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.