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Part of the answer is likely the residual effect of the knowledge class presuming for most of the 20th century that religion was simply irrelevant to anything that mattered. Why gain a background depth of knowledge about things insignificant? As a consequence we now, in this post-9/11 era, have a knowledge class scrambling to figure out religion with little collective accumulated knowledge of it on which to rely. Part of the problem, too, may be that few magazines and papers have "religion beats" comparable to their coverage of sports or politics or entertainment, staffed by seasoned experts. And no doubt there are other reasons to explain religiously ignorant religion journalism which a longer treatment could explore.
The fact that news writers and editors are often ill-informed about religion also helps to explain why they incessantly project their own biases into their religion coverage. When much of the secular knowledge class thinks about religion, here are the sorts of associations that often naturally come to mind: fundamentalism, violence, scandals, homophobia, dying churches, repression, exotic rituals, political ambition, cults, trivia.
Is it any wonder, then, that, of all the possible important and interesting stories about American religion that reporters could cover, about the only one they could seem to imagine reporting on last year was the Catholic priest abuse scandal? If I hear another solemn story about sex-abusing Catholic priests on NPR's All Things Considered or Morning Edition I am going to tear up my pledge card and start listening to country radio.
Or is it any wonder that a major newspaper recently assigned a reporter to write a story about how some religious figures coincidentally have religiously related names? Like, isn't it funny that Cardinal Jaime Sin, the archbishop of Manila, is named "Sin"? And isn't it interesting that the sociologist of religion, Christian Smith, is a Christian? Now that's important religion coverage!
It came as no surprise, then, that when by chance I turned on Terry Gross's Fresh Air several months ago, she was interviewing the author of a book about how some "Mormon Fundamentalist" brothers murdered their sister-in-law and her daughter because they believed God told them in a vision to do so. Gross listened attentively while her guest explained that his book raises grave questions and concerns about the "dark side" of religion. Indeed. Now I know not to fly American Airlines through Salt Lake City.
It is good that newspapers and radio are covering religion more these days. And, to be fair, occasionally some of them can be quite good. Last summer, for instance, Barbara Bradley Haggerty aired a thoughtful and appropriately sympathetic npr story on the life and death of Bill Bright, evangelical entrepreneur best known for his leadership of Campus Crusade for Christ and his "Four Spiritual Laws" evangelism tracts. But wouldn't it be nice if good, well-informed, and balanced stories covering a variety of important and interesting religious people, organizations, issues, and events were the norm? Wouldn't it be good journalism if reporters assigned to religion stories began with more in hand than their own personal impressions and biases? Why should Americans have to put up with all-too-often religiously ignorant and biased journalists and editors? It is high time that things changed.
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