Journalism & Faith.

I like to consider myself a person who is devout and firm in my religion. My testimony has grown by leaps and bounds in the last couple of years, and my faith in my future is great. I am thankful and happy to call myself a Mormon.

At the same time, I think about my future as a journalist and I couldn't be more excited. I sit in my journalism classes and I have moments where excitement for my future hits me and infects me with hope and enthusiasm for what lies ahead. 

Because my faith and my career both seem so promising and exciting, it almost surprised me to learn that faith and journalism seem to often but heads in the media world. As I started to dig deeper to find out why this is, I found several articles that shed interesting light on the matter. 

The first one is titled "Do Journalists Understand Religion?" (found here). It argues that journalists don't understand religion the way that the rest of the world does, and thus when journalists report on it, it isn't very accurate. They make note of a study that showed that only 8% of journalists report attending church weekly, which is much less than the 39% national average. 

The second one is an article done by the Deseret News (found here) where the columnists claim that there needs to be more diversity in the newsroom in order to cover religious stories more fairly. They also discuss how most journalists lack simply lack the right education to help them regard religion fairly. They quote Michael Cromartie, founder of the Faith Angle Forum conference for journalists: 

"The simple reason the press is this way is that they've all gone to universities where the secularist mindset is the norm. It's a higher education problem. They've been incubated in a world where religion is seen as a phenomenon of the past," he said." 

Hearing opinions like this just make me so much more grateful that I attend BYU, where religion is a huge part of our education. I am also thankful for this because it gives me a uniqueness that other journalists my age don't have--a faith driven outlook on my career. I believe that it is possible to combine religion and journalism, and to still be successful.

Mormon Media Studies Symposium

Session 1

            I attended “Founding a New Discipline: 10^th Anniversary of the Journal of Media and Religion” which was taught by Daniel Stout, an editor of the journal. I have to admit that going into it, I thought it would be a pretty boring session to attend, but I actually learned a lot more about the connection between media and religion and their role in academic research than I thought I would.  Dr. Stout co-founded the academic journal 10 years ago, and he presented a list of the journal’s 10 best articles.

Because we were attending a conference for Mormon media studies, I assumed the articles would be related to our religion, but they actually were more diverse. Dr. Stout talked about things like China’s relationship with religion, how religious advertising sells, perceptions of Barack Obama’s religion in the 2008 election, how martial arts can be seen as a religion, how Mitt Romney’s religion represents Mormon identity, and the LDS church’s effective use of social media. Each of the articles he discussed were interesting to me, but I particularly found the articles relating to Mitt Romney and Barack Obama’s religions very interesting. He said that after Obama was elected in the 2008 election, 20% of Americans continued to believe that he was Muslim. He also talked about how Mitt Romney is viewed as a model to Americans of what a Mormon is like. All in all, the session was interesting and it peaked my interest in media studies in a number of ways.

Session 2

            I also attended “Publishing Trends in Mormon Media Scholarship”, presented by Julie Williamsen and Trevor Alvord. They talked about the “Mormon Moment” that begun with the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake and ended with Mitt Romney’s defeat just a few days ago. They specifically looked at the publishing trends in regards to Mormonism—the amount of publications, and whether those publications were favorable, neutral, or negative toward Mormons. Despite the extra attention Mormons received during the last 10 years, their data didn’t actually show that there was a “Mormon Moment” in academia. There weren’t any significant jumps in the amount of research being done on Mormons. They ended their presentation with a video produced by BYU Magazine that talked about the “Mormon Moment” and Mitt Romney.

Reporting and Emotion.

There's a line in a song by Jack Johnson that says:

"Why don't the newscasters cry when they read about people who die?

At least they could be decent enough to put just a tear in their eye." 

When you think about it, it's kind of amazing that reporters are able to keep their emotions under control as much as they do. It was touching to watch the video in class last week about the reporter that got emotional about the hurricane. I wish that I could say that I would be a more subjective reporter, but I know myself well enough to know that it would be really hard for me to not cry in a situation like that. I imagine myself as a reporter during 9/11, during tsunamis, hurricanes, and I know it would be a real struggle for me to keep myself together. 

In 2010, when the earthquake in Haiti happened, there was extreme devastation that came as a result of the natural disaster. This video shows an example of the devastation in Haiti, and how one FOX News reporter named Steve Harrigan was affected by the event. The video is 5 minutes long, but I would recommend watching just the first 3 minutes. 

Isn't interesting how you can just hear in his voice how awful the conditions were? You can sense the empathy he has for the people, and it almost makes the event feel more human and real.

As important is it is to remain subjective in journalism, I think it's also important to acknowledge that reporting is a human activity. Sometimes, it's nearly impossible to separate emotion and information, and I do think that it is ok for this to happen--especially in broadcast reporting. After all, it's not good to always be robots in your approach to journalism.