Language gap; what are our reference points? - religion and media - Editorial

Christian Century, June 29, 1994 by James M. Wall

A GROUP OF JOURNALISTS and religious leaders met recently in Evanston, Illinois, to consider how to organize a new Media and Religion Center linking a theological seminary (Garrett-Evangelical) and a journalism school (Northwestern). One of the participants, New York Times religion writer Peter Steinfels, observed that one challenge of such a project is overcoming the lack of a common language. For the news media, said Steinfels, "popular fiction provides a reference point that was once provided to an earlier public by Shakespeare or the Bible." An allusion to the television character Murphy Brown is instantly recognized by the public as a reference to a single parent. People who no longer resonate to stories about prodigal sons or unfaithful servants are familiar with lines from popular movies ("Make my day," "We'll always have Paris"). Shakespeare may get better and more frequent film treatment than the Bible, and it is more readily taught in the public schools, but this rich resource of the English language is largely unknown to the general public. (I once shouted to a colleague at a Democratic National Convention, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more" and drew an uncomprehending stare.

Few reporters at the site of the Branch Davidian disaster at Waco, Texas, last year were prepared to interpret David Koresh's use of the Bible. According to one of the Evanston participants, one reporter, when informed that Koresh was relying on the Book of Revelation, asked, "Where do you find that book?" (A theologian present insisted that he had heard a reporter ask, in another context, how to spell "Jesus."

Participants at the Evanston gathering were in general agreement that the media are so thoroughly secular that even when they want to talk about religion they are easily led astray. There is something slightly Off-kilter, for example, in the way in which some Christians are able to persuade journalists that abortion is a scriptural abomination and that Jesus abhorred homosexuality, when in fact neither topic commands any serious biblical attention. The two issues have become central to the "religious" debate not because they are crucial to any single faith but because journalists have been persuaded that they are.

In other areas, journalists are legs willing to accept others' definition of what is important. Science or education reporters know their subjects well enough to set their own agenda and to determine the significance of the newest fad. There are superb religion reporters at work today--including Steinfels, John Dart of the Los Angeles Times and Richard Ostling of Time--but often covering the religion beat is but one remove from working on the obituary page in print journalism's pecking order. (The recent addition of a religion reporter at ABC News--the first at a major television outlet--only underscores how little attention nonprint journalists pay to the topic.

The absence of a language shared by religion and journalism is a problem that has its counterpart in government. This is apparent in this summer's hottest political book, Bob Woodward's The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House, The work has to be taken with a touch of salt, since Woodward's sources (usually unnamed) have their own agenda to promote. But Woodward's narrative does suggest that the war raging within the administration for the soul of Bill Clinton is a struggle between the president's elite intellectual friends and the media consultants who want to retain the themes that were pushed in his campaign.

Woodward writes of the initial motivation with which Clinton's media team fashioned his campaign, and he reports on an impassioned speech Hillary Clinton gave at a Camp David meeting of advisers: "|You show people what you're willing to fight for when you fight your friends,' Hillary said." (She was recalling the struggle she and her husband had with teachers over school reform in Arkansas.) She noted how her husband has used that wonderful quote from Isaiah, "Where there is no vision, the people perish," in his convention acceptance speech. "The vision, she said, was in a sense the plan for the journey ahead. They could not get bogged down in bond market talk and deficit reduction numbers. Those were just tools. They were not the vision; they were not the journey."

Woodward concludes that in spite of Hillary's passion and Clinton's longing to maintain his campaign themes, the harsh realities of the political process have led him to step away from the issues--such as job development--on which he was elected. At one point in a preinaugural meeting, Woodward says, after viewing elaborate charts and listening to his economic advisers tell him he had to make decisions that would placate the financial community, "Clinton's face turned red with anger and disbelief. |You mean to tell me that the success of the program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of [deleted] bond traders?"'

In his many interviews Woodward failed to pick up any indication of the importance of religious faith in the Clinton White House. He may not have noticed it because the struggle there has more to do with a method of communication than with policies. The Clintons seem reluctant to use spiritual language to make the case urged on them by their advisers. It is possible to speak of sacrifice, commitment, responsibility and the common good in a way Americans can understand and respond to. (Cheek out Abraham Lincoln's Civil War speeches.) But the Clintons have difficulty doing so, and the secular media are no help.