Title: Unsecular media
First published: 1995
Description: Unsecular Media is the first comprehensive description and analysis of how the American news media cover religion. A working journalist as well as a historian of religion, Mark Silk explores the inherent tensions between religion and the news media and traces the ups and downs of religious news coverage from Benjamin Franklin to David Koresh.

Changing views of Americans' religious commitment have led to an image of the news media as implacably secularist. But Silk examines contemporary news coverage and concludes that, rather than reflecting a secular bias, contemporary media accounts express religion-based values that most Americans share.

Those values, Silk shows, are embodied in moral formulas, or topoi, that mark out the territory religion occupies in journalistic discourse. The formulas - good works, tolerance, hypocrisy, false prophecy, inclusion, supernatural belief, and spiritual decline - make the huge variety of American religious life morally comprehensible to a mass audience.

In demonstrating their usefulness and shortcomings, Silk points the way toward a less judgmental and more pluralistic approach to the coverage of religion.
Subjects: History, Journalism, Religious, Mass media, Mass media in religion, Religion, Religious Journalism, Religious aspects, Religious aspects of Mass media, Histoire, Presse religieuse, Aspect religieux, Journalismus, Médias, Massamedia, 05.39 mass communication and mass media: other, Politik, Religieuze instellingen, Médias dans la religion, Massenmedien, Mass media, moral and ethical aspects, Mass media, united states, Mass media, religious aspects, United states, religion, 20th century
Places: United States
Time periods: 1960-, 20th century
LC classification: PN4874.S513 A3 1995