The tragedy of Sept. 11 brought more attention to religious differences in America and thrust religion issues into the forefront

By John Hafner

Sammy Kershaw, a country western singer, said the three subjects never to bring up in conversation are “politics, religion and her.” Fortunately, this is not true in journalism. Religion has earned its place in the American press, and Sept. 11 focused journalists’ attention on the role of religion in both private life and international news.

“Before Sept. 11, many Americans took for granted our ability to live with deep religious differences in this country, and many of us ignored the role religion plays in world affairs. Now we know better,” said Charles Haynes, senior scholar for the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center, in an October 2001 online article.

Religion stories involving Sept. 11 have dominated the news since the attacks, and they have veered in two distinct directions. One type lauds America’s ability to rise above calamity and celebrate the religious diversity of its people. Stories with headlines like “Thousands gather to listen and pray” run with photos depicting people of various races and religions joining together under a banner of love, peace and tolerance.

The other type of story — the one that has been reported more often — concerns the widespread fear that Muslims in America would be the targets of racial profiling and hate crimes.

With photos of Palestinian children dancing in the streets when the towers fell, it came as no surprise that there would be fear of mass hatred toward Muslims. These stories have had headlines like “Muslims fear attacks may cause backlash.”

“The dominant impulse was to show American Muslims as loyal, law-abiding people, who should not be blamed for terrorist acts apparently committed by a few of their co-religionists,” said Mark Silk in an online article for the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. “Lines were drawn between the patriotic Muslims at home and the bad ones over there,” Silk said.

Journalists led the charge for open apologies to Muslims. On Sept. 14, The Denver Post declared, “As Americans bristle with patriotism in the wake of the terrorist attacks, we also must shoulder some shame over ignorant, vengeful attacks on Muslims and others who simply appear to be Muslims.”

The diversity committee of the Society of Professional Journalists went as far as adopting 12 guidelines for how journalists should cover Islam, Arabs, Arab-Americans and Muslims. The guidelines are meant to provide direction on choosing and covering stories that demystify the Arab community. They encourage the media to include a variety of Arab opinions and perspectives in all types of stories. For example, they recommend seeking out an Arab businessman’s perspective in a business or finance story.

“Some of the pertinent points covered ... say that we should not stereotype, misrepresent, oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context. And that we should give voices to the voiceless, avoid imposing our own cultural values on others, and tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of the human experience boldly, even if it is unpopular to do so,” said Al Cross, SPJ president and political columnist for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky.

The SPJ’s guidelines seem extreme to some journalists, especially guideline 12, which advises reporters to “ask men and women from within targeted communities to review your coverage and make suggestions.”

Stephen Hayes, staff writer for The Daily Standard, lashed out at the guidelines in an Oct. 31 editorial.

“Imagine the outcry if a newspaper editor permitted a Catholic priest to revise — before publication — a reporter’s story about a pro-life rally,” Hayes said. “Or if a columnist called in a tobacco executive to edit an article about the hazards of smoking.”

Hayes said the SPJ’s guidelines are “absurd” and “come perilously close to calling for racial and religious quotas in both news photography and composition...They focus so obsessively on avoiding ‘offensive’ words and phrases that truth and accuracy seem like secondary concerns.”

Hayes said most Americans know that Muslim terrorists don’t represent Islam as a whole. “Straightforward, accurate journalism” eliminates the need for the guidelines, he said.

Lynn Schwanke, religion editor of the Missoulian, expressed a similar opinion. Good reporting should eliminate the threat of religious or racial profiling, and the push for political correctness can cause reporters to “get all tangled up in jargon” and sacrifice clarity, she said.

Jim Strauss, editor of the Great Falls Tribune, said “the spirit behind the guidelines is on target,” but journalists need to find a “middle ground” that allows them to “inform without offending.”

“If we muddy our copy, who are we really serving?” Strauss said.

There also has been an increase in stories about Israel and the on-going war between Jews and Palestinians. With continued coverage of Bush’s claim that the war on terror will extend to all nations who harbor terrorists, it’s likely that religion will continue to dominate the news. And with concern over prejudice and heightened sensitivity toward Muslims, as demonstrated by the SPJ’s guidelines, it’s evident that there are no easy solutions to the problems posed by religious issues and controversy.

With religion under a media microscope since Sept. 11, a few prominent religious leaders of non-Muslim persuasion were bound to stick their feet in their mouths. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who are no strangers to stirring up controversy in the name of religion, did just that.

On Robertson’s cable television show, “The 700 Club,” Falwell blamed “the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians” for what Robertson called “God lifting his protection over this nation.”

“Instead of rallying the religious right, Falwell and Robertson’s comments provoked the wrath of a public press unified by crisis and in no mood for religious finger pointing,” said Michael Navarstek in an online article for the Greenberg center. “Neither minister was prepared for the astonishing barrage of condemnation that fell upon them from media outlets of all shapes and sizes,” he said.

James Werrell, a columnist for the Rock Hill, S.C. Herald said, “Add the ‘700 Club Jihad’ to the list of fundamentalist extremists who pose a threat to the future of America.” The Baltimore Sun called Falwell a “reminder of our own fault lines: One man talking about the judgment of God is a warning about how we will stand — together or apart.”

Some journalists chose instead to give credit to those religious leaders who preach patience rather than lash out. The Minneapolis Star Tribune said, “Falwell gets headlines for his flame-throwing, but thousands of somber and reasoned voices speak for Christianity.”

Falwell admitted on”‘Good Morning America” that his comments “missed the mark,” but Robertson refused to apologize. “He insisted that his struggle to bring God back into the national consciousness must go on,” Navarstek said.

