Not Getting Religion: Why the Mass Media Miss the Story

BY DR. PAUL MARSHALL
  
[FULL TEXT]
  
  
 INTRODUCTION: MEDIA AND RELIGION
  
The media frequently miss, or misunderstand, stories because they do
not take religion seriously, or misunderstand religion when they do
take it seriously. Jeff Sharlot, editor of the Revealer, New York
University’s online review of religion and the press, suggests
“Religion in the true, broad sense underlies, controls, permeates at
least half the stories in the news, probably a lot more.”(1) Obviously,
we can argue about the proportion of reports affected, but the
essential point is that religion is a major factor in the modern world
and, hence, in major news stories, so if reporters do not understand
religion, they will be poorer reporters. To the extent that journalists
do not grasp events’ religious dimensions, both global and local, they
are hindered, and sometimes incapable, of describing what is happening.
 
Several years ago Edward Luttwak noted that analysts and
commentators, including journalists, who are ever ready to “interpret
economic causality, who are apt to dissect social differentiations more
finely, and who will minutely categorize political affiliations, are
still in the habit of disregarding the role of religion, religious
institutions, and religious motivations in explaining politics and
conflict, and even in reporting their concrete modalities.”(2) As CNN
political analyst William Schneider has opined, “On the national level,
the press is one of the most secular institutions in American society.
It just doesn’t get religion or any idea that flows from religious
conviction. The press is not necessarily contemptuous of serious
religion. It’s just uncomprehending.”(3)
 
Roy Peter Clark, a Senior Scholar at the Poynter Institute, a
premier center for media studies, admitted his own alienation and
ignorance and noted that it makes for poor journalism: