Faith
and the Media
Again, why? One good answer is that religion has gone public more than
before. In olden days, reading articles about a bake sale or a mortgage
burning at the church next door had to be an acquired and then quickly
lost taste. But today, religion is at the crossroads of so many spiritual
paths that hard-boiled editors who used to disdain religion now are learning
that they will miss some of the best stories and many of their best readers
if they continue to ignore faith. People kill each other in the name of
their religions and make prime time for doing so. People heal others in
the scope of religious faith and sometimes make page one for doing so.
So this answer amounts to "there's more of it around, so more gets covered"--and
not just on the Saturday religion page.
Add to this the answer that there is more stimulus. Numbers of foundations--the
Pew Charitable Trusts, in our case and several others-- support religious
news on National Public Radio, promote religious education of reporters,
set up this happy Public Religion Project, and the like. Journalism schools
at Northwestern, Maryland, Colorado, and elsewhere help produce cohorts
of ready-to-go religion reporters and columnists.
We keep on adding reasons for more coverage. These are days of conflict
in religion--over authority, homosexuality, or whatever--and conflict makes
good copy. There have been clerical scandals, and the press loves to expose
these, again on page one.
As we clip hundreds of "sightings" per month for our Project, however,
we have developed another hunch: the media are finding that religion makes
news less often by being part of hard news and more often when covered
as a feature category. That means featuring close-ups, often of ordinary
people being heroic or saintly in the public world. As such, religion gets
linked with the growing sections or programs on medicine, education, and
science.
That linkage led the Washington Post some years ago to speak
of this linkage as SMERSH, "Science, Medicine, Education, Religion and
all that S--t," sneered one editor. Newsweek picked up on this in
its October 12 issue, in which the editors pointed out that the old line
between tabloids or yellow journalism and newspapers that manifested taste
has been eroded. There are few close-to-the-heart themes as rich as religion
in the SMERSH context. It's been discovered. Expect even more coverage.
The question now is whether, as the non-tabloid media discover religion
and the religious promote their endeavors, they can avoid becoming overtly
tabloid and trashy. A second question: can you think of a better place
for religious activity in public to be located than in the company of SMERSH
neighbors? That is a puzzler that might lead public relations people and
reporters to magnify ordinary people rather than oversell celebrities and
leaders and be truer to life, thanks to the extraordinary SMERSHites.
Sightings can be found at The
Public Religion Project.
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Comments? Questions? E-mail: [email protected]
Last modified: 29 October 1999
