Article Added On: June 17, 2004 - over 7 years ago
Title: Deep down newspapers are superficial
Author: Douglas Todd
Publication: Vancouver Sun
Publication Date: January 01, 1998 - over 14 years ago
Themes: Religion and society

Abstract:

Reynolds won gusts of laughter when he made fun this week of the mighty media before 300 people, most of them media-wary members of churches, synagogues, mosques and temples.

But he was doing anything but writing off newspapers with his remark, or even that most superficial medium of all, television. Reynolds was putting in perspective the often-unrealistic demands for more and better coverage being made by his religious audience, who felt the media have done them wrong.

At a three-day conference here titled Faith and the Media - which was the brainchild of John Longhurst and Harold Jantz, two motivated Mennonites from Winnipeg - the Canadian media's heavy hitters met with some of the biggest players on the national religious scene.

OTTAWA - Neil Reynolds, editor of The Ottawa Citizen, knows how to play an audience.

Reynolds won gusts of laughter when he made fun this week of the mighty media before 300 people, most of them media-wary members of churches, synagogues, mosques and temples.

But he was doing anything but writing off newspapers with his remark, or even that most superficial medium of all, television. Reynolds was putting in perspective the often-unrealistic demands for more and better coverage being made by his religious audience, who felt the media have done them wrong.

At a three-day conference here titled Faith and the Media - which was the brainchild of John Longhurst and Harold Jantz, two motivated Mennonites from Winnipeg - the Canadian media's heavy hitters met with some of the biggest players on the national religious scene.

There was testiness and defensiveness on both sides. By the end, however, there were glimmers of mutual understanding. Everyone agreed it is always possible to do a more complete job of covering faith. But the most sophisticated went away realizing there will always be tension between the media and the devout.

Reynolds' joke about the limitations of the media was reflected in a remark by CBC's Cross-Country Checkup host Rex Murphy, who hosted a wild, two-hour program on religion and the media last Sunday. The structure of the news media, Murphy said, militates against front-page stories about what ancient religions believe about, say, the creation of the universe.

Before delving into the reasons why there will - and should -always be tension between religious groups and the secular media, it's worthwhile to offer a few snapshots illustrating the state of religion and religion reporting in Canada.

• Pollsters Reginald Bibby, a sociologist from Alberta, and Andrew Grenville, of Angus Reid in Toronto, told the audience that roughly 60 to 70 per cent of Canadians say that religion is important to them. About 22 per cent attend a religious institution, usually a Christian church, at least once a week.

• A survey of three weeks of religion coverage in 28 newspapers across Canada turned up more than 1,300 religion-based stories. The large number of articles challenged complaints by many religious officials that the topic is drastically under-reported in Canada.

  It's true that small minority faiths, such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, received little attention in the informal survey of newspapers. Catholicism was the group most frequently covered, followed closely by Judaism. Which is surprising, given that Jews, like Muslims, make up only one per cent of Canadians, far less than United Church members or evangelicals.

  Of course, quantity doesn't always mean quality, as noted by Lois Sweet, Ottawa-based author of the book God in the Classroom, who analysed the contents of the newspaper scan. Only a few Canadian newspapers have writers dedicated to the religion beat. Most newspapers, Sweet said, plugged their news and religion pages with drab wire copy from outside their city.

• In releasing the results of a survey of 1,600 adult Canadians that Angus Reid did for the conference, Grenville said 65 per cent of weekly churchgoers feel "the media does a poor job of covering faith and religion and that this area does not get the kind of media coverage it should." The general Canadian population, however, felt the media was doing a better job than churchgoers.

  British Columbians were the most likely in Canada - at 59 per cent - to believe that the media does a good job reporting religion. British Columbians were also somewhat less likely to believe that religious issues weren't covered enough, with just 29 per cent saying so.

  In an interview, Grenville said one of the reasons for British Columbians' relative happiness with religion reporting could be that B.C. is the most secular province and, therefore, least likely to have members of organized religion who feel slighted.

