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In a sense, this collection of essays on religion and the media takes as its text an article from Books & Culture, in which Christian Smith denounced "religiously ignorant journalists."1 Now, that comment was never entirely fair. Although it was and remains true that the media often do an appalling job of covering religion, journalists are not necessarily to blame, and some are outstanding—Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times and Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times come to mind, but other stars abound. The problem is less with journalists themselves than with the whole process of newsmaking, particularly the manner in which editors decide how particular stories are or are not newsworthy. In consequence, the biggest problem with religion news is not how topics are covered, but rather the vast areas that remain off the radar, until (sometimes) they suddenly appear with nightmarish clarity. A decision not to cover a theme or trend is, by implication, a statement of its insignificance.
Quoting God: |
The largest area of religious life under-represented by the mass media is normality. Given conventional priorities, the customary and unsensational is not news, so that media stories about Islam are likely to expose terrorism and subversion rather than everyday piety, while according to most media accounts, the Roman Catholic church is either engaging in moral crusades or picking up the pieces after the latest sex scandal. If all an observer knew of Roman Catholicism was drawn from mainstream reporting over the past forty years—or indeed, from the Hollywood productions of that period—what would that person know of the central fact in the church's life, the Eucharist, or how radically the lived realities of the Catholic faith have changed following the liturgical reforms of those years? And the same might be asked of any other tradition. How many media professionals have the slightest idea of the distinctive theological beliefs that characterize evangelicals or Pentecostals, as opposed to knowing the political and sexual prejudices such groups are presumed to share?2
Also, media coverage of any topic, religious or secular, is shaped by the necessity to summarize complex movements and ideologies in a few selected code-words, labels that acquire significance far beyond their precise meaning. Though designed as guideposts for the perplexed, all too often, such words rather tend to stop intellectual processes. One such demon word is fundamentalism, originally a description of a particular approach to reading Christian Scriptures, but now a catch-all description for supernaturally based anti-modernism, repression, and misogyny. Within the past few years, evangelical has been similarly debased, gaining its popular connotations of white conservative politics. (Sorry, African American evangelicals don't exist, and as everyone knows, all Latinos are traditionalist Catholics. Right?) Most pernicious of all, perhaps, is the benevolent-sounding word "moderate," which equates to "the side that we (the media) agree with in any religious controversy, no matter how bizarre their ideas, or how bloodcurdlingly confrontational their rhetoric." In this lexicon, likewise, theological is an educated synonym for nitpicking triviality.
After September 11, the perception that media coverage of religion was selective and tendentious persuaded academics to coordinate their expertise in order to make their expertise more readily available to journalists.3 With its distinguished list of contributors, Quoting God tries to explore the common ground that exists between academics and media professionals, and indicates that the image of mutual incomprehension is far from accurate. The book is organized into three main sections, respectively the legal and constitutional frames that shape the media; the task of reporting across cultures, and the reporter's role as participant/observer; and the media's lack of scientific or theological sophistication. The book tackles very diverse themes spanning cultures and faith-traditions, from Appalachian religious identity to the Aum Shinrikyo terrorist cult, from U.S. media treatments of death to the cultural significance of the Virgin of Guadalupe
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