Liberation Theology, for example, is quite specific to Latin America. There are also times when it seems as if the media and faith are two distinct and alien cultures. One is rooted largely in the search for facts, while the other is grounded in a discovery of faith beyond fact. This means they don't have the vocabulary to speak fluently with others about faith. Perhaps these things account, in part, for the uneasy relationship that faith groups and journalists often have.
Believers fear ignorance, mis-representation, and trivialization.
They also often misinterpret skepticism for cynicism. For their part, journalists are afraid of not getting the whole story, of being conned, of taking something seriously that they've been told is a matter of superstition. Needless to say, they don't want to be seen to be giving credibility to something that they've been taught to regard as credulous. Perhaps not surprising, then, when I covered this beat, I found one of the biggest challenges was to develop a relationship with the people I interviewed that moved beyond defensiveness. Another barrier for journalists is our own sense of ourselves.