Reuters Editors
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Keeping the faith: Connecting the dots with religion and ethics coverage
Dean Wright is Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards. Any opinions are his own.
Some years ago, an American reporter who covered religion was at Tel Aviv airport leaving Israel.
As she was subjected to the usual questions from Israeli security, she was asked what she did for a living. “I write about religion,” she replied. “Which one?” the security officer responded. “Well, all of them,” the reporter said.
“How is that possible?” the officer asked. After 20 more minutes of questions, the reporter was allowed to board her plane, but it was clear from the conversation that the security officer could not conceive of a journalist writing about a faith to which she did not subscribe.
It’s an interesting question during this season of religious celebrations: Does a journalist have to be “religious” to cover religion? Is it desirable to have a reporter of one faith covering stories about another? What about atheist or agnostic reporters?
Reuters News Religion Editor Tom Heneghan, who produces the excellent FaithWorld blog, says reporters “need to know enough about the religion they’re covering to get beyond the usual clichés about the faith.” But, importantly, “they have to be ready to put aside the usual ‘either/or’ approach they learned covering politics or business. Religion often doesn’t fit into those categories, but into a ‘both/and’ perspective.”
For example, “Pope John Paul II was both liberal in some political issues such as defense of the poor or opposition to the Iraq War, and conservative in Catholic theology. Islam has radicals who commit violence in the name of God and moderates who say Islam is a religion of peace.”
And the band played on: covering the economic crisis
I recently visited one of the most frightening sites on the Web—the place where I look at my shrinking retirement account.
As I calculated the investment loss since the steep decline in the markets began, and particularly since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in mid-September, some questions arose (in addition to: Will I ever be able to retire?).
–Did we in the media do our job in reporting on the run-up to the crisis?
–Now that an “official” recession has been declared in the U.S. and the depth of the crisis is becoming clearer around the world, are we in the media keeping things in perspective? Should we even be using words like “crisis” or “meltdown?”
On the first question, I can’t help thinking of Claude Rains’ “Casablanca” character Captain Renault, who was “shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on” in Rick’s club. In hindsight, given the current state of the financial markets, wasn’t it obvious a problem was brewing?
Not necessarily. And it probably wouldn’t have been obvious to anyone reading online or print coverage or watching television news in the United States.
A look at a study by the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism indicates that, in the United States, coverage of the economy was pretty much drowned out by coverage of the presidential election—at least until the two stories converged in mid-September. Indeed, as the Pew material shows, in the month preceding the week of Sept. 15, which saw the Lehman bankruptcy, the Merrill Lynch sale, the AIG bailout and large drops in share prices, the proportion of the news hole devoted to the economy reached a low for the year, filling only 4.8 percent of the time on television and radio and space in the print and online media. Since then, that focus has shifted, as the presidential campaign narrative became, again, “it’s the economy, stupid,” and as the presidential transition has focused on U.S. economic problems.
Is journalism about reporting or investigating? We can all blog and report and describe what’s happening, the media is no longer needed for that. We can all report numbers and say what other people told us they mean. What we need is investigative journalism that tests the assumptions that are being made, that shines the spotlight on those who gave bad predictions and that helps us understand where and why did we get it so wrong.
You asked a couple of questions.
Are the media covering religion and ethics issues in a smart way? No, religion is only covered in how it relates to war and politics………Are we making the connections between religion and ethics issues and politics, finance and other areas? I think the media have help make a lot of these connections to people running for office…. What are the stories that need to be covered in 2009? Third party candidates, fair debates, clean elections, true free markets, and sound currency coined by congress.