Rarity in the News: A TV Station Takes Religion Seriously

An evangelical on camera in Dallas.

Last summer’s Southern Baptist Convention was attended by crews from all three commercial television stations in Dallas, Texas. That was unusual, since most TV news operations have neither the time nor the inclination to pay serious attention to religion. The Dallas coverage was even more unusual because the Baptist convention was in Los Angeles.

Television news coverage of religion in Dallas heated up this year when WFAA, the local ABC affiliate, became the first to use a full-time religion reporter, a 25-year-old evangelical Christian named Peggy Wehmeyer. The station management took a gamble on her even though she had never worked in television before. Some of her colleagues at the station, in one of the country’s top 10 television markets, were not accustomed to greenhorns starting out at the top. Some of them balked at working with her at all, although others were kind. She came to the station (first as a writer, then as an on-camera reporter) from Dallas Theological Seminary, where she was public information director.

Marty Haag, the program director for WFAA, said public response to its regular religion coverage has been good. “We were inundated with letters from people who appreciated it,” he said. The religion beat is an unusual one for television, Haag said, but it is a significant one. “This is the kind of beat where all sorts of trends and movements in society show up. It also gives us a chance to report good news stories in which people are doing things for others.”

Haag said Wehmeyer’s transition from print to broadcast journalism has been unusually smooth, given the suddenness, and he added that some reporters are not able to make it at all.

Her Christian friends thought Wehmeyer’s transition from the seminary to WFAA’s news was something close to a miracle.

But although her climb was fast, Wehmeyer knows it was not easy. She remembers fear that almost dried up her words the day she met Haag and asked if she could work for him. She remembers terror in facing that first morning on the desk after Haag had challenged her desire to work by saying, “You want to work here? Okay—come in tomorrow morning and manage the desk.” She didn’t even know what the desk was.

She remembers encouragement from some people, but also the hurt provoked by nasty rumors and the impenetrable chill of veterans in the newsroom who had worked too long and hard to tolerate inexperience. She remembers prayers for strength, and prayers of thanks for new responsibilities. She remembers facing the risk of giving up her seminary job to write news for anchorman Tracy Rowlett’s 4:30–5:00 P.M. show.

Even after surviving that year’s transition in the newsroom, Peggy Wehmeyer faces problems.

Her inexperience is one hurdle. “I need more time to smooth out some of the rough edges,” she said. “I’d like to get more of the basic structural things down well enough so I can be even more creative. I’ve learned pretty well how to put visuals and print together now, but you can never get good enough at that. It takes time and experience.

Integrating her faith and profession is another problem for Wehmeyer. One day she spoke at a Christian women’s club. During the speech she gave her personal testimony, but after the meeting could not shake an uneasy feeling about what she had done. Prior to her job with Channel 8 she had often spoken about her faith, but this time something didn’t fit.

Would she compromise her objectivity as a religion reporter by telling people what she believed? Could people in that audience respect stories she might write about religions not her own? Would Jews, Mormons, or atheists speak openly to her on the beat if they knew she tried to persuade people to become Christians?

The next day Wehmeyer discussed her uneasiness with one of her supervisors. He told her to cut the testimonies: he said they were bad for the station. He said she could speak about religion on television or on the beat, but that it would be wise for her as a religion reporter not to tell the public what she believes. Wehmeyer’s friends thought she was compromising.

But she made her own decision. “I don’t think at this point in my life I can be a good reporter,” she said, “seen and respected as objective, if I am also going out persuading people what they should believe. The two conflict. At least for right now I have settled with the idea that my job is to be a good reporter first.”

She added, “I don’t feel any less committed as a Christian, or like I have to hide my faith. I just feel that God has called me to be a reporter and that means, for the time being, that in other areas I must be subdued.”

Wehmeyer is subdued in public maybe, but not in the news room. She said she never goes around flying to evangelize or cram her faith down someone’s throat. But she is very open about what she believes. “I’ve been advised a number of times not to be so open,” she said. “But when people ask me why I believe what I believe—I tell them. Others have beliefs too. They just aren’t as open about them. Everybody has a certain frame of mind through which he sees things. There’s no reporter who is totally objective.”

Wehmeyer’s bias is a burden at times. “I’m sensitive to the fact that people know I’m a Christian,” she said. “Because I am a Christian I feel I have to prove that I’m even more objective than others in my reporting.”

Her faith has been stretched tight by the demands of Channel 8 reporting. “In this business you’re supposed to be a real skeptic,” Wehmeyer said, “but a Christian is someone who has faith and trusts people. I’ve had to live with the tension of being a skeptic and one who lives by faith.

“One person told me sooner or later I’d lose my faith here,” she said. “I think that’s a bunch of baloney. We ought to be skeptical about a lot of things that happen in religion.

“I’ve gotten out of my ivory tower since leaving the seminary,” she said. “I’ve seen where people hurt. Once I covered a car accident where a mother and her child were trapped in a car. I watched helplessly as they burned to death and asked, ‘God—how can you let this happen?’

“I have to admit,” she said, “the longer I work in the news room, the more I find out I don’t have all the answers. I used to have all the answers in black and white. Now I’ve had to accept the fact that I five in some gray areas. It takes a very secure person to live in the gray areas.”

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