Good news.

Twice as heavy, twice as many pages, twice as good for you: Coverage of three Commonweal forums organized to examine the contentious relations between religion and the media begins on page 13. The editors religion was often incomplete or inadequate, and sometimes incompetent or biased. Why?

As we began planning these forums in 1993, two examples loomed large: the coverage of the Branch Davidians and of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in Chicago. In Waco, the contempt conveyed by AFT federal agents was accepted uncritically by too many reporters, who first wrote about David Koresh as a charlatan if not a criminal. Too few media outlets probed the Branch Davidians' apocalyptic beliefs or reported their part in the stand-off and final inferno. In the second case, unsubstantiated charges of sexual abuse brought against Chicago's archbishop seemed to be unfairly seized upon and sensationalized. Subsequent investigation showed that CNN, which first reported the charges, ensured that they would surface just before a CNN special on clergy sexual abuse and the opening of the 1993 Catholic bishops' meeting.

Bias, ignorance, stereotypical thinking, snap judgments, and outright dishonesty--both stories were examples of how religion thinks the media get it wrong. Where were the objectivity and fairness of professional journalism? Both stories showed the herd mentality that can take over when reporters fail to--well, be reporters. That is not the whole story, of course: these two examples along with others--egregious and edifying, sobering and amusing--weave their way through the speeches and conversations of the three Commonweal forums. E.J. Dionne, Jr., recounting his excellent adventure covering a papal trip to Africa, shows how the attitude governing word choices can convey the news impartially. Journalists from the religious and secular media tell many such stories, offering analyses and observations that verify problems but also point to remedies.

A confluence of structural and cultural forces has sharpened the contrasts between two views of the world, one grounded in religious tradition and the authority of Scripture, the other in the Enlightenment tradition of rationalism and skepticism. What is news? Terry Eastland's telling example illustrates the epistemological divide: we modems get the news from our morning papers, the Israelites in the desert got theirs from the manna sent by God. Don Wycliff's counsel to journalists, "respect for one's [own] ignorance," about religion, points to the existence of personal bias. There is also a striking generational shift, as John Leo notes. Journalists--once local people knowledgeable about the communities they covered--are increasingly drawn from Ivyleague colleges and specialized professional programs. Leo argues that, as a result,

you get an elite view....Religion is okay for the masses, but it's something you [the

journalists] leave behind." Those impressions are echoed in William Baker's experience in struggling to bring ideas--philosophical, religious, ethical--to commercial and public television.

The remedies? They lie in several directions, including appeals to fairness and objectivity, acknowledgment that religious belief and religions are a major news story, and recognition that better coverage may mean greater specialization. Assign reporters to the religion beat who know the territory as well as other reporters know the sports or political beat. Helen Alvare's plea for greater sophistication in those who covered religion was further discussed by John Dart and smartly seconded by Mary Alice Williams: the cause of most media offenses is not malice or venality but "stupidity."

The structure of news gathering, time constraints, and the conflict model of "news" have to take into account the more ambiguous, often less dramatic, slower moving, multilayered nature of religious news. These were among the points raised by Peter Steinfels and E.J. Dionne, both of whom have covered religion and both of whom think the gap between the two world views can be bridged--in part, because they have done so. Their keynote addresses (beginning on pages 14 and 26) lay out a full agenda of problems and remedies.

But remedies are a two-way street. Cokie Roberts's observation that clerics can be their own worst enemies when it comes to the media is right. As director of the U.S.C.C.'s media office, Francis Maniscalco may not entirely agree with that assessment, but in a "Postscript" following the forums (page 49), he criticizes the media but also talks about the failings of religious leaders and institutions. "Religious people ... display their own kind of ignorance toward the world of the media and their own form of arrogance....This is too bad, because the two worlds have much in common. The media exist to communicate, to inform, even to shape public opinion, and the church is also about those things."

The forums covered a lot of ground. Among the outcomes: the sources of the conflicts between religion and the media are not so simple nor the impasse to better coverage unyielding. If the quality of media coverage needs improvement, so does the quality of media criticism. Grumbling about the media is a convenient way for religious leaders, as well as political leaders, to excuse their own failures. Scattershot criticism, factually shaky or uninformed about the difficulties of newsgathering, operates like the careless use of antibiotics: it creates antibodies rendering the media resistant to well-founded criticism when it is offered. Indeed, too much media criticism reveals no less bias than the coverage it targets. What passes for media criticism from religious sources is often ideological or theological warfare carried on by other means, ultimately not aimed at the media so much as at rival viewpoints within the religious group itself. But those concerned about constructively coping with the problem of the media's power in our culture and the media's inevitable role in conveying both information and attitudes about religion will find a wealth of practical information and down-to-earth insight in the Commonweal forums. They are not the last word, but they are a good word.