{"id":106318,"date":"2013-06-05T23:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T03:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/?p=106318"},"modified":"2013-06-05T20:43:15","modified_gmt":"2013-06-06T00:43:15","slug":"wpost-style-manages-to-print-an-interesting-ewtn-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2013\/06\/wpost-style-manages-to-print-an-interesting-ewtn-story\/","title":{"rendered":"WPost Style manages to print an interesting EWTN story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Whenever your GetReligionistas pick on the Style gods at The Washington Post<\/em> \u2014 primarily with our pronouncements that alternative points of view are good things in features about controversial issues (perfect example here<\/a>) \u2014 there is always someone out there in comment-pages land who tells us to lighten up and get real.<\/p>\n

After all, why should anyone expect the traditional rules of journalism to apply back in the once-fluffy pages of the Style section, even when the ace writers there are dealing with subjects of national and global importance. Right? Who needs to hear from the other side when you are dealing with issues of culture, as opposed to the real world of politics?<\/p>\n

Call me crazy, but I still like to hear from critical, informed, worthy voices on the other side of controversial issues, especially on religion-news stories. It doesn\u2019t matter to me whether the feature story focuses on people and institutions on the religious left or the religious right. It\u2019s even nice to read a diversity of views when things are going on in the middle.<\/p>\n

Every rare now and then, the Style gods do one of their profiles of someone on the conservative side of things. These reports are rare, since conservatives, one can only assume, very rarely do colorful, creative, edgy and stylish things. Nevertheless, we had a big Style report on a pack of conservatives just the other day and, to my shock, the report was very low-key and respectful.<\/p>\n

In fact, I thought it suffered from a severe lack of commentary by Catholic liberals who, trust me, would have wanted to discuss the news hook for this story<\/a>. Why? Because we are talking about Mother Angelica and we\u2019re talking about news in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve long delivered the Good News. And now, simply news.<\/p>\n

The Eternal Word Television Network, which, from an unlikely start in the garage of an Alabama monastery, has become one of the world\u2019s biggest religious broadcasting operations, is bulking up its presence in Washington this summer by starting its first evening newscast.<\/p>\n

The live, half-hour show, scheduled to start next month, is a major step for the Catholic broadcast company, whose message is typically expressed through devotional talk shows, replays of Mass and religious education programming such as series on the Eucharist or the saints.<\/p>\n

By planting a stake in Washington \u2014 in an office space near Capitol Hill \u2014 EWTN hopes to raise its profile on issues where religion converges with public affairs: abortion, contraception, stem cell research, immigration, the death penalty, terrorism and repression of Christians abroad.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a deliberate choice to be in the midst of everything,\u201d said Michael P. Warsaw, EWTN\u2019s president and chief executive. \u201cWe hope it has an impact on policymakers and the inside-the-Beltway crowd.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, believe it or not, this story does not contain a single word of commentary \u2014 on or off the record \u2014 from some of the logical Catholic liberals who reside in this town. I can understand Vice President Joe Biden or Rep. Nancy Pelosi taking a pass, but where is E.J. Dionne or the always quotable Father Thomas J. Reese?<\/p>\n

But while I was surprised that this feature didn\u2019t seek some of the liberal Catholic voices that were sure to be critical of EWTN, it made me happy by seeking out at least two first-rate authority voices who could actually provide needed input on the subject at hand. That would be the potential audience for the show and how the news might be filtered by the doctrinal views of its leaders.<\/p>\n

Methinks these are good questions to toss at all cable-news operations, these days.<\/p>\n

One of the voices is rather obvious. The second showed real initiative and insight. So who are we talking about?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Experts on media and Catholic affairs said EWTN will fill a void, because there is no other daily news TV program that is pitched to the estimated 75 million Catholics in the United States. And while the network\u2019s guests include a steady diet of those who represent the conservative wing of the church, EWTN does not stoke right-wing fury like a Fox commentator.<\/p>\n

\u201cEWTN has a lot of people on its air, and they don\u2019t all sing from the same songbook,\u201d said John L. Allen Jr., a Vatican authority and senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

EWTN\u2019s influence, and presumably that of its newscast, derives in large measure from its devoted audience and sheer reach \u2014 there\u2019s hardly a place on Earth its signal does not go. Exact viewership numbers are impossible to know, especially because it\u2019s available in more than 140 countries and territories. Nevertheless, said Allen, EWTN is \u201cthe biggest game in town in the Catholic-broadcast universe. The big prize is trying to get on their air or get them involved in what you are doing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And what about the actual content of the show? The team working on this feature reached way outside the DC Beltway and tapped into the knowledge of a many who has been at the top of religion-news scholarship since the 1980s.<\/p>\n

