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"Good coverage of religion includes the same tools and filters as political coverage, school coverage or any other beat you can name," says Dallas Morning News religion reporter Jeffrey Weiss. But he adds a warning: "This is not an easy beat to jump into. Nuance is everything. And seemingly similar faith groups really aren't."

The oddest dispatch in the media's awakening is from Fox News's Eric Burns. "The central fact of life to millions of Americans is not even an aside to journalists, except when priests molest children or Islamic terrorists murder innocent men and women. And then it is the perversion of true faith that is reported, not the core values," he says. "On the other hand … just because something is significant does not mean it is newsworthy. In fact, one might make the case that religion is too significant for so quotidian a vehicle as journalism." In his defense, Burns says he lacks a point of view on this subject and hopes that letters will "help me take a stand."

The fact that he doesn't have a clear point of view on whether there should be religion reporting is another indication that this isn't something that has been discussed enough in American newsrooms. One hopes the conversation continues. Those looking for good resources on the topic should check out the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, the Religion Newswriters Association, and Jim Romenesko's employer, the Poynter Institute, which has had several articles and events on religion reporting lately.

More stories

War with Iraq:

• Pope presses Bush on Iraq | Pope John Paul II has decided to send a personal envoy to Washington to deliver a message to United States President George W Bush about the threatened war against Iraq (BBC)
  
  
• Also: Praying for papal intervention | Pope John Paul II is causing heartburn among one of the president's key constituencies: conservative Catholics (Mary McGrory, The Washington Post)
  
  
• Also: Bush's advisers greet Catholic leaders | The president plans to meet in the next day or two with Cardinal Pio Laghi, a former Vatican ambassador to the United States (Associated Press)
  
  
• Iraq's Christians fear being caught in the crossfire | They could face a religious backlash from die-hard regime supporters who might perceive them as accomplices of American invaders of the same faith. But they also risk a political backlash from those who have considered them allies of President Saddam Hussein (Financial Times)
  
  
• Meeting a moral standard for war | The just-war tradition, its last-resort criterion and the debate on an invasion of Iraq (Peter Steinfels, The New York Times)
  
  
• Churches sound as one voice | Do not initiate a war, they all say (David Waters, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis)
  
  
• Church leaders mobilize for peace | Opposition to invasion of Iraq often not shared by parish members (The Baltimore Sun)
  
  
• Hawaii clergy split on question of 'just war' | When it comes to debate among Hawaii religious leaders about war in Iraq, there's plenty of talk of God to go around (The Honolulu Advertiser)
  
  
• Chaplains step up as war looms | Commanders consider chaplains their partners in maintaining strong, well-adjusted, motivated forces (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Sexual ethics:

• Bishop lays down law to dissident clergy in same-sex blessing dispute | Dissident Anglican priests could be disciplined if they continue trying to bring an outside bishop to the diocese, Bishop Michael Ingham, head of the diocese of New Westminster warned Wednesday (Vancouver Sun)
  
  

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March (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47