Media Biased Against Religious, Few "People of Faith" at NY Times

MRC ^ | Monday March 28, 2005 | BrentBaker

[fight_truth_decay]

Two Washington press corps veterans have conceded that the news media have a bias against religious believers.

On CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday, New Republic Senior Editor Michelle Cottle asserted that journalists "behave as though the people who believe" in widely-held Christian values "are on the fringe." Steve Roberts, who noted how he "worked for the New York Times for 25 years," revealed: "I could probably count on one hand, in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, people who would describe themselves as people of faith." That disconnect hurt the media, Roberts suggested, in how "there was so much attention...on the rockers and the sports celebrities who were registering voters." Roberts asked: "And how many stories did we see about that compared to the pastors and churches in Ohio who were registering ten times as many voters?"

"Media Bias on Religion" read the on-screen tag line during a segment of the March 27 Reliable Sources, which was taped earlier, that followed a look at Schiavo coverage. On the three-person in-studio panel in addition to Cottle and Roberts, who now teaches at the George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, was Joe Watkins, a Philadelphia minister and radio talk show host.

Host Howard Kurtz proposed: "Let's broaden this to other religious-related issues: teaching of evolution in Kansas schools, a lot of coverage there, whether it should be required, whether creationism should be included; the Ten Commandments displays in Alabama and elsewhere; even gay marriage in San Francisco. Isn't there some built-in media bias by the East Coast journalists toward those who have a different view of these matters?"

Cottle agreed: "I think there is. I mean, it's not that they -- again, it's not that they say unpleasant things. But they do behave as though the people who believe these things are on the fringe, when actually the vast majority of the American public describes itself as Christian. You know, a huge percentage, somewhere between a third and a half, actually say that they believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. And another huge chunk would be comfortable with evolution being taught in the schools-"

Kurtz: "How does this match, say, the staff of the New Republic?"

Cottle: "This is not what you find in the Washington and New York media."

Roberts disclosed: "That is a very important point. I worked for the New York Times for 25 years. I could probably count on one hand, in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, people who would describe themselves as people of faith."

Joe Watkins: "That's right."

Roberts urged: "And I think one of the real built-in biases in the media is towards secularism. And I think that, when you talk about diversity, you want diversity in the newsroom, not because of some quota, but because you have to have diversity to cover the story well and cover all aspects of a society. And you don't have religious people making the decisions about where coverage is focused. And I think that's one of the faults."

Later, during a discussion of why no network has a reporting covering religion full time, Roberts suggested that "religion coverage has been ghetto-ized. It's been marginalized. It's never considered a plum assignment. It's never considered a stepping stone to bigger things. Everybody wants to cover the Congress or the White House, not religion.

"But I think in the last campaign, we saw a perfect example of this. There was so much attention, say, on the rockers and the sports celebrities who were registering voters. And how many stories did we see about that compared to the pastors and churches in Ohio who were registering ten times as many voters?...And that was a perfect example of how the mainstream press missed an enormously important subject. Because they were not familiar with those churches. They weren't comfortable in those churches. They weren't members of them. They didn't see what was happening.

Watkins: "They don't see church members as people like them."

Roberts: "I agree."

For The New Republic's page for Cottle's articles: www.tnr.com

For a picture of her, on a CNN page for an old CNN show, Take 5, see: archives.cnn.com

For GWU's bio page for Roberts, a White House reporter for the New York Times during the Reagan years, with a picture of him: smpa.gwu.edu

For a picture and bio of Watkins, a Saturday morning host on WPHT Radio and "pastor of the Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, the oldest African-American Lutheran Church in Philadelphia," go to: www.thebigtalker1210.com

[fight_truth_decay]

The News Dissector, Danny Schechtor writes: "CNN's Crossfire has bitten the dust. Christian Christensen an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Communication at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, Turkey says "Reliable Sources" should be next to get the axe(and he quotes Christensen):

"The real problem with "Reliable Sources" is that it purports to be "critical" about the news business, all the while acting as a veiled cheerleader for a corporate media system that has surrendered to the Bush administration over everything from WMDs in Iraq to social security. The genius of the program is that it manages to give the impression of critique while staying completely milquetoast: the guests say how reporting was bad, how editors failed and generally give the news media a black eye. The logic of the system, however, is never questioned: critiques are almost always at the individual, not the systemic level. It is pre-packaged and commodified dissent."(Excerpt)

Christian claims to have examined 56 episodes of "Reliable Sources," aired during 2003 and 2004, thus coming to his conclusion.

CNN's PR on Reliable Sources : "Kurtz moderates a panel discussion or conducts a one-on-one interview with a "top journalist" or major newsmaker. Guests have included Bob Woodward, Walter Cronkite, Tim Russert, Dan Rather, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, and even George Clooney."

[camle]

this month's Smithsonian mag has an article about the Scopes monkey trial. I found it disconcerting, but not surprising the way they portrayed the traditionalists as ignorant hicks. AND they expressed wonder and awe when they claimed that half of americans feel the same way.

[KC_Conspirator]

Roberts asked: "And how many stories did we see about that compared to the pastors and churches in Ohio who were registering ten times as many voters?"

Actually, there were none, you stupid moron. There were however, plenty of local Bush team organizers who went out to the suburbs, the ex-urbs, the churches, the bowling alleys, the malls, and lodges to register 10 times as many people, including pastors and church members.

[macbee]

Roberts asked: "And how many stories did we see about that compared to the pastors and churches in Ohio who were registering ten times as many voters?"

Actually, there were none, you stupid moron...

Yeah, I caught that as well. Media types seem to assume that most churches behave like lib-activist churches such as the AME, who would be hammered by the media if their overtly political actvities were in support of the GOP. Here in CA, we were subjected to the spectacle of recall-bound Gray Davis pandering (ineptly) to a predominantly African-American congregation and not one member of the media questioned the appropriateness of this politicizing of a church.

[KC_Conspirator]

Either Roberts still has not lifted a finger to investigate the million of people that voted for Bush, especially in Ohio, or he just assumes that the illegal registering of church goer's through the inner city churches was done in the suburbs (which it was not) went on. Either way, its still lazy and snobby journalism.

[Richard Kimball]

Okay, that makes it official.

[nmh]

The NYT is dominated by homosexuals and straight liberals.