Media and the Message

Media and the message

The media and religion sometimes seem to live on different planets. By Douglas Todd, Religion and Ethics Reporter for the Vancouver Sun If you could paint an (over-)simplified picture of an alien from planet Religion, she would be trusting, respectful of authority, resistant to worldly sins, open to the non-rational and loving. The unkempt creature from planet Media, on the other hand, would be skeptical, hostile to authority, obsessed with facts, wary of commitment and, in some cases, sympathetic to the underdog. These aliens are separated by suspicion. Journalists accuse the clergy of being deluded, corrupt and boring. Religious dismiss journalists as deluded, corrupt and raunchy.

Catholics feel disgust with the media for focusing on priestly sex abuse. Evangelicals fume about the media obsession over leaders' financial shiftiness. United Church members grumble about why the media only look at their policies on homosexuality. Muslims feel smeared as bomb-making fanatics.

This gulf of understanding serves neither organized religion nor the media. With the mutual distrust, religious people fail to get their message out to the world. Journalists miss out on some of the most well-read and compelling stories around.

And society comes to the false conclusion that religion is not a force in people's lives.

How did the media and religion end up alien cultures?

The days are gone when the North American media treated religion (i.e. Christian churches) with deference. For good or ill, since the 1940s, most newspapers no longer reprint sermons or dutifully report moral pronouncements of top church leaders.

The media are now not afraid to spotlight religious controversy. Some of the biggest stories of past years have been the fall of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, the cult inferno at Waco, World Trade Center bombings by Muslim extremists, murders of U.S. doctors who perform abortions, clergy sex abuse, the rise of the religious right in the Republican and Reform parties, the euthanasia debate, Sikh terrorism, Bill Clinton's faith, Vatican opposition to defusing the population explosion and the disastrous end of Quebec's Solar Temple.

The media have covered some of these stories well. Others have been handled with shallow sensationalism. A study by the school of journalism at the University of Colorado, for instance, suggested the media helped bring about the explosive end at Waco because it fed the idea that David Koresh was a mere terrorist and not a (perverted) religious leader who might have responded to astute theological negotiations.

The Colorado study also suggested one of the main reasons the media don't cover religion more thoroughly is because they're intimidated by the complexities of contemporary Christianity, not to mention Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Confucianism and hundreds of smaller faiths.

In this pluralistic age, as TV producer Bill Moyers said when he spoke this year in New York at the annual conference of the Religion Newswriters Association, ``mainstream journalists mostly ignore religion because they don't understand it and because they are worried about misinterpreting it.''

TV is the worst.

A 1993 study by Virginia's Media Research Center found that out of 18,000 stories run on the evening news of CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and PBS, a mere 212 stories dealt with religion (about .1 per cent). Meanwhile, at secular newspapers in the U.S., only about 120 reporters cover religion on virtually a full-time basis. About 12 religion reporters work in Canada.

The typical journalist's nervousness about religion may also explain why, even though more than one out of three Americans and Canadians attend a religious institution each week -- far more than attend a sports event -- religion sections usually take up a couple of pages a week. In comparison, sports sections seem to go on forever.

Contrary to popular belief, the shortage of religion coverage at most newspapers is not a result of media types being anti-religious. A new survey has contradicted a dangerously misleading 1980 study by Robert Lichter of George Washington University, and Stanley Rothman, which has been widely quoted for a decade within evangelical and Catholic circles.

The Lichter-Rothman study said only half of journalists have a religious affiliation, compared to 90 per cent of the population. It claimed only 14 per cent of journalists regularly attended church, compared to the U.S. average of 40 per cent.

But Lichter-Rothman interviewed only 240 journalists at the top media outlets in Washington and New York, regions where religious attendance is habitually low.

On the other hand, Vanderbilt University's Freedom Forum survey of 900 journalists and clergy across the country suggested anti-religion bias among journalists is a fiction.

The Freedom Forum survey found only four per cent of religion writers replied ``none'' for religion, as did nine per cent of all editors. Of religion reporters surveyed, 75 per cent said faith was "very important'' in their lives and 37 per cent of editors said religion was "somewhat important'' to them. There is little reason to believe these figures do not apply in Canada.

But the fear and loathing remain.

Asked whether most religion coverage today is biased against ministers and organized religion, nine out of 10 evangelical leaders agreed. So did seven out of 10 Catholic officials and six of 10 ministers from centrist to liberal Protestant denominations. Journalists overwhelmingly disagreed.

It's possible many religious adherents fail to understand that the secular media are not there to do its public relations.

Even the church media have begun to question their usual boosterish view on religious life. Canada's evangelical magazine, Faith Today, published a story questioning why bad news is so absent from in-house publications.

But signs of more understanding between religion and the media, and more in-depth study of religion, are rising:

• Magazines such as Newsweek and Time have scored record-breaking sales when their cover stories explored topics such as evil, prayer, the Virgin Mary, the separation of church and state, hell and creation.
• Senior newspaper editors are taking seriously new surveys that show, even though church attendance falters, 90 per cent of Canadians believe in God and 75 per cent consider themselves Christians.
• The Society of Professional Journalists, Harvard, Northwestern University and numerous other bodies are sponsoring forums to educate journalists about religion.
• Books on religion and spiritual themes became the top-selling genre in 1994, according to Publishers' Weekly.
• Religion writing is no longer consigned solely to the religion-page ghetto, but appears in every part of most newspapers. ABC has television's first full-time religion reporter (Peggy Wehmeyer).
• The Colorado University study found people who attend church frequently are more likely to read newspapers than those who attend once in a while.
• More institutional religions are being trained to be media savvy.

Perhaps the most to expect is that each alien culture will come to better appreciate the job each has to do; the media provide information about the world, religions offer faith beyond facts.

Both seek the truth.

So let's hope as both the clergy and journalists play their roles, which sometimes includes being prophets -- exposing evil and hypocrisy -- neither side will be caught engaging in empty name-calling across the chasm. After all, it was theologian Reinhold Niebuhr who said: "The prophet stands under the judgment he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.''

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