Keeping the Faith in the Newsroom

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

For the most part, Bartholomew agrees. "Western reporters find it terribly difficult to take religious issues seriously. If journalism is going to have integrity, it can't just carry on in the old liberal way of imposing its exclusive view of knowledge and truth and objectivity upon alternative understandings of the world. The liberal view is only one among many."

It is not so much a question of objectivity as whose objectivity, suggests Marvin Olasky, editor of World magazine, a newsweekly with a religious perspective. "Ultimately, all worldviews are rooted in faith of one kind or another," says Olasky. He says his magazine's Christian perspective on the news is no more "religious" than an atheistic perspective. "It's not as if the choice is between having a faith of some kind and having no faith. My sense is that all reporting is directed by something -- some sort of faith, some sort of belief, some sort of worldview. It's not a question of being directed or undirected -- it's a question of what is it directed by."

Robert Boston, a spokesman for the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, often addresses church-affiliated groups of journalism students who come to Washington on internship programs. There are many different types of journalism jobs, he tells the budding reporters. "If you work for a daily newspaper, objectivity is expected." Unless they go into advocacy journalism, Boston says, those found "slanting their copy" for religious reasons won't get ahead.

Nonetheless, he tells Insight, "There is a need for better reporting about religion in the United States. A reporter who comes from a religious background may have a leg up. A lot of reporters come out of a secular mind frame. I certainly don't believe it would be impossible for a conservative evangelical Christian to report dispassionately. That anyone would assume that a reporter's religious beliefs would affect their reporting any more than their political beliefs is absurd."