Postscript.

What is going on in the media? That is a question everyone is asking today, in the church, in politics, in the media themselves. There is a growing conviction that the media are playing an increasingly negative role in our society. Obviously the strong criticism of violence on television points to one area of concern, largely related to the entertainment media. My area of expertise is with the news media, with print and broadcast journalism; and I will reflect on them.

With regard to the news media, there is a feeling that the media have adopted a cynical attitude which is having a corrosive effect on people's trust in their institutions. Connected with this is the phenomenon sometimes described as the tabloidization of the news, the tendency for the media to fixate on the sensational. Obviously, there were always elements of the media that have done that, the tabloids, for instance, that showcased the sensational, such as bloody crimes and juicy scandals involving celebrities.

But this tendency is escalating and infecting even the serious news organizations. Think of the last couple of years: Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco; Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan; and most recently, O.J. Simpson. These stories clearly were not left to the tabloids. Yet can anyone seriously claim that these matters, as tragic as they are to those immediately involved, have the kind of social significance that warrants the amount of air time and column inches given to them?

Some in the media will suggest that they are in business to make a profit and are simply responding to what the market is demanding. One must reply that the media assume too much, and too quickly decide what the public wants. In fact, they contribute to a lowering of standards by defining as news only what is sensational and by catering, even creating, a short attention span on the part of the public. How quickly the media pass from one subject to another. One day Somalia is in the headlines; a few weeks later people are asking, "Whatever happened to Somalia?" Sometimes a story has truly reached its conclusion; but too often the media have moved on in a restless search for the new, for fear the public will become bored and turn to their competitors.

Part of the role the media have to play--and which they have always had to play--is sifting the news for what is important and what is not. Today they seem to choose more and more in favor of the ephemeral and the sensational. The media seem to be responding to a kind of Gresham's Law by which bad journalism is pushing good journalism out. Or, to put it another way, even those journalists who used to look down on tabloid journalism are now adapting not only tabloid journalism's types of stories but using the tabloids' sensationalistic style to deal with serious stories.

When it comes to covering the church, it sometimes looks to me as if the newspaper publishers and network executives get together somewhere to plot their coverage of church matters. Why do I suspect this? It is because sometimes, when a story takes reporters into unfamiliar territory, they tend to use as a model the work of reporters they think are more knowledgeable. This leads in a few easy steps to what is sometimes referred to as herd journalism or the media talking to themselves.

One story that made many exclaim "What's going on in the media?" was the treatment of the suit filed against Cardinal Joseph Benardin by Steven Cook. Though this story has finally ended happily with the reconciliation of accuser and the wrongly accused, its earliest stages comprise perhaps the most glaring example of what can go wrong in the media.

Was the filing of the suit legitimate news? I think we have to say yes. Granted that, however, there are different ways to handle it. Let me note two. In the New York Times, the story, taking only a few paragraphs, ran well inside the paper. CNN and its reporter Bonnie Anderson, however, acted like the Angel Gabriel announcing the Last Judgment.

Both news organizations were acting on the same set of facts: a young man, about whom little was known, had filed a suit against a prominent person. That's not an uncommon thing. It's not even a difficult thing to do in terms of expending time and money. But filing a suit is not proof; it does not establish that what the young man claimed had actually happened. I think the Times hit it about right: it gave the basic facts of the allegation and the cardinal's denial of it and ran the story without fanfare.

Bonnie Anderson went on CNN as soon as the suit was filed, dramatically announced that it had been filed moments before, and said it was a suit that could rock the church in this country to its foundations. A few minutes were then devoted to showing Cardinal Benardin, now put by the media

in the position of having to defend himself, denying, in a sidewalk news conference, allegations he so far knew mainly from the news media.

However, for the piece de resistance, after the cardinal's few minutes, CNN ran a six-minute interview with Mr. Cook in which he was not asked the tough questions about his allegations but in which he was pictured in a sympathetic light, almost as if his purpose was, above all, to save the church from itself. With that interview, CNN, in my opinion, moved from reporting a story to intervening in the newsmaking by giving credibility to the accuser. If Mr. Cook seemed believable to the public, it is because CNN seemed to believe him.

