Missing Religion in the Newsroom

In Paul Marshall’s book Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion, he tells the story of a Washington Post reporter who was covering a protest at the White House, which was being held by Pentecostal Christians. The reporter quoted a speaker who said, “Let’s pray that God will slay everyone on the Capitol,” and he reported it as a call for mass murder. Neither the reporter nor his editors realized that the Pentecostal practice of being “slain” actually refers to being “slain in the Spirit.” The speaker was calling on the Holy Spirit to come down onto the representatives in the White House. It was an entirely peaceful call.

Why doesn’t mainstream media take religion seriously? Why aren’t journalists educated to find and capture the religious context of the news? When it comes to religion, we only see headlines that involve the anti-LGBTQ Christian movement, religious affiliation in decline, Islamic extremism, and priests molesting children. Why?

• Maybe it’s because Americans are, in fact, leaving religious institutions behind. In March of 2021, a Gallup poll showed that Americans’ membership to a religious community of faith dropped below 50% for the first time.

That poll shows a shift in behavior, but not necessarily a shift in identities and values. What if someone stops going to church, but continues to enjoy cultural traditions and familial values that stem from that church and will continue to shape their life? These statistics do not point to the fact that religion is an evolving entity that is constantly changing and being re-interpreted. Religions are not static and we must recognize this evolution as opposed to blowing it off as an abandonment of the institution. We can only do this by studying practices and compiling ranges of experience (ie: people praying at home or finding new ways of practicing faith and spirituality).

• Maybe it’s because covering religious communities in a more literate and in-depth manner would violate a journalists dedication to truth and objectivity. Spirituality goes against hard truths.

But in order for a journalist to properly understand the motivation behind hard data, they need to understand an individual or a community’s system of values, which often relates to their spirituality, their community of faith, and/or their family’s history, which is bound to be connected to a community of faith. We must confront the stereotypes that atheists are unbiased, guided by reason and evidence, whereas believers are guided by myth. Many believers find no conflict between their faith and science. Both fields embrace the idea of unknowing and of seeking answers. And many atheists are ignorant and biased, claiming they have the answers in science when the field of science is actually in a constant mode of discovery. But again, not all atheists are ignorant and not all believers are unbiased. These stereotypes are the real myths that should not and cannot drive any of our reporting.

• Maybe it’s because, for the sake of pluralism in a democratic society, religious beliefs and practices should remain in the private sphere. In the United States, the separation of church and state is almost sacred (pun intended).

That would ignore thousands of years of history in which those two entities were not mutually exclusive. And even if that history were acknowledged, journalism must also acknowledge the fact that in our contemporary world, religious institutions continue to shape the minds and values and ultimately, the way in which individuals take on the duty of being citizens in a democracy. Even if we wish it were, religion cannot be isolated to one realm of life and as journalists, we should not be contributing to the drawing of arbitrary lines between different realms, such as politics and faith.

• Maybe, at the end of the day, this is not actually the fault of the journalist. The role of the journalist is to objectively tell the important stories and maybe in doing so, they are honestly exposing assumptions and biases about religions that are embedded in our culture.

If a key tenet of ethical journalism is providing context and taking special care not to oversimplify, journalists must be more literate in religious history and religious practices. And I say this not for the sake of defending religious institutions, but rather for the sake of maintaining the public’s trust in the press.

In Mark Coddington And Seth Lewis’s piece on determining sources to trust, they found that the primary component leading journalists to determine whether a source is credible is the source’s “officialness” or organizational role. The authors call this a dangerous shortcut that undermines the work of the journalist. In the world of religious reporting, this is a profoundly common trend and a particularly tricky one to confront.

We often believe that one or two representations of a religious tradition can speak for the whole. But no one imam can speak for the diverse array of approaches taken to the thousand year old tradition that is Islam. Nor can one priest speak for all of Christianity.

A handful of priests who serve a specific congregation in addition to a handful of the congregants they serve may be able to provide ample context for a story on that specific congregation. But again, they cannot speak for the religion as a whole, which not only includes dozens of different sects, but also, within each sect, the faith is interpreted and practiced in a multiplicity of ways.

And if we, as journalists, perpetuate this cultural practice of oversimplifying an entire religious tradition based on the accounts of a few sources and/or particular newsworthy events, we are doing ourselves and our audiences a huge disservice. Through more in-depth and analytical reporting, we have an opportunity to show that there is internal diversity within each religious belief and practice. How? Let’s look at how not, and hopefully we will see the incredible room for improvement.

• Coverage of Islam often perpetuates the association of Islam with violence, while it also preserves the association of Buddhism with peace and nonviolence. The vast majority of Muslims oppose violent extremism and religion is only one of the many factors that lead to the instability that we have seen in largely Muslim states. Furthermore, all religions have historical and current manifestations of violence. The Christian Crusades. Buddhist nationalists in Myanmar who are currently slaughtering Rohingya Muslims. Violence does not have a religion. Terrorism does not have a religion. And we must steer the public away from the unfair tendency to group and stereotype religions and regions in order to deal with perceived internal or external threats.

• Coverage of evangelical Christianity often excludes communities of Black and Latinx evangelicals, while only focusing on White evangelicals. And it often focuses on their conservative, intolerant politics. Do we ever read about the fact that only 56% of evangelical Christians identify as Republicans? Or that over 20% of evangelical Christians are Black or Latinx? What about them?

• Coverage of gay rights in communities of faith too often unfairly deduces and distorts based on incomplete information. Why is the media painting a picture of religious intolerance towards the LGBTQ community when studies show that large majorities of every major religious group favor nondiscrimination laws that protect LGBTQ people and support marriage equality? Religious Americans strongly support LGBTQ rights, and this reality should be reflected to ensure fair and accurate media coverage. I reported on a United Methodist Church (UMC) congregation a few weeks ago. The community calls itself “radically inclusive.” The physical church has rainbow flags flying from every steeple. The congregation includes people who identify with an array of sexual orientations and gender identities. The community does not represent the UMC as a whole, but it does offer a glimpse into how one congregation uniquely interprets and presents itself.

The examples above are just a few of the false or unfair narratives that the media has not done an adequate job in challenging when it comes to coverage of religion. If journalists were more educated and literate on religious history and religious practices and if journalists were more aware of the problematic over-simplifications of religious life in popular culture, they would be able to confront all of these generalizations. If religious literacy continues to be undervalued in newsrooms, however, the media will continue to drive journalists to the feeding ground of sensationalism, which serves absolutely no one and in fact disenfranchises all parties involved, including not just the subject, but the reporter and the consumer, too. We can do better, journalism. Let’s educate our newsrooms.