The stories stemming from Sept. 11 are just one type that religion reporters must tackle. The beat covers a number of diverse issues. Anything from the dangers of religious profiling to the demand for nondenominational Christmas trees is fair game. Despite limited budgets and frequent cutbacks, newspapers are reporting on the religious issues that matter to their readers. Associations for religion reporters are leading the way toward craft improvement by helping reporters define and report issues accurately and objectively.

Unlike public affairs beats, the religion beat forces reporters to make news judgments about personal faith and belief in things unseen. This subjectivity often scares many reporters and editors away from stories that matter to their readers. With increasing numbers of Americans placing greater importance on faith and religion the stories need to be covered.

“The number of Americans who say religion now has a higher profile in society has more than doubled since the beginning of the 2001,” said Jane Lampman in a Dec. 7 Christian Science Monitor article. A December survey of 1,500 adults by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 78 percent of Americans believe religion is increasing in influence, compared to 37 percent just six months ago. It’s the highest measure of religion’s popularity in 40 years.

For many, the survey is proof that the United States has entered a new era of increased spirituality, in which religion is no longer merely a private matter.

“It’s a quiet revolution that has been building since the 1980s, but this presidency has reinforced the trend,” said Haynes. “This widespread influence of religion is now more visible, more welcome and more diverse,” he said. The United States is also seeing increased participation in public policy debates from a greater mix of religions, not just Catholics or other conservative groups, Haynes said. “Many other religions are finding their voice, so there’s a ‘diversity push’ for more religion in public life,” he said.

The Pew survey also shows that Americans are heeding Bush’s call for tolerance and acceptance of Muslims. Favorable views of Muslims have risen from 45 percent in March 2001 to 59 percent in December. Furthermore, the president’s own core constituents have shown the biggest turnaround regarding Muslim acceptance; 64 percent of conservative Republicans feel favorably toward Muslims, compared to just 35 percent in March 2001.

Bush has made his faith very clear. The president makes frequent references to God during press conferences and when addressing the nation. Media scholars believe his personal faith has opened the door for an increased awareness and acceptance of all religions in the news and public life.

Reporting on this push for more religion won’t be easy, though.

In a 1995 article for the American Journalism Review, Ellen Hume said the conflicting ideologies of religion and journalism often make religion reporting extremely difficult.

“Writing well about religion is fundamentally at odds with journalism,” Hume said. “If journalism is about skepticism and religion is about beliefs, you’ve got a clash of cultures. To cover a priest, how can you say, ‘You fool. How can you say someone has risen from the dead?’”

Covering issues about people’s personal faith and relationship with God poses problems not faced by reporters with hard news beats. Getting the story and showing respect for those involved can be difficult, especially if the story involves a religion unfamiliar to the reporter.

If reporters know little about religion, they’re likely to seem ignorant to their readers and sources. On the other hand, if they’re religious and sensitive about their views, they’re likely to offend their sources. Perhaps the best way for religion reporters to do their job is to simply get informed about all the religions they have to cover.

Strauss said religion reporters represent their readerships without allowing their personal beliefs to compromise their reporting. “A lot of people think journalists aren’t good Christians,” he said. “Whatever my beliefs are, I don’t wear them on my sleeve.”

Schwanke said it can be difficult for reporters to understand other faiths, but they should “never attempt to tell people what they should believe.”

She said a small budget and lack of reporters to assign to religion stories has forced her to “rely on the faith community” for content. Schwanke depends on local churches to write their own stories about the issues affecting their congregations, she said.

Schwanke’s strategy for selecting stories each week is simple. “I try to keep the page open to all faiths,” she said. “The page belongs to the readers, to the community and to western Montana.”

There’s no doubt that readers desire more religion coverage, but that doesn’t make the job of finding religion correspondents to cover the beat any easier. Full-time religion reporters are few and far between. Newspapers have suffered cutbacks in religion reporting positions nationwide. Over the past year, full-time religion reporting beats have been eliminated at the several newspapers and hiring freezes have also hurt religion reporting, Walsh said.

It’s the same story in broadcast journalism. In October 2001, ABC fired Peggy Wehmeyer, who had been television’s sole religion correspondent since 1994. According to ABC, she will not be replaced. A Nov. 13, 2001, brief in the American Enterprise Online said, “Without a single correspondent assigned to religion, television coverage of religion will become even shallower than it is now. This is a deployment of resources that simply does not match the level of importance that everyday Americans place on religion.”

Recent findings regarding the legitimacy of religion in society, such as those obtained in the Pew survey, could persuade media executives to create more religion reporting positions.

The present shortage of religion reporters is a major shift from the 1990s.

“The number of journalists assigned to full-time positions covering religion swelled dramatically in the 1990s, and scores of newspapers introduced expansive weekly ‘faith and values’ sections at the beckoning of focus groups hungry for an increased presence of faith and religion in the media,” Walsh said in a Dec. 9 online articles for the Leonard Greenberg Center.

The demand for increased religion coverage has continued into the new millennium, but the cutbacks in religion reporting jobs have made it tough to cover the ever-broadening beat. The few full-time religion reporters working the beat today have a responsibility to accurately report on issues affecting a variety of faiths, and to represent their readers fairly.

Sept. 11 showed the United States that, despite their religious differences, Americans feel a collective sense of urgency to get closer to God. A look at history shows Americans consistently turn to God in times of trouble.

“The words ‘In God We Trust’ were added to our currency in the wake of the Civil War, and ‘under God’ was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 at the height of the struggle against communism,” Haynes said. “That’s because a good many Americans believe that when our nation fails to acknowledge God — when we fall away from God as a people — we invite disaster.”