Yet this story turned out to be not even a close call. When the facts emerged, as they did within months, the thinness of the suit against the cardinal became apparent and the young man himself dropped it.

There is an additional detail that may show how vulnerable even large and important news organizations like CNN are to manipulation in the current media climate. At a seminar at Northwestern University about the media's treatment of this story, Mr. Cook's lawyer, Steven Rubino, admitted that he had arranged to file the suit just before the annual November meeting of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, just as he had filed another case before the bishops' previous June meeting. He was saying, in effect, that he expected the media to become his unwitting or not-so-unwitting partners in pursuing his case. Since CNN itself had also scheduled a pre-meeting special, an hour-long report with Bonnie Anderson, called "Fall from Grace," about pedophilia among priests, one might have thought CNN's own opportunism would have alerted them to Mr. Rubino's.

I think this story indicates how the media can go wrong: the sensationalism of the treatment; the rush to put the story out to beat possible competitors; the assumption that the alleged victim must be right and the large institution and its leader wrong; and the slipping of journalistic standards by which an allegation, unsupported by corroborating evidence, is enough for a major news organization to broadcast it every hour on the hour with the weakest possible excuse that the accused was also shown denying the charge.

The Bernardin story also highlights an important type of journalism that seems to have gotten out of hand. That is investigative journalism. Many journalists today seem to define all journalism as investigative reporting. This kind of journalism has been in the forefront of the news business at least since the muckrakers at the beginning of this century. Its importance took a quantum leap with Watergate. Soon every reporter wanted to be either Woodward or Bernstein, and no one was successful until he or she had found a scandal to report.

Needless to say, it was the uncovering of real scandals that gave investigative journalism its reputation for serving society; and investigative journalism discovered information that helped cast doubt on the accuracy of the allegation against Cardinal Bernardin. However, investigative journalism is also behind the growing tendency to treat suspicions and allegations as if they were proof of scandalous behavior, and this has made the public as skeptical of the media as the media tend to be of society's leaders.

This is a tremendous irony: The media seem to have conveyed their skepticism--perhaps the word really is cynicism--about contemporary leadership to the public so successfully that the public does not hesitate to apply the same skepticism to the media. This is not simply another example of killing the messenger. It is a developing conviction that the messenger is part of the problem.

Part of traditional media skepticism, and not a bad one in itself, is the media's tendency to take the word of an individual over that of an institution, especially a large one. One of the myths the media live by is the story of David and Goliath: the little fellow who comes out on top over the giant. That's a rousing story indeed. But sometimes the media, in their desire to get that story, actually falsify it or at least drastically oversimplify it. If they looked more carefully, David, in fact, might not turn out to be as right as the media first thought, nor Goliath as wrong. Today the media almost always tend to give credence to even outlandish charges against the church and to those who publicly disagree with church teaching. The media need to think about whether they may be acting like Goliath toward those they think are Goliaths.

Everything I have said up to now could be echoed anywhere from the White House to your local police precinct. Does the church have less generic concerns? I think it does. First it should be pointed out that when it comes to analyzing just how good a job the media do in covering the church or religion in general, it is useful to divide the media in two. Print and electronic media are very different worlds. With regard to religion reporting, print journalism (especially the larger papers in the larger cities) has a tradition of professional religion writers. One may disagree with what they write, but most of these people know a good deal about the subject of religion.

The electronic media--both radio and television--have not had such professionals. Only recently did one TV network, ABC, designate a full-time correspondent to cover religion and values. That says a lot about electronic journalism's attitude toward the importance of religion in society.

Very practically, from the perspective of my job, the difference between talking to a professional religion reporter and to a general reporter is, too often, the difference between night and day. With full-time religion writers, you can get right to the point. With the others, I sometimes feel there's no starting place closer than, "In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth." This is not so much a problem of individual reporters as a systemic one. If I were sent to cover a football game, something about which I know next to nothing, the idiocy of my questions would drive everyone I interviewed crazy. No responsible editor would send someone like me to do such a job. Yet many editors and producers of broadcast news seem to feel that almost anyone can report on religion.

