Evangelicals fume about the media obsession over leaders' financial shiftiness. United Church members grumble about why the media only look at their policies on homosexuality. Muslims feel smeared as bomb-making fanatics. This gulf of understanding serves neither organized religion nor the media. With the mutual distrust, religious people fail to get their message out to the world.
Journalists miss out on some of the most well-read and compelling stories around.
And society comes to the false conclusion that religion is not a force in people's lives. For good or ill, since the 1940s, most newspapers no longer reprint sermons or dutifully report moral pronouncements of top church leaders. The media are now not afraid to spotlight religious controversy. Some of the biggest stories of past years have been the fall of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, the cult inferno at Waco, World Trade Center bombings by Muslim extremists, murders of U.S. doctors who perform abortions, clergy sex abuse, the rise of the religious right in the Republican and Reform parties, the euthanasia debate, Sikh terrorism, Bill Clinton's faith, Vatican opposition to defusing the population explosion and the disastrous end of Quebec's Solar Temple. The media have covered some of these stories well.