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Thursday, May 06, 2004
Reporters and religion X2
Over at Relapsed Catholic, Kathy Shaidle has posted a link to Why Don’t Journalists Get Religion? A Tenuous Bridge to Believers in the Columbia Journalism Review.
Perhaps it should be paired with this article out of the May issue of First Things, The Politics of Partisan Neutrality by Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio:
It is thus comfortable for journalists to conceive of religiously based political conflict in terms of an aggressive Christian right advancing upon a beleaguered neutral and pluralistic center and left.What the journalists leave out of their accounts is the fact that the nonreligious have also become aggressive actors on the political stage and that they possess and promote, in fact, an overarching religious worldview of their own--one that can fairly be called secularism.
Posted by Kevin Steel on May 6, 2004 | Permalink
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» Reporters And Religion from small dead animals
There's a genesis of a discussion beginning at the Shotgun over an article that asks Why Don't Journalists Get Religion? I think the premise is wrong. I think that Journalists think they have it all nailed. They get religion just... [Read More]
Tracked on 2004-05-06 11:39:36 AM
» Reporters And Religion from small dead animals
There's a genesis of a discussion beginning at the Shotgun over an article that asks Why Don't Journalists Get Religion? I think the premise is wrong. I think that journalists think they have it all nailed. They get religion just... [Read More]
Tracked on 2004-05-06 11:43:10 AM
Comments
And if you are 'into' this subject, do read the entire Christian Smith instant classic article that CJR mentions:
http://www.therevealer.org/archives/feature_000161.php
"Other journalists simply cannot pronounce 'evangelicals' at all. They get confused and flustered, and after a few uncomfortable tries at 'evangelics' and 'evangelicalists' they give up and resort to referring to evangelicals simply as 'them.' These are the knowledge-class professionals who are supposedly informing millions of readers about religion in America..."
And so forth.
We talk about this a lot on the CTS show "Behind the Story," on which I'm a regular panelist. And I have to disagree with the CJR writer's dismissal of the more mundane reasons that journos don't 'get' religion. In my experience (as instant expert, during the sex abuse scandals) younger journalists especially are as clueless about religion as they are about, say, statistics. 'Kids these days' are terribly illiterate, God-wise.
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle | 2004-05-06 10:10:14 AM
To: Kathy Shaidle.
May I ask who/what is CTS and CJR?
Posted by: gg | 2004-05-06 10:16:36 AM
CJR is the Columbian Journalism Review, in which the article Kevin links to just appeared.
Crossroads Television (CTS) is probably best known around Southern Ontario as the station that airs Michael Coren's talk show, as well as 100 Huntley Street. About once a month, I appear on their program Behind the Story, on which we look at how the secular media covers the religious stories of the day.
I'm not sure how many people can get CTS, but my latest episode of Behind the Story happens to air this Sunday at 7pm EST :-)
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle | 2004-05-06 11:29:33 AM
Here is another take on that original CJR essay:
http://jkalb.org/tab/archives/the_times_and_the_timeless.php
Posted by: Kathy | 2004-05-06 5:17:45 PM
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