Reporting on new casinos across the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, Iowa, veteran newsman Robert Dorr of The Omaha World Herald last year consistently used the phrase“ gamblers' losses” to describe waging revenues at two riverboats and a racetrack casino.
“That’s the clearest way to convey what the casino gets,” said Dorr. His writing decision, backed by editors and blasted by casino owners, may be an example of how his religious affiliation possibly influences his reporting, he said.
Dorr is a longtime member of the United Methodist Church, which actively opposes the spread of organized gambling. “I’ve plunked down a few quarters in Las Vegas,” he said, “but my belief is that once gambling gets away from Las Vegas and Atlantic City, it does some terrible things to some people.” The three casinos take in $250 million a year alone in “gamblers’ losses,” he said.
As for the motive behind his word choice, “whether that’s my religious belief or whether that’s genuinely the best term to reflect what I’m trying to convey, I don’t know,” Dorr said. “I honestly think it’s the latter. I don’t think it’s biased or unfair.” Lately he has used “casino income” as an occasional synonym for stylistic reasons.
Dorr said also that his “tough and skeptical” reporting “happens to coincide” with the editorial stance of The World Herald, whose opposition he credited for voters' rejection of proposed gambling in Nebraska.
Journalists' inability to say precisely if, or how, their religious beliefs affect their news decisions is hardly unusual. Catholic-raised, Buddhist-trained Michael Haddigon, writing in this issue, concedes: “Where Catholicism, Buddhism and simple news judgment begin and end in the selection process, I have no idea.”
This uncertainty arises for at least three reasons. First, journalism credos encourage a detachment on the job from personal interests. Despite his 35 years on The World Herald, Dorr, for one, could not think of another story that he’s covered that presented a potential religious conflict of interest.
Second, God-talk rarely surfaces in newsrooms because one’s spiritual views and religious allegiances are not grist for casual chatter any more than they are at other workplaces. Additionally, “the ethos of journalism somehow makes people feel they will be taken as lightweights and marginalized if they are too public” about their faith, writes reporter James Richardson.
Third, based on my own 30-year experience covering religion, I think that it is very difficult for anyone to determine how influential one’s faith is in decision-making vis-a-vis their age, sex, race, social and economic motives, and the basest or purest of individual instincts.
For these reasons, the Nieman Reports examination of how modern-day scribes and town criers deal with their religious perspectives in journalism ought to spur a broader discussion of unexamined religious biases in the newsroom. Research should also look at journalists who are nominally religious or non-believers.
The accounts here by openly religious journalists provide a practical beginning. Skeptics may be surprised how many believers are devoted to the journalistic principles of fairness, honesty and hard-nosed inquiry, even blending it with religious duty. “I regard it as a Christian duty to do journalism that way,” attests Arkansas newsman Bill Simmons. Some believe that their faith background is a career plus: Karla Vallance, a Christian Scientist, and Presbyterian-raised Chris Hedges say that their upbringing “informs” their news-gathering craft.
Potential conflicts rear up when religiously committed journalists are asked to express opinions as columnist, commentator, editorial writer or political cartoonist. Gene Owens, a Jehovah’s Witness, recounts his difficult decision to quit as an editorial writer at the Roanoke (Va.) Times & World News because of his belief in the futility of human governments conflicted with his newspaper obligation to urge support for promising political efforts.
May both reader and researcher beware of overconfidence, however. Knowing journalists’ religious affiliations will rarely permit you to predict their beliefs or know how they would handle a given story. Evangelical Christian Kim Lawson says, “I think I’m tougher on my own groups because I know more, including their foibles.” Lawson, former Religion Editor for UPI Radio, is news editor for “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly,” a WNET program being offered this fall to other PBS stations.
In addition, denominations typically have liberal and conservative wings with differing interpretations of what their faith means today. Knowing someone is Presbyterian doesn’t tell you his or her view of the death penalty; you ’d have to ask. Christians to the right of center on theological and cultural issues may be “ liberal” on gay and lesbian matters because of their experience with family or friends who are not heterosexual.
Thus, many Americans unapologetically fashion their own set of beliefs, even while claiming to be loyal Baptists, Lutherans or Catholics. The Vatican has complained about “cafeteria Catholics” who selectively agree or disagree with church teachings or public stances.
Changing circumstances can alter beliefs on occasion. Take Paul Conrad, whose editorial cartoons are distributed by The Los Angeles Times Syndicate. His views on abortion rights changed noticeably more than a decade ago, for all to see.
Two much-remembered cartoons that illustrated Conrad’s shift in thinking were a fetus hanging on a cross (before) and the figure of Justice holding scales made out of coathangers (after). “ This was after President Reagan was expected to start appointing U.S. Supreme Court judges to overturn the Roe vs. Wade decision,” Conrad said. “I decided women should be able to decide what to do with their bodies.”
Then and now an active Catholic parishioner, Conrad said he favors abortion rights policies but opposes abortion itself. He and his wife have acted on that belief: “Kay and I have taken into our home close to a dozen young women who became pregnant.”
The case of Paul Conrad and countless other journalists should be a reminder that “religious” and “conservative” are not always synonymous. It only seems that way at times because conservative religious groups are making much of the religious news today. The religious liberal is so assimilated within secular society, including the secular newsroom, that he or she is often virtually invisible.
