Keeping the Faith in the Newsroom

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 27, 1999 | by Aimee Howd

Many journalists are quick to argue that their faith is the very thing that most helps them maintain an open mind and treat the people around them with understanding. "My own faith has made me realize how easy it is for people to make sweeping assumptions about any faith," says Dale Hanson Bourke, a columnist and publisher of Religion News Services. "If you want your own faith to have the opportunity to be expressed, you need to uphold everyone's freedom to do that in a way that is intelligent."

Mark O'Keefe, a reporter for the Portland Oregonian, recalls moments when living out his Christian ideals as a journalist meant offending other Christians. "While I agree that the press often has been unfair in the past to evangelicals, I'm not here to skew it the other way," says O'Keefe. "I'm here to play it as straight as I can. It's roughly analogous to when a black reporter covers the black community. Part of having integrity in journalism is doing the story that you have to write with tears in your eyes, which is calling your own community to some accountability."

Anderson, an outspoken Roman Catholic, came to faith shortly before he was taken hostage in Lebanon. "Much of my journalistic career was spent as an avowed agnostic," he tells Insight. But he says Catholicism made him more aware of people: "I want to see the victims, I want to see the ordinary people that are involved in the news. I'm not so interested in hearing what the politicians have to say."

Yet Anderson, who says he has not personally experienced animosity among his peers for his beliefs, recognizes that journalists who openly practice their faith may invite suspicion from colleagues. "There doesn't seem to be much difficulty with an Islamic journalist or a Jewish journalist, but for some reason Christians give rise to a good deal more of such strange looks," Anderson says.

"We have a harder time teaching Christianity in our schools than we do any other religion. We are so concerned with separation of church and state that many people and institutions look at our most widespread religion with extra-sharp eyes," he adds.

Why would Christians be more scrutinized than other religious reporters? "The great religious influence in Western culture has been Christianity, so we are also more aware sometimes of the problems that it has brought us," says Craig Bartholomew, a scholar who studies the links between philosophy, culture and religion at Cheltenham and Gloucester College in England. "We are very sensitive to any abuse that has come from Christian involvement in culture."

Journalists traditionally are rebellious, adds Aikman. "They tend to react against any belief system they regard as establishment. For most reporters, Christianity is still establishment. Also there's the tremendous hostility toward the `religious right wing' ... and all of the traditionally conservative cliches collectively associated in reporters' minds with Christianity. If you are, say, a Hindu, you are sufficiently rare not to be perceived as a threat."