Page 316 - Religion in the Media Age Media, Religion & Culture

Notes 305

over the years, a trend followed by the other newsmagazines. Time, for example,
featured prominent religious leaders on its cover during the 1950s and 1960s,
including Protestant theological icons Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. In fact,
by the 1980s, most major newsmagazines and metropolitan daily papers, as well
as the Associated Press and United Press International, had dedicated religion
reporters or staffs, though relatively few at any one outlet (Silk 1995).
43 There were, of course, precursors of these events. CNN’s Jeff Greenfield, for
example, has noted that as the US Civil Rights Movement was rooted so deeply
in religion, its early stages largely occurred “under the radar” of the main-
stream press. This is ironic in that of the major television news outlets, CNN
has been among the most resistant to introducing religion reporting as a beat,
though there has been a good deal of self-criticism there (CNN 1993).
44 For helpful descriptions and analyses, see Quebedeaux (1974), Wuthnow
(1990), Roof (1999), Marsden (1983).
45 See Marsden (1983).
46 It has been argued that, for a variety of reasons, Evangelicalism has been partic-
ularly attuned to media and popular culture, and prone to see the media as
likely contexts for the doing of religious “good.” See, for example, Hendershot
(2004), Clark (2003), McCloud (2004), and Schultze (1987).
47 Wilson (2005). The ad was particularly striking because it violated the
unspoken rule that religious messages must always be inoffensive. Making its
point with regard to openness, it portrayed “other” faith groups as exclu-
sionary, using the symbol of black-shirted “bouncers” denying people access to
church. The church reports a remarkable response to the ad, with large
numbers of hits on its websites, calls to local congregations, and new attenders
directly attributed to its message of openness.
48 While this description relates most closely to the situation in the US, some similar
trends are obvious in the context of the UK. For example, in an interview in the
(London) Times, the then new Head of BBC Religious Broadcasting, Alan
Bookbinder, noted that among the effects of the September 11 attacks and some
other recent events in Britain was a renewed profile for religion in news and
programming (Snoddy 2002). An interesting footnote to this story, and one rele-
vant to our discussions here, is that Bookbinder is a self-avowed agnostic. His
appointment raised quite a few eyebrows as a result, but his argument that media
coverage of religion must by definition be rational and oriented to ideas rather
than the promotion of faith illustrates the terms of the problem of religion.
49 An April 2004 study by the Media Research Center confirmed an increase in
coverage of religion by the major US networks, finding that the number of
stories had more than doubled over the previous ten years (Bauder 2004).
50 Hadden and Cowan (2001).
51 Kornblut (2000).
52 Broadcasting and Cable Yearbook, 2002–2003.
53 Broadcasting and Cable Yearbook, 2002–2003. A note on claimed
“subscribers” to these services is in order. In all cases, these figures represent
the total number of subscribers to the basic cable services on which these chan-
nels appear as an option. They do not necessarily represent subscribers,
supporters, or regular viewers of these services. In fact, the actual levels of
viewing are much smaller, probably in the hundreds of thousands for each
rather than in the millions. For a thorough discussion of the issue of televange-
lism audience size during the heyday of the form, see Hoover (1987).
54 Hinsliff (2000). Interestingly, one of the major reasons for the reluctance of
British authorities to allow religious broadcasting has been fear of the excesses
of the US model.