Customer Reviews

Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion

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Yes, all research shows journalists are among the most secular of all groups in the US. Even so, why, why do they so often ignore or mangle stories about religion?

Here is a collection of essays investigating the problem.

What is most puzzling about American journalists is not just their tone deafness to stories about religion. They actually seem unaware of religion's importance throughout the world. Explosive growth in Christianity in Africa and Asia is ignored. The vital differences in Muslim sects is rarely mentioned, let alone investigated.

In these essays, Marshall notes that "Americans have been educated to believe that democracy and secularization go hand in hand" (p 22) so that we have misreported, and misunderstood, news about religion that is vital politically.

Hertzke argues that "the mainstream press largely missed one of the great foreign policy and human rights surprises in recent decades" (p 65), that of the banding together of various religious groups to spotlight human rights abuses. And, shocker, the New York Times missed it entirely. It did, however, inform its readers about the activities of the enemy. Oops. I mean the activities of the Christian Coalition.

Vinson and Guth point out how badly all the chattering classes got religion in the 2004 election. "Stories...persistently pitted Bush's blind faith against Kerry's intellectual rationality with a clear assumption that religion and reason do not coexist" (p 91).

Amy Welborn reports on journalists and the Catholics. Every time a pope is mentioned, sure enough, there are those same dissenting Catholics, none of whom has stepped inside a church in decades.

Interesting essays. I just wish there were some good solutions. Thank God for the internet.

This book is thorough, accurate, well-researched and actually entertaining. The message is shocking and unfortunate but well in need of being highlighted. Highly recommended to religious and non-religious alike.

I found this book to be interesting - a topic seldom discussed. I agree with its premise, and I have observed this lack of knowledge by some of the media . . . especially the younger know-it-all correspondents. NPR comes to mind.