Are journalists getting religion?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"WASHINGTON -- The late, great religion writer George Cornell knew a big story when he saw one -- especially when people kept underlining it.It was in\" \/>\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\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are journalists getting religion?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON -- The late, great religion writer George Cornell knew a big story when he saw one -- especially when people kept underlining it.It was in\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Terry Mattingly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2000-05-24T12:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-01-30T19:03:16+00:00\" \/>\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=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/\",\"name\":\"Are journalists getting religion?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2000-05-24T12:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-01-30T19:03:16+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\"},\"description\":\"WASHINGTON -- The late, great religion writer George Cornell knew a big story when he saw one -- especially when people kept underlining it.It was in\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Are journalists getting religion?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\",\"name\":\"Terry Mattingly\",\"description\":\"On Religion\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\",\"name\":\"tmatt\",\"description\":\"Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Universal Syndicate.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/author\/tmatt\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Are journalists getting religion?","description":"WASHINGTON -- The late, great religion writer George Cornell knew a big story when he saw one -- especially when people kept underlining it.It was in","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Are journalists getting religion?","og_description":"WASHINGTON -- The late, great religion writer George Cornell knew a big story when he saw one -- especially when people kept underlining it.It was in","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/","og_site_name":"Terry Mattingly","article_published_time":"2000-05-24T12:00:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2013-01-30T19:03:16+00:00","author":"tmatt","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"tmatt","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/","name":"Are journalists getting religion?","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website"},"datePublished":"2000-05-24T12:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2013-01-30T19:03:16+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1"},"description":"WASHINGTON -- The late, great religion writer George Cornell knew a big story when he saw one -- especially when people kept underlining it.It was in","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Are journalists getting religion?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/","name":"Terry Mattingly","description":"On Religion","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1","name":"tmatt","description":"Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Universal Syndicate.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/author\/tmatt\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":1132,"date":"2000-05-24T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-05-24T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/24\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/"},"modified":"2013-01-30T14:03:16","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T19:03:16","slug":"are-journalists-getting-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2000\/05\/are-journalists-getting-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Are journalists getting religion?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

WASHINGTON \u2014 The late, great religion writer George Cornell knew a big story when he saw one \u2014 especially when people kept underlining it.<\/p>\n\n

It was in April 1982, that he wrote his Associated Press story about research by S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman into the moral and religious views of journalists in America\u2019s top newsrooms. One statistic jumped out of the report and into pulpits nationwide. Half of these journalists, when faced with the \u201creligious affiliation\u201d blank, wrote \u201cnone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Cornell dug deeper and learned that many had also underlined the word \u201cnone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\u201cA lot of journalists, grew up in a tradition where religion \u2014 at least the substance of religion \u2014 was out of the ballpark as far as newspapering is concerned,\u201d Cornell told me, when I was doing graduate research at the University of Illinois. \u201cI think that idea has carried over. \u2026 They hesitate to cover religion because they see it as a private matter and they don\u2019t want it in the newspaper. Of course, this attitude could also be due to their ignorance of religion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

That was then. According to a new 30-year study by Lichter and the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the amount of religion news in America\u2019s elite media doubled from the 1980s to the \u201990s. The percentage of elite journalists who claimed they had no religious affiliation has fallen from that 50 percent level in 1980 to 22 percent. In 1980, 14 percent of those surveyed said they attended religious services at least once a month. It was 30 percent in the new report.<\/p>\n\n

Nevertheless, Lichter\u2019s team found that the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, NBC and CBS combined produced only 116 religion news stories a year during the \u201990s, or just above two a week. Also, journalists embraced certain kinds of stories, while shunning others.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s true that there is more religion in the news, today,\u201d said Lichter. \u201cBut what you tend to get is the religion of the journalists \u2014 which is politics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Thus, religious groups usually made news when engaged in public policy debates or internal power struggles, especially if the clashes were about sex. Church-state conflicts produced one out of every eight stories about religion in the \u201990s. Journalists love to dissect the Religious Right.<\/p>\n\n

Meanwhile, 93 percent of the religion news reports contained no references to theology or the spiritual content of a group or person\u2019s faith. This \u201cspiritual dimension\u201d appeared in only 5 percent of stories about Catholicism or Protestantism, but graced 26 percent of those about Eastern religions, such as Buddhism<\/a> and Taoism and 19 percent of those about Islam.<\/p>\n\n

One explanation for this is that journalists may presume readers already know the \u201ctheological rationales behind mainstream religious opinions,\u201d said Newsweek religion editor Kenneth Woodward, during a forum on the survey at the Ethics & Public Policy Center. Then again, reporters may simply be theologically ignorant or operating with a \u201cdon\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell\u201d policy when it comes to the role of faith in the news, he said.<\/p>\n\n

In the years since the original \u201cmedia elites\u201d study, its critics have attacked the claim that major newsrooms are havens of secularism. The Freedom Forum\u2019s 1993 \u201cBridging the Gap\u201d report noted that 72 percent of 266 editors surveyed nationwide said that religion is \u201cimportant in their lives,\u201d while only 9 percent claimed no religious affiliation.<\/p>\n\n

But Lichter remains fascinated that 70 percent of elite journalists continue to attend religious services once a year, or less, or never. Also, journalists remain paragons of progressive virtues on hot moral issues. In 1980, 90 percent were pro-abortion rights. It\u2019s 97 percent in the new report. Support for gay rights was 76 percent in 1980 and has slipped by a statistically insignificant amount, to 73 percent.<\/p>\n\n

A logical way to read this, said Lichter, is to say that elite newsrooms contain just as many cultural and political liberals, but that some journalists now attend \u201csocially and culturally liberal congregations.\u201d Newsrooms may be fertile mission fields for oldline Protestant churches.<\/p>\n\n

Or perhaps, quipped Woodward, \u201cbaby boomer journalists now have adolescent kids and that will drive almost anyone to church.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"