Can Journalists Get Religion?
How many divisions does the pope have? Stalin’s the one who asked, but reporters would have shared his scorn. The press’s rule of thumb was this: A lot of churchgoers read the paper, and there’s no need to risk offending them. So give them their harmless folklore, while the hounds of journalism chase serious matters.
The first new course open to both student bodies was “Religion and Public Issues,” offered last spring. The students formed groups that examined news stories for their religious side. To the bewilderment of Medill professor Robert McClory (a former priest who’s also a Reader staff writer), one group analyzed the police sweeps at the CHA. “I could not for the life of me think of any religious dimensions to the CHA sweeps,” says McClory. But the students “got into a discussion of where the churches were, and whether they were promoting the sweeps or not. You get into questions of rights and property and justice–which have a religious dimension.”
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“To me, about the best journalist anywhere these days is Serge Schmemann, who covered the Moscow bureau for the New York Times the usual number of years. If you go back and look at his stuff you just know this is the work of a man who is not just a good journalist but someone who knows the culture and society of the world he’s writing about. It’s no accident that Schmemann’s father was the distinguished dean of Saint Vladimir’s Theological Seminary–Russian Orthodox–in New York. There’s a depth and texture in his stories because he understands the dynamics of that culture. It’s in his bones.
If that’s when innocence began to rot, it rotted slowly. A shrewd article in the latest American Journalism Review examines the Cuban missile “crisis” of 1962. It argues that Kennedy had political reasons to exaggerate the threat the Soviet missiles posed. JFK scammed us all, and an innocent press corps went along.
We turned to Studs Terkel seeking answers. Being 82 now, Terkel can take the long view of American innocence. If there was a moment when it vanished he’d have noticed.
But this was just one man’s opinion, and he hadn’t seen Redford’s movie. Others might say innocence died with Look Who’s Talking Too, clearly the work of cynics.
