Oct 18 2008
Why so few Evangelicals in newsrooms?
Here is a foolproof way for politicians to score points with evangelical voters: Attack the media, an institution widely seen as lacking conservative Christian voices. Republican presidential hopeful John McCain and his evangelical running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have done just that at times during the campaign, with repeated jabs at the “liberal media.”
One way to change this perception, some church leaders, social commentators and journalists say, is for mainstream news organizations to employ — and keep — more evangelicals in their newsrooms.
“Journalism has become more of a white-collar field that draws from elite colleges,” said Terry Mattingly, director of the Washington Journalism Center for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and a religion columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. “While there’s been heavy gender and racial diversity … there’s a lack of cultural diversity in journalism,” including religion.
Since the 1980s, when the Christian right emerged as a powerful force in American culture and politics, evangelicals have made significant inroads in law and government by training believers to work inside secular institutions. But while the same universities that helped students launch careers in those fields are offering similar programs in journalism, they haven’t been as successful at changing the nation’s newsrooms.
“The media — journalism — remain one of the hardest fields for them to realize their power,” said D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist at Rice University and author of “Faith in the Halls of Power.”
Case’s primary concern is that evangelicals are frequently portrayed in the media as a monolithic bloc, when in fact they are diverse politically, intellectually and theologically.
“It bothers me that when mainstream outlets want an evangelical voice, they’ve turned to Jerry Falwell orJames Dobson or Pat Robertson,” he said. “They are men of high regard and standing, but there are others who have a different take on things.”
Read more here.
[From me]
That last quote sums it up for me. I respect those men for what they have done but they don’t speak for all evangelicals. It would be nice to hear from some different evangelicals. It would be nice to have some evangelicals who were in the mainstream media to give a balanced view.
What do you think?
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4 responses so far
The media goes to those guys because they are lazy and they tend to give good sound bites. And Robertson is just so predictably weird and foolish.
I’d love to see them go to thoughtful evangelicals more often. R.C. Sproul, Ben Witherington, Greg Koukl, James McDonald, and more.
Neil’s last blog post..?The Lord says . . .?
I agree with Neil. Some of the things that I hear from the three men mentioned in the post are simply a religious way of saying something political.
Man, would I love to hear a CBS interview with Sproul. That’d be something.
JeraldD’s last blog post..The Basis of Teaching
I think the media loves the over the top. I think it’s why they don’t go to men such as mentioned above, or Christian women who are more balanced. They love the Pat Robertsons, the Ann Coulters. The more outlandish Christians can look the better the media like it, in my opinion.
Debbie Kaufman’s last blog post..YouTube - Avalon - In Christ Alone - Ruth Graham Special
“Evangelicals” did horrendous damage and even diminished their testimony by pursuing temporal power in the first place via the political realm. Trying to achieve even more power in the newsroom will not accomplish anything conducive to the furtherance of the Kingdom of Heaven.