But several religious officials at the conference praised the Southam newspaper chain, of which The Vancouver Sunis a member, for showing the most interest in religion. Virtually all the religion reporters in Canada work for Southam papers. Other than Vision TV, which is dedicated to multi-faith broadcasting, religion reporting is decidedly hit-and-miss at most networks, radio stations and newspaper groups, such as Thompson, owner of The Globe and Mail, or the Toronto Sun newspaper chain.

Many speakers at the conference, including Bibby, suggested that the religion writers who aim for the front page and also focus on broad issues of spirituality and values elicit the best response from a range of readers. Typical Canadians, Bibby said, have no interest in narrow institutional concerns such as who's in and who's out at, say, the leadership of the Presbyteran church in Canada.

Still, religious officials, from Catholics to Muslims, Scientologists to evangelical Protestants, trotted out long-held grudges about particular mistakes or oversights made by the media. They cited how the Globe recently referred to Reform party leader Preston Manning's large evangelical following as the Christian and Military Alliance; it's actually the Christian and Missionary Alliance. Muslim women complained the media stereotype Muslims as terrorists. United Church moderator Bill Phipps asked why the media ignore Canadian religious leaders' criticisms of unfettered capitalism.

However, several talked of the need for a creative tension between the media and faith. Toronto Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, the highest ranking Catholic official in Canada, admitted he's often felt great unease with the media. He's trying to get used to it. But he said the tension will always be there because the media tacitly follows a secular world view that he calls liberal democracy.

Liberal democracy puts the individual and choice first and foremost, Ambrozic said. The Catholic church, Canada's largest religious body, instead follows religious authority.

The cardinal implied that religious truth, often based on "revealed" teachings contained in scriptures, can never be compatible with the liberal democrat assumption that freedom to choose is paramount.

Peter Desbarats, former dean of journalism at Western University and a United Church member, added a variation on Ambrozic's theme. He said most journalists have bought into the scientific rationalism of the Enlightenment and will be at odds with anything approaching religious fundamentalism, with its absolute beliefs.

Since the conference was packed with religous people feeling hard done by, pollster Grenville (who is an evangelical Christian) raised another telling reason that religion and the media will likely never feel fully comfortable with each other.

He said a lot of religious people nurture a persecution complex when it comes to the media. Grenville said many religious people, particularly conservative Catholics and Protestants, take every perceived slight as another reason to disengage from society. They give up opportunities to get their agenda or values heard.

Finally, Grenville suggested another reason orthodox religious people are frustrated with how their religion is portrayed in the media - because even those within their own fragmented denomination may not share the same beliefs.

Every denomination, Grenville said, has a large proportion of adherents who attend frequently who do not necessarily follow their leaders' dictates, preferring instead to follow what Grenville calls a "private faith." In other words, they don't bow down to religious authority. They are basically liberal democrats who believe what they want to believe, not what they're told. They disagee with their leadership on everything from the use of artificial birth control to whether its mandatory to fast during Ramadan.

By the end of the conference, journalists, particularly top editors such as William Thorsell of the Globe, Kirk Lapointe of Southam's proposed national paper, Robert Lewis of Maclean's and Hana Gartner of CBC-TV's Magazine, seemed impressed at the intensity, depth, power and richness of the religious impulse in Canada.

Many religious participants, meanwhile, said they were leaving the conference with a new understanding of the essentially skeptical nature of secular journalism. They began to realize that serious coverage of religion did not mean writing only promotional copy.

And professor John Stackhouse, who recently took a position at Vancouver's evangelical Regent College, offered a suitably spiritual perspective for religious people who get worked into a lather because over possibly piddling coverage.

If you're a faithful person who feels inner peace and that you have found God - and Maclean's magazine, the Globe and Mail and CTV still manage to ignore it - well, Stackhouse says: "Who cares?"

Douglas Todd has been The Vancouver Sun's religion and ethics writer for seven years. He was won numerous awards on the beat, including the Canadian Science Writers Award, four B.C. Newspaper Awards and the Webster Foundation Award. He was recently named a finalist, for the fourth time, for the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year award, which goes to the top religion reporter in North America in the secular press. He won the Templeton award in 1994.