Most journalists on the beat ‘don’t get religion’

It was a month after Donald Trump won the presidency and, to be honest, many stunned journalists were still trying to figure out how they missed the tremors that led to the political earthquake.

That was the backdrop for an appearance by executive editor Dean Baquet of The New York Times on the Fresh Air program at National Public Radio. While the focus was politics and journalism, Baquet also offered a refreshingly candid sound bite about mainstream media efforts to cover religion news.

I think those remarks are worth a flashback this week, which marks the end of year 29 for my syndicated On Religion column. You see, I am just as convinced as ever that if journalists want to cover real stories in the real lives of real people in the real world, then they need to be real serious when handling religion.

Quoting a pre-election Times column by Jim Rutenberg, Fresh Air host Terry Gross said: “If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him? Because if you believe all of those things, you have to throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century.”

For Baquet, this topic was linked to stirred-up populist emotions out in the heartland. Journalists must strive, he said, to understand the “forces in America that led to Americans wanting a change so much” that they were willing to back Trump.

“I want to make sure that we are much more creative about beats out in the country so that we understand that anger and disconnectedness that people feel. And I think I use religion as an example because I was raised Catholic in New Orleans,” Baquet said. “I think that the New York-based, and Washington-based too probably, media powerhouses don’t quite get religion.

“We don’t get religion. We don’t get the role of religion in people’s lives. And I think we can do much, much better. And I think there are things that we can be more creative about to understand the country.”

Needless to say, his blunt statement — “We don’t get religion” — hit home for me as editor of the GetReligion.org website that has, for 13 years, produced media criticism focusing on that very topic.

It’s important that Baquet also noted that, while his newsroom contains a veteran religion-news specialist, one pro on this beat isn’t enough if the goal is to listen to what Americans are saying outside elite ZIP codes in the urban Northeast.

Thus, it mattered that The New York Times later posted a job notice for a new “faith and values correspondent” to be based outside of New York.

“In 2017, we’ll roam even more widely and dig even more deeply into the issues, both those that animate and those that infuriate Americans,” said the notice. Then it added, “We’re seeking a skilled reporter and writer to tap into the beliefs and moral questions that guide Americans and affect how they live their lives, whom they vote for and how they reflect on the state of the country. You won’t need to be an expert in religious doctrine.”

Another media critic immediately underlined that reference to doctrine.

“I don’t want to read too much into this, and to unfairly knock a good-faith (so to speak) effort,” noted commentator Rod Dreher, writing at The American Conservative. “Certainly a general-news ‘faith and values’ correspondent doesn’t need to be able to give a detailed explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity, or parse the finer points of Sharia according to the Hanafi school. But the reporter certainly should be able to understand why doctrine matters to religious thought and belief.

“My concern here is that the Times is inadvertently minimizing the importance of religious knowledge, along the lines of, ‘You don’t really have to understand how religion works in order to report on it in the lives of ordinary Americans.’”

As I head into my third decade with this column, all I can add is this: “Amen.”

Terry Mattingly is the editor of GetReligion.org and Senior Fellow for Media and Religion at The King’s College in New York. He lives in Oak Ridge, Tenn.