Hi, I am working on a Masters thesis, tentatively titled SundayJournalism in a Saturday World. It essentially examines how themainstream press differs from the religious (church) press, particularlylooking at Anglican media and mainstream media.

This has been a concern of mine for years, having worked inboth religious and mainstream.

I was once in line for the position of religion editor at theGlobe and Mail, which calls itself Canada’s national newspaper. I lostthe job because the managing editor of the paper, the person who wouldhave hired me, wanted more hard news, and I told him that most religiousnews was soft news. (Unless, of course, the Pope absconds with hissoprano soloist sometime.)

I see two major differences between religious and commercial.Bear with me — it may turn out to be three, or even four.

One is that business of soft news and hard news. Hard newsmeans (if you don’t understand these terms already) that something hashappened, or is happening, or will happen. But there is an event, thatcan be reported. Soft news is essentially analysis. It involvesrecognizing and explaining trends.

It is hard news if Hans Kung renounces Catholicism, andannounces that papal infallibility is a sham. Something has happened.But if no one immediately follows him, it quickly becomes non-news.Nothing is happening. It is soft news if someone starts analyzing thecontent of sermons in a host of churches, and discovering that more andmore priests allowing their people to be skeptical about papal edicts.No one thing has happened, but something is happening underground, so tospeak.

Another is attitude to religion itself. The religious presstakes for granted that religion is important. It may not be a goodthing, but it is important. The commercial press does not. Because, ofcourse, the commercial press does not make money from religion. Ifanything, religion hampers its ability to make money by sellingproducts.

So, although the commercial media might never admit it, theydo start with a built-in bias against religion. The commercial mediaare, in that sense, thoroughly post-modern, in that they startdeconstructing anything that churches or church leaders do or say, tofind the motives, and to find out what those leaders are trying NOT toreveal.

The religious media usually recognize that they have this biasin favor of religion. The commercial media generally do not recognizethat they have any bias at all. But it’s clear to me, at least, thebusiness reporters have a bias in favor of business, sports reportershave a bias in favor of sports, and so on. I cannot imagine a sportsreporter surviving long if he or she constantly argued that professionalsports was a colossal waste of time, that could better be spent in, say,helping out at a food bank!

A third is attitude to conflict. Generally speaking, thecommercial media cannot have news without conflict of some kind. Sportsis the classic example: the human against time, against elements,against other humans. Politics is just sports in a different arena. Eventheir “good news” stories tend to pit welfare moms winningvictories over bureaucrats, or school kids cleaning up a stream pollutedby other less environmentally sensitive people.

The religious media, by and large, downplay conflict — atleast within their denominations. They may report on dissension, butwill usually try to find at least one thing that the dissenting partiesagree on, to indicate that there is still some amicability, and perhapssome hope. If they do focus on conflict, it’s usually “church”against “them” — whether the “them” is capitalism,socialism, communism, patriarchalism, feminism, whatever… Almostnever, in my experience, will the religious media turn a conflict into apersonality issue; the secular/commercial media almost always do.

I go back to the WCC General Assembly in Vancouver, in 1983,which I covered. The commercial media did not know — had no clue, infact — how to deal with an assembly of 800 people from 300 churchesfrom 200 countries. The mood was that of a gigantic family reunion.There was conflict, of course, but it was either behind the scenes, orover subtle differences of theology or evangelism that the commercialmedia considered to be irrelevant and meaningless. So, for 11 out of 14,they concentrated on a small group of far-right fundamentalists lead byCarl McIntyre, who carried placards and fulminated against everythingfrom papistry to devil infiltration. When there were press conferences,the questions were almost uniformly about splits, chasms, arguements,and conflicts. I cannot recall one question from the secular media aboutagreements. It was not until the final few days that a few of the moreperceptive journalists realized that McIntyre and his fellows wereutterly extraneous, and quit giving them the headlines.

I suppose my last point is that the religious media — and Ithink I can say this without exception — have a hell of a lot lessmoney to spend on their reporting than the commercial media do.

Jim

Jim Taylor’s Quixotic Ventures http://www.nexxus.bc.ca/edgese-mail