wfn.org | Episcopal Media Center held forum on media and religion

[Daphne Mack <dmack@dfms.org>]

99-026
Media and Religion need healthy relationship, says journalist 

by Nan Ross
(ENS) Even though commercial television has several 
successful programs with spiritual themes, TV journalist and host 
of PBS's In the Prime Deborah Potter believes religion and media 
have a long way to go before their relationship is an effective 
and healthy one.

Addressing a recent gathering hosted by The Episcopal Media 
Center at the Washington National Cathedral, Potter said, "The 
church needs to see the media not as something like a trucking 
company, useful when you want to deliver a message but that 
otherwise has nothing to do with you. The church has to recognize 
the media as a culture, a shared experience - and an 
extraordinary opportunity."

Potter, executive director of NewsLab, a nonprofit 
television news laboratory affiliated with the Project for 
Excellence in Journalism, said religion and media could be "the 
ultimate power couple."

"Lately we've tended to think of religion and media as 
separate forces that only sometimes intersect, when one of them 
uses the other."

As a potential power couple, religion and media have 
displayed a mostly dysfunctional relationship, Potter said. 
"Think about it. There's no mutual respect. There's no 
commitment. There's no equality. If I were an editor at a women's 
magazine, I might think I'd found the perfect focus for next 
month's regular feature: `Can This Marriage Be Saved?'"

On average, Potter said, children spend more time watching 
television than they do on any other activity except sleep - more 
time watching television than they spend in school. "And what are 
they getting from all that television watching? Religious 
instruction? Spiritual development? I don't think so.

"The media don't just out-influence religion," she said. 
"In some ways they have replaced religion.  Consider how we 
define ourselves and how we relate to each other. What topics 
dominate casual conversation? What we rented at Blockbusters 
Saturday night, or what we heard in Sunday's sermon?"

Moral and ethical themes
Potter said many in her baby boom generation strayed from 
the church as they "did their own thing." "But many of them are 
now seeking what's been missing in their lives. They have children 
to raise, in a confusing world. They are facing their own 
mortality. It's not just that their parents are aging. They 
themselves are getting the signal. It comes in the mail: A blue 
and white card that says, `Welcome New Member' from the AARP.

"Imagine for a moment that you could get a message to this 
generation, and to their children. That you could reach them and 
their children where they are (in the blue glow of their 
television sets or computer screens). That instead of being 
isolated and in danger of becoming irrelevant, the ministry could 
once again become central in people's lives."

Potter said religious programming is not the answer. 

Television marketing studies make it quite clear that most people 
do not want to watch religious programs on TV. In fact, they avoid 
them. "The audience for the so-called `electronic church' 
programs are minuscule. Have you watched any? I rest my case."
But that doesn't mean there's no appetite for programs with 
moral and ethical themes. Quite the contrary, Potter said. "It's 
possibly the most popular single theme on prime-time television, 
with religious depictions in prime time having quadrupled in the 
past five years."      She cited Touched by an Angel - two 
angels bring hope to people touched by tragedy; Seventh Heaven - 
a minister-father of five children faces the challenges of raising 
children during permissive times; Charmed - good witches fight 
evil; and one of the latest, Brimstone - bad dead people escape 
from Hell and only one man can save us.

"No, these aren't (so-called) `religious programs.' 
Brimstone's hero is NOT Jesus Christ. He's a dead ex-cop. But you 
can't miss the overall theme here. On the radio, you might be able 
to avoid the religious talk and music programs, but last year you 
couldn't avoid Joan Osborne's song, What If God Were One of Us?
So what does the church need to do to take advantage?

"First," Potter said, "there needs to be a recognition that the church 
lives and works in the real world, a world where new technologies 
offer more and more choices every day." 

--Nan Ross is marketing director and editor of The Link for The 
Episcopal Media Center in Atlanta.