difference at election time. It doesn't matter, they may vote Libertarian or for the Green party, they may vote for the Reform in Ontario, they may vote for the NDP or the Communists, but they believe it makes a difference.

Some people believe their prayer makes a difference and some believe their prayers could never possibly make a difference and that is their belief, and it is my belief that their belief is just as much a belief, and a subjective one at that.

We have come a long way since the days when anyone in Canada could speak of the one true faith.

As well, I believe that at the heart of every religion and every religious tradition there is a deep and overwhelming sense of wonder, a sense of magic, and a sense of complete and utter amazement. I also believe it is from this sense of the profound awe and appreciation that the classical and religious motiviations of humility and reverence and self-surrender and dedication and all the orders and all the doctrines and all the hierarchies flow. I believe that, in its essence, this prime religious sense is very innocent, very priceless, very sacred, very human and very good. The media, for its part, is not intrinsically bad nor intrinsically good. It may be good at some things and bad at others. Perhaps it is naive on my part, but I would like to think that the media can as easily be put to good, constructive and enlightening uses as it can to negative uses of propaganda and disinformation.

But there are a couple of challenges and seeming contradictions. One is that in these times many people resort to media as a fix for their sense of utter boredom, meaninglessness and lack of community. They are looking for something quick and flashy, something sexy to capture their imagination and take them away, to entertain or distract them from their own unhappy circumstances. They're looking for something to turn on to, tune in, and get lost in. So modern media is used as a quick fix for our modern sense of alienation while the modern media also happens to be a part of the cause, along with a host of other social, environmental, economic and political factors of that very stifling alienation.

So if media is to accurately reflect essential religious spirit, the sense of awe and reverence and brotherly and sister love, there is a fundamental shift that must take place, a shift from entertainment and distraction to enlightenment and engagement.

The second challenge is that most media is--and has for some time now-- been run for profit, much or most of it generated by advertising money. And advertisers rely on the media to create demands for their products. Now, ours has become a media culture. We don't, by and large, do our folk dances any more or sing our traditional music in the streets or fields or homes or halls or anywhere. We watch our culture. And to serve our culture, our consumer culture, and to sell those products and keep the whole consensual reality going, the media usually taps into passions which by their nature are not religious or spiritual at all. How many times has a headline about a great confession or a great self-sacrifice or a wonderful new insight someone has had? How many more times has the headline had to do with sex and power and violence?

My thesis is that the media is afloat in the seven deadly passions simply because they're addictive, totally disempowering and darn good for business. If you're feeling burned out and victimized by a hostile, faithless world, you're liable to make a much better consumer. You'll want to feed or compensate your disenchantment endlessly with all kinds of stuff. This is the nature of materialism, but it has nothing to do with the gospel or any religious teaching. It is good for business, but ultimately it is bad for people. The core teachings of all religious faith have to do with modesty, self-restraint and discipline, and they're all bad for the commercial media as we know it, which basically thrives on banalities. In that world, everything has a price, while in this other world there are things which are simply priceless and precious beyond measure.

So having said what I've said in the context of what I wish the media knew about covering faith and having pointed out a couple of the fundamental conflicts of interest between the essential spirit of religion, the sovereign spirit of the eternal soul, and the drives and needs of commercial media as we know it, I'd like to offer a vision, a few ideas about how media, the info-tainment industry, might better serve us all as spiritual beings with spiritual needs.

For example, I like it when the media questions established truths and authorities intelligently and without malice. The authority of government, the wisdom of the economists, the truth of accepted morality and religion and science, and not least of all the authority and truthfulness of media itself. There was a time when religion could perhaps with some justification have been called the opium of the people. Well, perhaps it is now the media that has been lulling everyone into a stupour.

I like it when media pokes fun at itself and at us in a good-natured kind of a way. I like it when we are provoked into seeing ourselves with new eyes and laughing with a newfound humility.

I like it when media rises up out a cesspool of slander and slaughter and blood and seduction, to awaken in us a sense of wonder at uncanny acts of providence, unthinkable coincidences, profound love and dedication, the miracle of new life and the equally amazing passing on of life from this earth, the courage of martyrs and heroes, the power of beauty, intelligence and self-restraint.

I like it when the media provokes us to be unruly, loving, kind, imaginative, majestic, sympathetic, faithful, brave, creative, adventuresome and utterly outrageous. I like it when the media recognizes that I am not a number or just a consuming blob and that I have a sovereign soul and that soul is worthy of respect.

For religious people, this is a time to aspire fearlessly to live the highest truth as best as they can understand that truth. And for the people of the media, it is a time for reporting in an enlightened way about the truths and the aspirations of the ordinary and the extraordinary women and men, for the truth will make us free.

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