by Peter Kenny

Many news items raise the issue of media and religion and how they
intertwine in a landscape that in reality is far more complex than
a robust debate between creationists and evolutionists.

Those who increasingly subscribe to the secular system see religion as a life activity compartmentalized from mainstream existence. In many countries "church" and "state" have been clearly separated or are in the process of such a divorce. This separation is often reinforced by perceptions advanced by the news media.

This is especially so in advanced industrialized nations, where religion as it existed in the past is often portrayed by the media as being on the wane. Yet in current or former communist nations, where atheism was once advocated as the accepted belief system, religion is reviving, as is the case in both China and Russia. Christianity is thriving in many developing nations, while Islam is growing in many countries in which its presence was once minimal. At the same time, it is becoming harder to distinguish certain nations as having only one dominating religion, faith, or denomination. Still, some countries vigorously resist the encroachment of new faiths.

News for its part covers every aspect of human endeavor, and religion is no less a niche in coverage than politics, sports, and lifestyle. Newspapers and blogs specializing in religion abound. Religion is interwoven with both old and new media. There is even a Web site called Blog as Religion (blogasreligion.com) that says, "Blogs can inspire legions of followers only when they're structured like a religion!" All the major faiths now have Web sites or portals devoted to news, some that cater more for secular tastes and others aimed at their own followers.

News Agencies

Buddhists and those interested in Buddhism are catered for online by the Buddhist Channel (www.buddhistchannel.tv), which carries secular news and opinion pieces about the faith. Those seeking news about religions that has a strong emphasis on Christians can read Ecumenical News International (www.eni.ch). ENI is an independent news service based in Switzerland that is funded by global church groups. In North America, Religion News Service (www. religionnews.com) says it is "the only secular news and photo service devoted to unbiased coverage of religion and ethics." It provides news to mainstream media and has a sophisticated Web site. Both ENI and RNS, which have a news exchange agreement, tailor their news to secular consumption but are also used by religious-news outlets. There are news agencies, such as the Catholic News Service (www.catholicnews.com), that also have independent charters but cater for specific religious groups, such as the Roman Catholic Church in the case of CNS. The Jewish Telegraph Agency describes itself as "the global news service of the Jewish people," publishing news of interest to them. iViews.com is an interactive publication that provides "timely reporting and insightful analysis and commentary" of importance to Muslims. "While the publication [www. iViews.com] is written from a Muslim perspective, its focus is not religious." iViews.com says it seeks to "add balance and objectivity to an otherwise homogenous media pool." Then there is the International Islamic News Agency, or IINA (www.islamicnews.org.sa), a specialized organ of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, based in Saudi Arabia. Among its stated aims is "to enhance and preserve the huge Islamic cultural heritage." The Sarve Samachar Hindu News Service (news.hinduworld.com), sponsored by the Viraat Hindu Sabh, claimed when it began in 2004 to be the first Hindu news portal using a technology similar to the one used by Google News. Later, at its launch, Hindu Press International (www.hinduismtoday.com) said "the world's oldest religion is donning shining new clothes," with the aim of informing and inspiring "Hindus worldwide and people interested in Hinduism."

Reuters, the global secular news agency, has since 2007 had a special Web page devoted to religion called FaithWorld (blogs.reuters.com/faithworld) in which blogging takes place on every aspect of religion.

As well as the big secular and religious media players, there are tens of thousands of other denominational agencies, publications, and Web sites.

There are thousands of religious newspapers run by and for faiths and denominations. Then there are newspapers run or supported by religious organizations, such as the Christian Science Monitor, that are independent of their backers and provide credible secular news. Many religious newspapers, however, are facing a financial crisis, like many other kinds of newspapers throughout the world.

Religion is constantly mentioned in global news coverage. Often it is contentious and can involve reportage of conflicts stemming from purported religious bases. Every day a bishop, monk, or mullah makes the news headlines on political or social issues. Yet, when journalists who cover religion inquire about what people listen to, read, or watch in the news media, religion is rarely mentioned. For this reason some journalists who cover religion are pessimistic that not enough resources go into its coverage.

