Religion In The News

This was a longish footnote to the previous post, but I decided to promote it.

Le Review: I had been reading Newsweek articles and ruminating on whether they had a dedicated religion person. So I went digging.

Good thing too, because the electronic masthead for MSNBC was buried. (Newsweek's online presence is hosted on MSNBC's site.) Once I found it, I discovered they have a correspondent dedicated to "ethics and values in American society." I wonder if that aerogel umbrella is supposed to cover religion and faith.

They also have a correspondent whose beat includes "Asian-American relations." According to the 2000 U.S. census, 4.2% of the population identifes itself somehow with the word "Asian." Nearly twice as many people self-identify as Methodist in the United States (Wikipedia). Dubbaya-tee-eff, mainstream news media?

I'm not complaining here. As Stephen Colbert says, Christians in the U.S. are "a long-oppressed majority." Boo-hoo for us.

No, I'm actually confused. Why doesn't thoughtful Christian representation fly in mainstream news media? (I'm also curious in a larger religious sense, but I'll just discuss Christianity here, since that's what I'm familiar with, and I don't want to have to think about how to write this so it includes Buddhism.)

If you can write a news story aimed at the American public, you can certainly write to a significant, though fractious subset of Americans. It's not hard to write to sports fans, a notably cantakerous lot. It's not hard to write an editorial page, a newspaper section practically designed to foment division.

Someone must be thinking about this. There's too much at stake for no one to be working on this, or at least for there not to be a good reason for its absence. Am I missing something big and obvious? Can it be as stupidly simple as a gross underrepresentation of Christians inside media? I read something to that effect once, that a majority of reporters aren't terribly religious, and shy away from the topic personally, allowing their blindside bias to affect their reporting. I wish I had the reference for that. I've also read conflicting reports.

But there's so freaking much money to be made from American Christendom. Even if you think God is an illucid fairy tale, we're a rich, loyal demographic. Mel Gibson has proven this. Tim LaHaye has proven this. Why do news media approach us from the side, through politics and social issues, instead of where we really are?

I'm figuring this out, talking before having done significant research. More later. Possibly.

P.S. 4/1/06
This entry is changing as I think about it more. Tonight I found the website of Frederica Matthewes-Green, who I wish I'd known about sooner. She has this marginally related thing to say about being a Christian in a hostile culture, which might not be very hostile. Or maybe it is. Or maybe hostility isn't the point. It's longish (for the Web) but worth the time you'll spend on it.