The dynamics of television make matters worse. Because of TV's emphasis on personalities, reporters are obliged to become celebrities and are expected to report on everything from space launches to cooking recipes. Is it any surprise, then, that people who know something about religion find TV journalism lacking in depth or overly concentrated on what might be called the sporting aspect of every story: Who won and who lost?

A piece on "Primetime Live" last year, with Sam Donaldson, reported on how the United States purportedly helped Nazis escape Europe at the end of World War II. The story contained allegations about how "the Vatican" helped such Nazis. I couldn't help thinking that Donaldson is about as expert in Vatican refugee policy during the 1940s as I am on football. Clearly somebody brought him a story, and the show's producers had done enough research to find out that a Jesuit historian, Father Robert Graham, was a Catholic expert on the issue. The program gave Graham about a minute of airtime to deny the allegations (enough to claim the show was "balanced"), but then the report blithely continued, using the original assumptions about "Vatican" involvement.

Today, unfortunately, getting a story right often seems to have become less important than getting ratings.

Take another example, the tendentious manner in which "Dateline" handled the story of Father David Trosch, the Alabama priest who espouses killing abortionists. On CNN's "Reliable Sources," "Dateline" correspondent Dennis Murphy described his slant on the story: the church's supposed lack of action against Father Trosch. But that is nonsense. Trosch was disciplined; but, in what seems to me a dangerous mixture of ignorance and arrogance, some in the media decided that no Catholics are really punished unless they are excommunicated. So the media sought to create an issue over "will he or won't he be excommunicated?"

What stands out here is how the assumption that the only good journalism is investigative journalism combined with media skepticism about leadership to distort a straightforward story about Trosch's views and the church's rejection of them. By accepting the fact that there are forms of journalism other than the investigative, forms based on expertise and found in fields as diverse as sports, travel, science, and the arts, such a story might have been informative. This indiscriminate attempt at investigative journalism shows instead how perilously close such efforts can come to making up a story that isn't there.

Nor can we exclude real bias on the part of some in the media. The claim is often made that news people are very secular and are biased against religion because of that. That may be true. However, anti-Catholicism has had a long career in this country, and it is not impossible that some media people retain attitudes ingrained in previous, not very ecumenical eras. One columnist wrote in connection with the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo that "the church has subtle power in addition to its crude sway in some countries." This sounds almost like an echo of nineteenth-century nativist attitudes, with its invocation of some kind of secret Catholic power.

One form this bias may take is overconcentration on the disagreements within the church. Lack of unity within a faith group is certainly newsworthy, whether it comes in the form of the conflict over a document on sexuality in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or the leadership debate within the Southern Baptist Convention. Yet pride of place does seem to be given to Catholics who take up pen or microphone to complain about their church. The "Hers" column in the New York Times decided to take on the annulment process. I wonder of what other religion's internal processes the Times would tolerate such a one-sided description. Purely on journalistic grounds I would take issue with the column's implication that the annulment process is a charade in which annulments are granted willy-nilly, when the annulment entered into evidence seems to demonstrate the opposite. This particular annulment, the writer's former husband's, it turns out, was not granted. Also to make a process that is open to and availed upon almost equally by women and men into a gender issue is more than questionable. I took the column as an application of an unexpressed journalistic principle that there's nothing that cannot be said about the Catholic Church.

One reason, I think, that this principle is so freely applied is that most media see in the Catholic Church only a large institution: the papacy, the hierarchy, the great churches. They don't think it can be stopped or even wounded, even if they wanted to. They almost entirely forget that it is also the religion of ordinary people who can be wounded by how their beliefs are portrayed. Catholics should speak out when they are offended. There are millions of Catholics who are consumers of news, and it is as consumers that we will change news coverage when the news organizations realize that they are offending their own customers.

The media usually point out that criticizing church leadership for its public stands on social issues does not constitute bias. Since there is a kind of common sense to this position, it is important for church members to gather the evidence where bias is suspected. The relentlessness of the criticism, the kind of language used, the willingness or unwillingness to treat the church's position with seriousness, these are indicators of something more than legitimate public debate.