Bravo!<\/p>\n

Stewart M. Hoover, director of the University of Colorado\u2019s Center for Media, Religion and Culture, described EWTN as \u201ca general-interest Catholic service, though with a clearly conservative-traditionalist bent\u201d that would appeal to an older and conservative viewership.<\/p>\n

Hoover said he monitored EWTN\u2019s coverage of the papal transition earlier this year. \u201cThey didn\u2019t seem so much like a hard news service as a soft-feature framing of the events,\u201d he wrote in an e-mail. \u201cI\u2019d expect their news service from Washington to be similar: Catholic, traditional, tending to soft-pedal controversies in place of serious advocacy on issues like opposition to abortion, et cetera. I\u2019d expect the Bishops Conference to get a lot of attention, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWill it be the Fox News of Catholicism or religion? I\u2019d doubt they\u2019d be that strong or strident,\u201d he added. \u201cMore likely a gentle, dolorous, pious framing of events with strong coverage of Catholicism and its presence in U.S. public culture. Some of the impulse is to try to recreate the Fulton Sheen era,\u201d referring to the bishop and Catholic media star of the 1950s and 1960s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what is my point?<\/p>\n

First of all, I simply wanted to note that seeking input from critical, informed and worthy voices is always a plus, in journalism. Why run virtual-PR stories? What\u2019s the point of doing that?<\/p>\n

Second, the next time you are reading a totally one-sided Post<\/em> Style section piece about some trendy liberal subject \u2014 something like the views of gay and transsexual Muslims<\/a> \u2014 ask yourself this simple journalistic question: Who are the two or three authorities on the other side of this issue, or authorities whose expertise is universally accepted, who could have been interviewed to provide balance and additional information? We\u2019re talking about the equivalent of people like John L. Allen Jr., Stewart Hoover or John C. Green.<\/p>\n

There are tremendous voices out there on a host of topics, with perspectives all over the map \u2014 contrarian voices even. Journalists simply have to want to find them. For some reason the Post<\/em> Style gods are more driven to do that on some subjects and not on others. I wonder why?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever your GetReligionistas pick on the Style gods at The Washington Post \u2014 primarily with our pronouncements that alternative points of view are good things in features about controversial issues (perfect example here) \u2014 there is always someone out there in comment-pages land who tells us to lighten up and get real. After all, why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,6,7,3,23,12],"tags":[890,1745,1731,1744],"class_list":["post-106318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholicism","category-godbeat","category-journalism","category-politics","category-radio-and-tv","category-religion","tag-ewtn","tag-mother-angelica","tag-the-washington-post","tag-thomas-j-reese"],"yoast_head":"\nWPost Style manages to print an interesting EWTN story<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Whenever your GetReligionistas pick on the Style gods at The Washington Post -- primarily with our pronouncements that alternative points of view are good\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2013\/06\/wpost-style-manages-to-print-an-interesting-ewtn-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"WPost Style manages to print an interesting EWTN story\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Whenever your GetReligionistas pick on the Style gods at The Washington Post -- primarily with our pronouncements that alternative points of view are good\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2013\/06\/wpost-style-manages-to-print-an-interesting-ewtn-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"GetReligion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-06-06T03:00:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-06-06T00:43:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/files\/2013\/06\/EWTNMotherAngelica.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2013\/06\/wpost-style-manages-to-print-an-interesting-ewtn-story\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2013\/06\/wpost-style-manages-to-print-an-interesting-ewtn-story\/\",\"name\":\"WPost Style manages to print an interesting EWTN story\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-06-06T03:00:31+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-06-06T00:43:15+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\"},\"description\":\"Whenever your GetReligionistas pick on the Style gods at The Washington Post -- primarily with our pronouncements that alternative points of view are good\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2013\/06\/wpost-style-manages-to-print-an-interesting-ewtn-story\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2013\/06\/wpost-style-manages-to-print-an-interesting-ewtn-story\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2013\/06\/wpost-style-manages-to-print-an-interesting-ewtn-story\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"WPost Style manages to print an interesting EWTN story\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/\",\"name\":\"GetReligion\",\"description\":\""The press . . . just doesn't get religion." - 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