MediaWatch: February 1994
Table of Contents:
- MediaWatch: February 1994
- ABC Friday Segment Often Used As Vehicle for Unbalanced Praise
- NewsBites: What A Great Book
- Revolving Door: Bode Moves to PBS
- Schieffer Asks 26 Questions About Lying, But No Such Questions for Dems
- Media Suffer Memory Lapse
- Not My Fault
- ABC First to Hire Religion Reporter
- Janet Cooke Award: PBS Program on Campaign Finance Laws Boasts Nine Opponents, No Supporters
ABC First to Hire Religion Reporter
Repenting for Past Sins?
In January, ABC News named Peggy Wehmeyer, a local TV religion reporter in Dallas, to handle the same duties for World News Tonight. According to the January 26 USA Today, anchor Peter Jennings had urged ABC to hire a religion specialist for three years, saying that religion was "one of the great untapped areas in our national life." Wehmeyer added "that you don't have to be religious to be interested in people of faith."
Most in the media aren't very religious. In a 1980 poll by Professors Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman, 86 percent of reporters for major news outlets responded they "seldom" or "never" attended religious services. That vast cultural divide between the media and the public was exposed again last year when Washington Post reporter Michael Weisskopf wrote on February 1 that evangelical Christians were "largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command." Last summer, CBS reporter Jerry Bowen cracked about Pope John Paul II: "There are some who say that he [the Pope] would have been more comfortable in the 5th century, but some theologians say that really, some of the fifth century Popes were more progressive than John Paul II."
On World News Tonight last August 13, ABC's Jeff Greenfield pondered why, aside from "protest or conflict or dissent...religion is so often the untold story?....Only 50 newspapers in America even have a full-time religion reporter. The major TV networks have none." Why? Greenfield explained: "The quiet, daily influence of faith is very hard to cover. Then there's the nature of media people -- more skeptical, more secular." He concluded: "The ongoing influence of religion in daily life goes all but ignored. This, in a country where on any given weekend there are more people in houses of worship than attend major league baseball games all year long." As the first network this decade to maintain a religion beat, perhaps ABC will lead the media from mockery to balance.
