MediaWatch: April 1996
Table of Contents:
Social Liberalism Rears Its Head on TV
In their survey The Churching of America, Roger Finke and Rodney Stark reported that virtually all Americans believe in God or a universal spirit. The vast majority believe the Bible is either the literal or inspired Word of God. Sixty percent can be found in houses of worship in a given month. This "silent majority" still worships under the radar screen of a secularized media elite.
The Media Research Center's first study of TV news coverage of religion in 1993 found a surprising paucity of coverage and overt advocacy against traditional values: only 212 evening news stories and 197 morning show segments dealt with religion. Prime-time magazine and Sunday morning interview shows broached religion on only 18 occasions. Religion coverage declined in 1994. Evening news stories rose slightly to 225, but morning segments fell to 151, and Sunday talk show and magazine show segments dropped to nine.
Out of an estimated 18,000 segments last year on the five programs evaluated (ABC's World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, CNN's World News, NBC Nightly News, and The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour on PBS) the networks devoted only 249 stories to religion, a slight increase (11 percent) from 1994.
Despite more than 26,000 segments in 1995, the major network morning shows (ABC's Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, and NBC's Today) devoted 224 morning show stories to religion in 1995. That's a one-third increase over 1994, but still less than one percent.
The blind spot to religious news remains especially noticeable on Sunday morning shows and prime-time magazines. Analysts reviewed the Sunday shows (ABC's This Week with David Brinkley, CBS's Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press) as well as the prime-time magazine lineup (ABC's Day One, Prime Time Live, and 20/20; CBS's Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, 48 Hours, and 60 Minutes; and NBC's three-night Dateline format). Out of roughly 400 shows, the number of religion stories rose from nine in 1994 to 15 in 1995, including segment repeats. But that also included three one-hour programs on religion, one on ABC and two on CBS.
Institutions: The Catholic Church again led the coverage with 111 stories, up eight from 1994. Generic religion stories, often on subjects like school prayer or church-state relations, came in second with 70 stories. News of Protestant denominations was again nearly absent.
The networks again portrayed the Catholic Church as an oppressive, narrow-minded, outmoded hierarchy. When Ireland moved to lift its ban on divorce, CBS Evening News reporter Cinny Kennard applauded on November 18: "It's another example of the country's move to reinvent itself as a more modern and progressive Ireland, an Ireland that is more tolerant and open. Recently, there has been legal reform on contraception, abortion, and homosexuality; signs that the traditional Church grip on Ireland has been loosened; signs that the country is increasingly run from government buildings and not the Vatican."
Kennard repeated her line on the November 30 CBS This Morning: "It's been like an awakening. Ireland, long positioned on the world's stage as a church-dominated backwater, has reinvented itself as a new and energized Emerald Isle. A more open, a more tolerant place."
Abortion: Due to the lack of further violence against abortionists, coverage of violence around abortion clinics on all shows amounted to 142 stories, compared to the 247 in 1994 and 150 segments in 1993.
On January 3, 1995 Jane Pauley promoted an upcoming segment on Dateline NBC by charging: "Still ahead -- the latest round of bloodshed and violence at abortion clinics. The anti-abortion movement has been creeping to the edge of bloody fanaticism for a decade." With coverage like that, reporter David Culhane could convey the results of a new poll during the January 8 CBS Evening News: "A new CBS poll shows that three out of four Americans say the protest tactics of some anti-abortion activists can be blamed for leading to the recent shootings at several abortion clinics."
What about violence perpetrated by abortion advocates? In 1994, only CNN reported that Ernest Robertson Jr. tried to shoot a pro-life protester after picking up his wife outside a Baton Rouge, Louisiana abortion clinic. In 1995, Daniel Adam Mahoney became the first pro-abortion activist indicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. Alice Hand was arrested in January 1995 for making at least three phone calls threatening to blow-up a Catholic church and school in Suffern, New York. But the networks were silent.
While the networks devoted 142 stories to anti-abortion violence outside clinics, only three alluded to violence inside. CNN's September 12 World News broadcast one segment about abortionist David Benjamin, who was convicted of second degree murder in New York City for allowing a woman to bleed to death from a perforated uterus during an abortion. Two 1995 segments aired estimates of 1.5 million abortions a year, two more mentions than in 1993 or 1994.
Social Issues: The number of stories primarily about homosexuality increased from 105 in 1994 to 113 in 1995, still a fraction of the 1993 total of 756. But the networks demonstrated a liberal orientation once again: in the few morning show interviews that aired, proponents of homosexuality outnumbered opponents, 13 to 3. Once again, the networks portrayed the religious right as a negative force in the Republican Party. While the networks would not suggest that a liberal group like the NAACP doesn't represent all black people, CBS suggested the Christian Coalition did not represent all Christians -- or suggested they were less than Christian.
Dan Rather introduced a September 8 story by noting Phil Gramm "was at a meeting of preacher Pat Robertson's political group, the one calling itself the Christian Coalition." Four months earlier, on May 15, Rather charged: "The group calling itself the Christian Coalition is aligned with hard-right stands on issues ranging from gay rights to school prayer, and it's demanding its due for its help in getting Republicans elected."
