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Olasky also says that his book is intended to "help us look in the mirror and see ourselves as secular liberal journalists often see us." Unfortunately, he presents mainstream journalists exclusively as secular liberals. With a steady diet of élite media, it is an easy mistake to make. Indeed, Kristof said in his article, "I can't think of a single evangelical working for a major news organization." That's the view from the precincts of the Times.
But this is just a partial picture of journalism today. What about Cal Thomas, Fred Barnes, David Aikman, Jack Kelly, and other evangelical journalists with significant influence? Aikman's Gegrapha organization specifically supports Christians in the mainstream media. Hundreds have attended its conferences. At the University of Southern California, the Annenberg School for Communication has established an endowed chair in media and religion, and New York University started (in May) a Center for Religion and Media.
Doug Underwood, formerly a journalist with the Seattle Times and now an associate professor of communication at the University of Washington, has written an interesting volume on the largely forgotten but still potent religious heritage of journalism.3 Underwood contends that "journalists draw much of their professional inspiration from the Bible's prophetic complaints about moral corruption, as well as the calls for reform that grew out of the Protestant Reformation" and other historical events tied to Christianity.
Indeed, Olasky himself has long argued that mainstream journalism began well as a popular expression of the country's dominant Judeo-Christian culture before taking a left turn into Enlightenment skepticism.4 I wish Olasky had revisited this issue and given some practical strategies for Christians to find common ground with journalists. We might be surprised to discover how open secular journalists are to offers of help.
In a prescient April 1994 lecture at Saint Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, Cullen Murphy of The Atlantic Monthly outlined several other factors contributing to increased awareness of religion in mainstream journalism.5 Murphy said that journalists are being forced to grapple with religious issues partly because of the inescapably religious character of many of the conflicts outside the West. America's encounter with radical Islam after September 11 has only deepened the desire of secular journalists to understand the religious forces that drive so many world events. As David Brooks said in a March article in The Atlantic, "Secularism is not the future; it is yesterday's incorrect vision of the future. This realization sends us recovering secularists to the bookstore or the library in a desperate attempt to figure out what is going on in the world."6
Another pertinent factor, Murphy said, is the profit motive in American journalism. With falling ad revenues and increasing competition, newspapers, magazines, and other media are looking for ways to tap into neglected markets. As evangelical columnist and journalism professor Terry Mattingly said to MSNBC's on-air host during a break in coverage of the Promise Keepers rally in Washington, D.C., "You've just hit a big new demographic. They're there, if you want them."
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