Reporting on religion poses challenges to journalists

By Natalie Cortes
freedomforum.org

07.12.02

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WASHINGTON — Before they can ask a single question or write a single word, journalists who cover religion face a perplexing challenge.

It's the tension between journalistic skepticism and religious belief.

"The news media sees itself as a cohort of professional skeptics, and religious people generally see themselves as a cohort of professional believers. And they’re going to be in constant antagonism toward each other," said Rabbi Jack Moline of Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria, Va., in a recent panel discussion.

But beyond the difficulty of probing into a subject that is based on faith, journalists reporting on religion have to reconcile the value that Americans place on their religious life and the importance they also give to one of the nation’s founding principles: church-state separation.

"There is a lack of attention to the religious element of a lot of stories ... because we have attempted to maintain ... this wall of separation between faith and government, between our public selves and our private faith, and because we are so frightened about any breach in that wall," said Moline.

The rabbi spoke during a panel discussion about news coverage of religion at the National Press Club, co-sponsored by the Newseum and moderated by Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center.

Media coverage of Islam after Sept. 11 received a lot of attention. "I think they’ve done a pretty good job," said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "In those immediate weeks after the attacks when Muslims were being threatened and even shot sometimes, the media was very sympathetic and did a lot of work on the backlash against the American-Muslim community."

Hooper, whose organization has been criticized for not condemning suicide bombings carried out against Israeli citizens by militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, stated, "Our organization is ... against any act of violence, against any civilian anywhere in the world by any party, and it’s that two percent or three percent of the actively anti-Muslim individuals and groups out there that are quite frankly waging a smear campaign against any Muslim leader or group that sticks their head up."

Reporters such as The Washington Times’ Larry Witham who have tried to differentiate between Islam and Islamic extremism say one of the most difficult aspects of this story is finding sources who will make that distinction.

"We know that story is there ... but in the news business you can’t pontificate ... . You have to find someone who will say that," Witham said. "In one story that I tried to do, I couldn’t find one Islamic scholar in the United States ... who would dissect Islam and say some parts of it lead to violence."

For The Washington Post’s Hanna Rosin, part of the problem is what she described as the oversensitivity with which news organizations approach these stories. She gave the example of a Muslim leader who was invited to the White House despite having made incendiary remarks in the past.

"I found the paper ... just incredibly skittish about those kinds of stories. ... I just found it very interesting that the dialogue that predominates at newspapers ... is sort of gentle with foreign cultures as opposed to America’s boorish reputation."

A further question: Is the Mideast conflict really a religious conflict? According to Rabbi Moline, reporters who cover it that way are missing the story.

"There are religious roots to the conflict in the Middle East, but there is a passion for portraying Jews against Muslims, Muslims against Jews in the Middle East, when overwhelmingly what’s going on there is a struggle for national identity and definition of national boundaries. In that sense there has been I think a real shortfall on the part of the media," Moline said.

Hanna Rosin disagreed. She stressed that people are intensely interested in the Middle East conflict because the region is the birthplace of three major religions.

For Ibrahim Hooper, the core of the conflict is religious. "When one side says God gave me the land, it’s hard not to frame it as a religious conflict. I think the problem is the spectrum of debate. Recently we’ve seen that the spectrum has expanded a little on the Palestinian side, so that there are more portrayals of Palestinian humanity and rights but ... what we’re seeing is a restriction ... on how far you can go in criticizing Israel."

The panelists also discussed reporting of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. According to Msgr. Frank Maniscalco, communications director at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the news media did not report the whole story.

"There were certain definite steps taken in the early '90s which ... made a substantial difference. ... And then when the story came out of Boston, I think what was not pointed out is that over and over again a lot of these stories were absolutely terrible stories ... which had happened many years ago and which dioceses in fact had acted on."

But journalists maintain that while the sexual-abuse issue was reported extensively in the mid-'80s, new information made it a national story in 2002.

"I think it’s the court records," said Rosin. "A story about a pedophile ... clergy is a tabloid story. A story about the leadership of the church knowing about a pedophile priest ... with years of records is like a blockbuster story ... in terms of moral importance and political significance ... . This is one of the stories that wouldn’t have come out if it weren’t for the media."

Despite the glaring spotlight on the Catholic Church in recent months, Maniscalco remained supportive of the news media’s role in society.

"If the reporting brings out the truth and the facts in the matter, then the [journalists] are doing their jobs and the public is served. If the truth is not brought out or (is) distorted or not fully reported, then anybody can be hurt by that. The question is accuracy, fairness, truth in reporting, more than the kind of story or the group you’re reporting on," Maniscalco said.

The panel discussion took place on July 1.