Delivering the featured address at a religion news writers conference
in Denver on Friday, Archbishop Charles Chaput commented on what he
believes to be the new secular “orthodoxy” within American media and
warned that slanted journalism “diminishes public life.”
On Sept. 24, the Denver prelate made his remarks as keynote speaker
at the 61st annual Religion Newswriters Association conference at the
city's Westin Tabor center downtown.
Opening his speech, Archbishop Chaput underscored that a “free press
is part of the American identity, and also one of its best
institutions. I respect that. I value what journalists do for the same
reason I value the importance of religious faith in American life – both
in the private home and in the public square.”
In that regard, he added, the “kind of journalism that tracks our
religious life is so important because it’s the profession where two of
our defining freedoms meet.”
“A responsible press, and a faith shaped by the God of charity and
justice, share two things in common: a concern for human dignity, and an
interest in truth,” the prelate noted. “Freedom means that our choices
matter. It also means that our mistakes have consequences.”
Archbishop Chaput then referred to famed 20th century author George
Orwell and how his controversial work titled “Animal Farm” – which
critiqued the Soviet regime in Russia in the mid 1900s – was initially
suppressed from publication.
“Six decades later, this essay still has value,” he continued, “And
here’s why: Most arguments for press freedom deal with the media’s need
for independence from state censorship and propaganda. That makes
sense. But Orwell focused on something very different – a kind of
undermining of free thought and expression unique to modern democratic
societies.”
“Nobody demanded the media’s fawning coverage of the Soviet Union,”
the archbishop recalled. “Nobody required the falsification of facts, or
the ugly attacks on critics of Stalin, or the covering-up of unpleasant
truths. Nobody forced journalists and editors to do these things. They
freely chose to do them.”
“The news media of the day were staffed by decent men and women,” he
clarified. “They felt they were on the side of social progress. They
thought the Soviet Union, whatever its flaws, was fighting for human
progress too. So they ignored unhappy details and hard questions about
the reality of Soviet life.”
This dynamic “created what Orwell saw as a new form of religious
orthodoxy,” said Archbishop Chaput. “That orthodoxy shaped the
boundaries of permissible thought and expression. And Orwell warned that
this unspoken tendency toward group-think would threaten the press in
democratic societies well into the future.”
Orwell’s observations “capture the way many people feel today toward
the news media and coverage of religion news,” he went on. “In practice –
at least in the eyes of ordinary people I hear from every week – a new
body of ideas seems to shape the limits of acceptable thought in
American public life.”
“This new orthodoxy seems to influence the selection of religious
news and how that news gets presented. It seems to frame which opinions
are appropriate and which ones won’t be heard. And it seems to guide
the historical narrative that media present to their audiences,” the
archbishop emphasized. “At its core, it has a set of assumptions about
the nature of human life, the purpose of government, and the proper role
of religion in the lives of individuals and in society that veers away
from past American habits of thought.”
The Denver prelate noted that this “new thinking seems to presume a
society much more secular and much less religious than anything in
America’s past or warranted by present facts; a society where people are
free to worship and believe whatever they want, so long as they don’t
intrude their religious idiosyncrasies on government, the economy, or
culture.”
While “I do know reporters and editors whom I admire, and whose
fairness and skill I commend,” said the archbishop, “I think the
deficiencies in today’s coverage of religion are too real to ignore.”
The “Christian story now told in mainstream media” depicts the faith
as “a backward social force and a menace to the liberty of their fellow
citizens.”
“One of the worst habits many Catholics had at the start of the
clergy sex abuse crisis, including many bishops, was to minimize a very
grave problem,” he said. “But news media show many of the same patterns
of denial, vanity, obstinacy and institutional defensiveness in dealing
with criticism of their own failures.”
“Freedom of the press clearly includes the right to question the
actions and motives of religious figures and institutions,” Archbishop
Chaput noted.
“But freedom doesn’t excuse prejudice or poor handling of
serious material, especially people’s religious convictions. What’s new
today is the seeming collusion – or at least an active sympathy –
between some media organizations and journalists, and political and
sexual agendas hostile to traditional Christian beliefs.”
“When this happens,” he underscored, “the results are bad for everybody.”
“It’s no accident that freedom of religion and freedom of the press
are both named – in that order – in the First Amendment. The country’s
founders believed that protecting these two freedoms would be vital to
the American experiment,” the archbishop said.
“They saw that a
self-governing people needs truthful information and sensible opinion
from sources other than the state. They also believed that morality
grounded in religious belief is fundamental to forming virtuous people
able to govern themselves.”
“Knowledge professionals have their own kind of orthodoxy,” he added.
“They place a high premium on their own skill and autonomy. This has
consequences. It predisposes them to be uncomfortable with, and even
hostile toward, any claims of revealed truth, religious institutions,
traditions, doctrines and authority.”
“The point I want to leave you with is this: Journalism is a
'knowledge profession.' But like any other profession, the work of
journalism doesn't necessarily translate into self-knowledge or
self-criticism. And any lasting service to the common good demands
both. Journalism has its own unstated orthodoxies. It has its own
prejudices. And when they go unacknowledged and uncorrected – as they
too often seem to do – they can diminish our public life.”
SIC: CNA/USA