Faith and Journalism

Journalism and Religion a Difficult Combination

Religion and journalism are very difficult to put together. It’s hard to get correct facts concerning the religion, it’s hard to cover stories that make the religion look bad, it’s hard to write about your own religion without being biased, and sometimes its hard not to loose your own religion when you have to cover a story on it. William Lobdell showed the world of journalism in his book “loosing my religion” that it can be too hard to keep a religion when you have to cover stories of the scandalous things that occur within them.

A big question that comes up within the topic of religion and journalism is whether or not a journalist should be able and allowed to cover their own religion? Will a journalist be too biased, and turn the story into more of an activist story? Or will they be the best person to write that story because they know more about the religion then the average Joe would? My solution to this inquiry goes off of a subject we covered in class last week of journalistic forums. Perhaps religion should be covered by forums, that way all sides and all information on the matter can be brought to attention by whoever wants to write something.

There are many places that are geared towards the religious side of things in general. A few brought up in class were CBN, The Christian Century, and Christianity Today. These news stations are straightforward about their views in religion and can therefore have the journalists write about their own religions because it’s a known fact that there will be a bias.

As far as religious journalists go I think it’s important to remember that the core of your religion is the truth of it, and not to let stories about human flaws change or effect the way you feel about a certain religion. Also, any journalist covering any religion be it their own or not, they should cover that religion the way you’d want your own to be covered.