But addressing all of the above problems is an uphill battle. Few in the media are quick to examine their own behavior and admit to either ignorance or arrogance. Forget about bias. I am reminded that Cardinal Newman once referred to the quasi-infallibility of the periodical publications of his day. Apparently, even before television, the media could display a great lack of humility in reporting on complex topics to which they had only just been introduced.

Religion reporting is too often the clash of two uncomprehending worlds. On one side is a reporter, assigned to a religion story as one among many others to research and write. For the religion story the reporter is not likely to have much of a background in the subject and may even lack a knowledge of basic religious terms. On the other side are religious people, knowledgeable and devoted, but often not having communication with the wider world as either a skill or a priority. Given this scenario, one might be more likely to wonder how there could ever be any satisfactory results rather than that there are so few.

From this scenario, the statement that religious people may not have communications as either a skill or a priority should be taken very seriously.

Religious people also display their own kind of ignorance toward the world of the media and their own form of arrogance toward it. 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. A lot of church people recoil from this idea--perhaps because publicity has gotten such a bad reputation for superficiality, for concentrating on the wrapping instead of the contents--but the gospel is, after all, good "news."

I think it is essential that church leaders be available to news media, sometimes for particular stories and sometimes for general discussions. This will help counteract impressions of remoteness. Reporters, like some other groups, may indeed make more dangerous enemies than reliable friends; but a kind of familiarity, if not friendship, is helpful. If reporters feel they can, on occasion, walk up to a bishop and put a question directly, that goes a long way toward reducing suspicions--on both sides.

We have to make intelligent use of the media by being willing to deal with them. But we also have to do a better job of using our own church communications components. When I edited the Long Island Catholic, I once wrote that the church media helped make the church credible in the world of communications, the way our school system makes us credible in the world of education, our hospitals in the world of health care, and Catholic Charities does in the world of social services. A strong communications ministry not only gives the church an independent voice, but it also gives access to the wider world of communications.

Thus, we have a lot going for us. But we also have a lot against us. Even with better communications skills, one problem we have always with us is that, from the media's point of view, a positive story about what the church is doing is not news. "The church is supposed to do good. What's the news there?" The media have a distinct bias for the unusual, the sensational, and for conflict. The stories about the good the church is doing will probably make the grade to the extent that they are unusual (if not sensational). (And if you had to fight the bishop to get something done, all the better!)

I also think we need to put greater emphasis on communications in Catholic education. Media literacy in elementary and high schools, and journalism courses in our Catholic colleges and universities could provide a fine setting for discussing these issues. An extensive network of Catholic schools of journalism could be at the forefront of the field of ethics in communications. It could provide places where secular journalists might turn for courses designed to educate them to cover the Catholic church competently.

Many dioceses, religious communities, and other church organizations have employed directors of communications. A second step needs to be taken: to treat these people's jobs seriously.

The church needs to become more competent in dealing with the mass media. The mass media, in turn, need to become more competent in dealing with news about the church. On both sides this implies personnel development. Church leaders need to employ good, competent communicators to keep the media informed about what the church is doing. Media need to expend their resources to train their people in specialized topics such as religion.

I am convinced that good personnel will create an atmosphere, if not of actual trust, at least of professional regard which may eliminate a significant percentage of the problems. Journalists who display a knowledge and an understanding of religion will be more likely to merit cooperation. In turn, the more journalists see themselves as having access and being kept informed, the less likely they will be to jump to conclusions and claim, as some do, cover-ups typical of a secretive church.

The influence of the media in our society is too great for us to sit on the sidelines, licking our wounds and asking, "What is going on in the media?" It is time to challenge the media to be more responsive, to religious people certainly, but also to the entire community they serve. The more thoughtful in the media are themselves questioning the growing glibness with the way news is selected and treated. A concern for values--which many media people share with their friends and neighbors--can begin to inspire the way they approach the news. If--perhaps that should be "when"--the church enters into a serious and professional dialogue with the media, it may very well be the crucial factor affecting not only the way our own story is told, but also how the means of social communications define the role they should play in our society. MSG. FRANCIS J. MANISCALCO is director of the Office of Media Relations for the United States Catholic Conference. This is a revised version of a talk given to the New York State Catholic bishops and religious superiors.