David Shaw, media critic for The Los Angeles Times, concluded in a 1990 series that coverage of abortion by major newspaper, television and newsmagazine outlets was “unfair to the opponents of abortion, either in content, tone, choice of language or prominence of play.” Five years before, Shaw noted, a nationwide Times Poll of newspaper staffers showed 82 percent favored abortion rights.
Asked recently about that series, Shaw said that he recalled very few people, Catholics as well as non-Catholics, who categorically opposed abortion. “The vast majority that I encountered said that every right-thinking person thought it was a woman’s decision,” Shaw said. “It was not so much an ideological judgment as a cultural assumption that was absorbed almost by osmosis. Most did not know anyone who was opposed to abortion.”
Shaw has critiqued the performance and ethics of the news media since 1974. But he said that only in three major subjects were the religious beliefs of journalists of possible relevance — in the abortion story, a study of religion news reporting and an assessment of how the press covers the Pope.
“Apart from those stories, it’s not an issue that ever comes up,” Shaw said. “That may be because I am not a religious person myself. My sense is that most reporters are not religious, but I don’t know that for a fact because it is not something of interest to me.”
In fact, religion news specialists at newspapers, newsmagazines or wire services are aware of a goodly number of co-workers with religious ties or interests. This is not because religion writers function as newsroom chaplains — far from it. It’s just that a religion writer’s ears perk up when someone mentions a church or uses religious jargon knowledgeably.
Some studies indicate that newsrooms are not devoid of people of faith. I did a study on religion — news media tensions with the Rev. Jimmy Allen in 1992-93 at the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University that included parallel surveys of clergy, religion writers and The Associated Press Managing Editors Association. Only 9 percent of the editors said they had no religion, a figure comparable to polls of the general public. Thirty-five percent said religion was “very important” in their lives and 37 percent said religion was “somewhat important,” giving a total of 72 percent for whom faith held some personal significance. (About 21 percent said “slightly” and 7 percent said “none.”)
Many of our findings are in “Bridging the Gap: Religion and the News Media,” which has been distributed free to more than 25,000 people. A couple of questions were pertinent to the relationship between journalists' religiosity and professional performance.
Most clergy agreed with the statement, “Religion is often shortchanged in news coverage because journalists are skeptics or not religious themselves.” (Agreeing were 61 percent Catholics, 65 percent mainline and 87 percent conservative Protestant.) Of the editors, 55 percent agreed. Seven of 10 religion writers agreed, but that was not necessarily a self-critical commentary. A high proportion of religion news writers are religious, but they also know that most of what is reported about religion is by general assignment reporters, the court or political beats, columnists or wire services. (The Dart-Allen survey found that even on papers with strong religion specialists the majority of religion news is done by non-specialists — sometimes as much as 75 percent).
At the same time, most religion writers chafe at the notion that religious activity is a prerequisite for the job or even desirable. Only 20 percent of religion writers agreed with the survey statement that “reporters who cover religion regularly should be active in a religion;” 44 percent disagreed, 27 percent of them strongly. Editors backed up religion writers on that point whereas most clergy thought differently. Members of the Religion Newswriters Association tend to cringe at any suggestion that they need to be demonstrably religious themselves in order to do a good job. Becoming heavily involved in church or temple life carries a threat to professional objectivity, many say.
Sociologist John Schmalzbauer has attempted to discover this psychological intersection negotiated by religion writers and other journalists known to be religious. He interviewed nine evangelicals and nine Catholics at major print and broadcasting companies in New York and Washington. Two of the nine in both cases were religion specialists.
At least half of the 18 “mobilize the rhetoric of objectivity and detachment” to draw a boundary between their private views and their professional writing, said Schmalzbauer at the 1995 Conference on Media, Religion & Culture at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He said that Jack Kelley of USA Today, Peter Steinfels of The New York Times and ex-United Press International correspondent Wes Pippert were three who did this when they felt they came “close to violating the borders.” But Steinfels and Pippert also found ways to bridge the gap when talking about truth, justice and other concepts of concern in both fields.
In the end, “evangelical and Catholic journalists manage the boundary between objectivity and moral commitment by reframing objectivity as a religious moral commitment,” said Schmalzbauer, who is at the Center for Study of Religion and American Culture in Indianapolis, jointly sponsored by Indiana and Purdue Universities.
Taking those ideas a bit further, I’d suggest that journalism at its best is a quasi-religion that offers practitioners salvation from the corrupting lures of special interests. Whether dismayed by religious charlatans or devoted to them, personally conflicted editors and reporters have a way out, confessing loyalty to higher canons of balanced, straightforward news treatment.
It is for good reason that some say journalism is a “calling,” not only because so many journalists have wages near the poverty level but also because the vocation blesses those who shed light on truth, or a close approximation, and expose sins against the public. That hilltop news cathedral occupying high moral ground is the Fourth Estate, and it is equipped with bully pulpits for sharp-tongued journalists ordained as columnists and commentators.
Okay, I’m playing with metaphors. All of the above can and is described adequately in secular language.
Yet, ambiguity abounds when we talk about religiosity in journalistic practice. With the subject left unexplored for so long, no wonder news people find it hard to define what influence, if any, the pull of faith has on their work. It’s a tough boundary rife with suspicions and stereotypes. Just as virulent are latent anti-religious attitudes that may only surface when hot-button issues flare. Those who have developed tactics to negotiate that delicate frontier need to be heard, and this issue is a good start.