In the secular media each day, religious images flash across TV and Internet screens, and words and pictures about them are carried in newspapers and magazines or transmitted across the airwaves. There can be Pope Benedict XVI creating a stir when he speaks out on the Roman Catholic version of family life during a visit to Africa, a reaction to the Dalai Lama's being refused a visa to South Africa so as not to offend China, a mosque being bombed by Islamic ultraextremists ("Taliban militants," the government alleged) in Pakistan, or ultra-Orthodox Jews trying to expand a settlement into Palestinian areas of the Holy Land. News crops up concerning Hindu ultranationalists' attacks on Christians or Muslims in India, or Buddhist nationalists protesting against Tamil rebel bomb blasts in Sri Lanka.

Nonbelievers Use Same Media

While believers of all faiths have quickly grasped the tools provided by new media to spread their message, so too have those who vigorously oppose them. An example is the use of advertising campaigns on buses in Europe and North America to challenge belief in God. Atheist guru and British academic Richard Dawkins, with his book The God Delusion, has established himself as the world's highest-profile atheist polemicist using new and old media to spread his antireligious message.

Some bus advertisement campaigns in big cities of the world extol atheism, but others counter with support for faith. These signpost a growing public debate between those who have faith and those who strongly believe religion should have no part in life in our postmodern society. Those who believe there can be no God in their lives often use proselytizing fervor to propagate their nonbeliefs, and they have their own portal (www.atheismonline.com). These instances of daily-life actions are often based on belief, faith, and religion. Moreover, the fact that religion is often a key component in global and regional conflicts seems to have fueled the recent push by antireligious secularists to convert believers to atheism.

Many news items raise the issue of media and religion and how they intertwine in a landscape that in reality is far more complex than a robust debate between creationists and evolutionists. Because the history of the world may also be the history of religion, media in some form have always been part of the equation and are no less so now. Still, as the media have become more complex, so has their compartmentalization in covering global events. In the world of news coverage, there are now niche media for everything, including finance, health, politics, sports, and of course religion.

Apart from private prayer and meditation, religions have shared their messages verbally or in some written or pictorial form since their inception. Hindu Vedas and Buddhist sutras have long served the two religions that existed before Christianity and Islam. Jews used the Torah and Holy Scriptures for thousands of years, and later Christians spread their message through the Bible. Muslims developed the Qur'an from the same Abrahamic texts to deliver their message.

It is the Abrahamic faiths that seem to have the highest media profile in the twenty-first century. Christianity, followed by Islam, is the biggest religious faith, and both are often interpreted as being inclined to proselytize. After the Second World War, television took off globally as the most technologically advanced tool of the mass media. It took some years before religious organizations began to use publicly broadcast TV channels as tools for disseminating their messages.

Religion and New Media

Religious organizations were much quicker off the mark after the arrival of the Internet in 1989, which led to a proliferation of new media. The Internet offered new platforms for humanity to interrelate and communicate, and this time the world of faith was quick to catch on. Every large religion seems to use the Internet to disseminate its message. For better or worse, the world now has e-mail, blogs, e-books, portals, and social networking service as well as facilities to download and upload personal video material to the Internet. Most religions are using all of these tools. Even faith groups that remain opposed to modern human rights, such as Islamic groups that deny women the most basic rights, enthusiastically embrace twenty-first-century media and Internet technology. The same can be said for socially conservative Christian groups, which often have highly sophisticated Web sites and allow controlled blogging.

In 1986 William F. Fore, then executive director of the Communication Commission of the New York-based National Council of Churches, wrote in the U.S.-based Christian Century magazine: "For years church leaders concerned about the communication revolution have been asking how to get the churches to take the changes seriously. What will it take to coax churches to become really involved in radio, television, satellites and computers-to join the communication revolution?"

