From the Worldwide Faith News archives www.wfn.org
Bringing Religion to the "Wasteland" of TV
From
PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org
Date
01 Mar 1998 17:56:13
17-February-1998
98053
Bringing Religion to the "Wasteland" of TV
by Leon Howell
Religion News Service
WASHINGTON-Over the past 18 months, three 30-minute weekly religion news
shows strode boldly onto television, famously called the "wasteland"
several decades ago. The trio are serious efforts to report on the moral
and ethical dimensions of society. That's good. But the question is: Does
anyone know they are there?
Certainly the networks do not.
"Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" premiered Sept. 6 and is now available -
when it is not pre-empted - on 190 public television stations. Odyssey News
got underway Feb. 7 and can be found somewhere in the cable welter. Fox
News Channel, the 24-hour cable operation of Fox Television, started Fox on
Religion in October 1996.
Although a solid majority living in the United States says religion is
important, it's hard to find many places where serious religion reporting
takes place. It's certainly not the television networks.
And then, most of what is reported is what is called "sweet and sour" -
either a fluffy piece about a church social or synagogue event as with much
of the coverage of last year's Promise Keepers gathering in Washington, or,
reporting of scandal, as in the Jim Bakker flap, or conflict, such as the
denominational dust-ups over sexual mores.
Too rarely do we hear about religion at the core of the way we live and
move and have our being, such as the striking mushroom workers in Quincy,
Fla., who cite both Martin Luther King and Roman Catholic social teachings
on the right to organize in their dispute with Quincy Farms. Or how, for
the past decade, in a comparative religion class taught at a major
university, the students are increasingly American Buddhists, Hindus, and
Muslims wrestling with their own beliefs rather than Christians and Jews
studying about other faiths.
On television, however, entertainment is paramount.
Television's "god is brevity," said Bill Moyers, known for the multiple
dimensions of his TV work. "Even when television captures the emotional
religious experience of its subjects, it can't explain it historically,
psychologically or analytically in ways that honor (religion's) complexity
and diversity."
But polls suggest Americans want television - where a majority get
their primary news coverage - to pay more attention to religion. Fifty-six
percent of adult Americans in one poll, according to "TV Guide," believe
that prime-time television does not pay sufficient attention to religion.
Well they might be right. Ninety-nine percent of network news coverage
from 1993-1996 ignored religion altogether, according to The Media Research
Center.
Not much change has occurred on the network television front, although
five years ago ABC News hired Peggy Wehmeyer to create a religion beat. No
other television network has one.
"But you are missing all these great stories," Wehmeyer had told the
Dallas TV station where she worked a number of years ago. The station let
her concentrate on religion. By her estimates, Wehmeyer gets about l8
pieces a year on the air for ABC.
Into that gap have come the new programs.
"News Odyssey" is produced and largely financed initially - $1.4
million of the $1.7 million needed for the first year - by United Methodist
Communications in Nashville. It began a little more than a year ago and
continues to be available each weekend on the 9-year-old Odyssey Network,
sponsored by an interfaith coalition of about 35 religious groups, on
hundreds of cable channels.
"Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" began in September 1997 on 20 public
broadcasting stations and now appears on 190. It has been funded for 39
shows by a $5 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to WNET/Channel 13 in
New York and expects to continue for at least another year. The program is
put together in the Reuters studios in Washington, D.C. WNET sends it out
on Friday afternoons.
"Fox on Religion" appears Fridays at 11.30 a.m. EST and originates in
the Fox studios in Manhattan. It is hosted by Carol Iovanna, a long-time TV
anchor. When Fox started Fox News Channel two years ago, it sought to
provide in-depth coverage of subjects such as psychology, law, education,
health and, yes, religion.
The program - 18 minutes of news, 12 of commercials - usually devotes
its time to single topics like televangelism or the pope in Cuba.
"Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" and "NewsOdyssey" begin with crisp
current religion news items. Then they present three or four longer pieces.
The span ranges from the hundredth birthday celebration of Dorothy Day,
whose "Catholic Worker" movement concentrated on the poor, to the impact of
Christian rock on worship.
"NewsOdyssey" has an interesting editorial comment. "Religion and
Ethics
NewsWeekly" often has a panel of ethicists or religion experts who discuss
a timely issue, such as the current presidential crisis on a show released
at the end of January.
A central theme of both has been the growing diversity of American
religious expression.
"Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly" has a staff of 15. Executive Producer Gerry
Solomon has worked as an executive producer for ABC's "Good Morning
America,"
NBC's "Meet the Press" and CNN.
He joined the show, he said, because "here my values are in play." A
practicing Conservative Jew, Solomon left a program on finance that "asked
no ethical or moral questions."
Longtime NBC News reporter Bob Abernethy created the show and now hosts
and directs it. Abernethy, an active member of a United Church of Christ
congregation, emphasizes that "this is news reporting, no apologetics for
one point of view.
"But it's another thing to cover ethics and religion. We've learned a
lot. We have a lot to learn. We need to improve, quickly."
None of the three programs are perfect. But they are a step in the
right direction and already challenge the networks to take religion
seriously. Check them out ... If you can find them.
------------
For more information contact Presbyterian News Service
phone 502-569-5504 fax 502-569-8073
E-mail PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org Web page: http://www.pcusa.org
mailed from World Faith News <wfn-news@wfn.org>
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