Religion writing seeing noticeable improvement

In the late 1990s, Trinity College professor Dr. Mark Silk wrote a powerful book about news and religion coverage. Like so many other authors before him, he seemed to bemoan the quality of news coverage of religion.

The traditional complaint about news coverage of religion was — and continues to be — that news reporters are secular, and more irreligious in their outlook.

You need only look at a 2007 report by the Pew Charitable Trust to see that news reporters tend to be significantly less religious than their fellow Americans outside the newsroom.

Silk's unusual criticism, however, argued something more subtle by approaching the problem from a different angle. Media, in his view, are "unsecular." His idea was that news reporters of the 20th century rarely questioned religion and instead wrote trite stories about religion with little room for variety or doctrine. They accepted that religion — mainstream Protestant religion — was a good thing.

The religion coverage of the not-so-distant past focused on festivals of helping the poor and of cute little girls in their Easter dresses, rather than on the inner life of the religious. Religion coverage was often consigned to a back page on Saturday. Religion in the news was milquetoast much of the time.

But much has changed in the news coverage of religion since Silk finished his book — and I think that change has been largely a good thing.

For one thing, major news organizations have devoted reporters to cover religion at the national level — full time. These reporters, rather than relying on press releases about pot luck suppers in some pastor's backyard, now talk about the controversies and meanings of religion in American life.

Don't get me wrong, I have numerous quibbles with religion reporters and with their coverage. Often the reports stereotype religious believers; Latter-day Saint beliefs seem strange and evangelicals often seem bigoted, for example.

Second, these reporters usually struggle with how to cover scripture and revelation, two issues at the heart of religious experience.

However, there seems a growing willingness to discuss how religion influences the lives of believers and of how religion shapes them. In short, there are noticeable and meaningful improvements in the coverage of religion in recent years.