Christian Century carries informed news, analysis, and features about religion in a format that can be understood by those who may not be active in their religion. Like most print-based publications, the magazine is backed by an Internet site that carries breaking news relating to religion, mainly Christian. In his article, Fore noted that the key task of accessing the media with religious terms and images entails extensive resources and processes that can turn out to be very costly.

Fore could have been speaking for all religions when he wrote that it is not possible for the church to meaningfully engage in deciding how people's lives will be shaped without a society that is literate about the media. It is only in the provision of alternative conduits of the mass media that integrate messages about human and ethical values that media can help humanity overcome a growing dependence on those media that push an agenda seen by many religious leaders as based on relativist values, "celebrityism," and material greed, and that are so easily spread in the technological era.

As regards the United States, news coverage of the religious landscape has in recent years gained visibility spurred by an increased interest in religious issues. Still, this now faces an uncertain future, given a state of flux in U.S. journalism, say prominent religion journalists. Among reasons for this are resources linked to the global financial crisis, which seems to permeate all aspects of life in the world, including religious publications and media.

Financial Crisis Hits Religious News

"The religion beat is suffering collateral damage," reporter Michael Paulson, who covers religion for the Boston Globe newspaper, told members of the Religion Communicators' Council, an interfaith professional association, in March 2009. Paulson spoke, in a panel discussion during the council's annual meeting, with Rachel Zoll, who covers religion for the Associated Press, and John Yemma, the editor of the Christian Science Monitor. They told of frustrations and discouraging trends. These range from the reduction of staff to all-out elimination of sections devoted to religious reporting in U.S. newspapers. The journalists explained that the once mighty New York Times now has only one reporter covering religion at the national level, instead of two, while a big regional newspaper such as the Dallas Morning News has abandoned a weekly religious news section that was one of the most comprehensive in the United States.

As far as North America is concerned, the problems of religious coverage are linked to U.S. journalism as a whole and seem also to be replicated in other parts of the globe. Newspapers in recent years have faced rapidly declining readership, often owing to readers' no longer wanting to pay for news. This stems partially from news on the Internet or free sheets with compacted coverage. "There is a crisis in print," said Martha Mann, the president of the Boston chapter of the Religion Communicators' Council.

The situation has badly impacted the Christian Science Monitor, which has in its one hundred years of existence won seven Pulitzer Prizes. The Monitor is renowned for providing international coverage and analytical stories in a daily newspaper, but now it can no longer sustain its daily print edition. The newspaper now puts out a weekly print edition and has moved most of its coverage to the World Wide Web. Unfortunately, said the Monitor's Yemma, "the traditional newspaper model is untenable." Still, the Monitor might offer an opportunity to news agencies that cover religion to get greater usage.

In Britain, religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill, writing in her blog for the Times in London, said that when she began in journalism, every newspaper had a trade union correspondent. "Not any more. It was generally assumed our specialism [religion] would go the same way and there was little competition when I applied for this job more than 20 years ago. The opposite has happened, though. Not only is religion dominating the front pages, but newspaper executives now seek blessings on their ceremonies" at the British Press Awards by a member of the clergy "from a church where the curate, an ordained man, is an opinion columnist on a national newspaper."

In the current era of interfaith initiatives on climate change, the fight against HIV and AIDS, and the resolution of regional conflicts, there seems to be increasing recognition that faith leaders should be part of the public discourse. At the same time, nonbelievers have stepped up their debate using the same technological tools offered by the new media that faith followers use. News and media that specialize in religion can present beliefs and what believers do in ways that enhance understanding rather than fuel the stereotypes of creeds that can be triggers for conflict.

While economic hard times linger, it is tempting to cut first the funding of religious news as an easy accounting ploy. Yet those who realize that religion is an eternal process of advocacy would be wise to appreciate that news is the oxygen of beliefs. Now is therefore the time to increase commitment to new media. In that way, when times return to normality and material values rebound, religious media will be better placed to present their essential news.