April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
Entertainment Column
Religion missing from news
You want to know the latest news, so you fire up the computer, go on-line and type in msnbc.com, the web site of the cable news network operated by NBC and MicroSoft.
When the opening page appears, you scan the options listed along the left side: business, sports, health, technology, weather.
But what you want isn't there, so you get back on the internet highway and drive over to cnn.com, the web site of the Cable News Network. There, your cursor flits along more left-handed choices: politics, nature, entertainment and food.
Grrr. You still haven't come across the information you're seeking. Maybe a major daily newspaper will have it, so off you go to washingtonpost.com to peruse its selections: politics, of course, and health.
In the world?
That brings more aggravation because it's still not what you're looking for. Maybe the problem is with you. Maybe you're not looking in the right spot. Maybe what you want is hidden under "nation" or "world." So you click on those options."World" gives you new choices: Africa, Europe and photos, for example. "Nation" proffers science and columns.
BY now, you're fed up. So you shut off the computer and pick up your handy-dandy Catholic newspaper to find what you've wanted all along: in-depth news and opinions about religion.
Why don't websites like CNN's and MSNBC's include "religion" as a major clickable? The answer is obvious: They don't have any stories to file underneath that category. Why include it as an option when there's nothing there?
Missing piece
It's rare to tune in to the nightly news, local or national, and hear a story about religion, faith or spirituality. But you will be overwhelmed every week with pieces about politics, world affairs, war, health, sports and weather.This neglect has been going on for years in daily newspapers and in weekly news magazines like Time, and on radio and TV broadcasts. When Newsweek published a recent cover story about "E-Life: How the Internet is Changing America," the cover listed its contents: business, health, sex, family, politics, education and science. You don't have to guess what wasn't there.
Religion is so common an omission that most people don't even realize it's not there. But it should be as glaring as listening to a local news broadcast and not finding out if it's going to rain tomorrow or how the hometown team did.
Needed now
What would you think of a national news show that didn't cover the president? Would you subscribe to a newspaper that never mentioned politics? How quickly would you cancel a sports magazine that declined to include baseball or football?Yet most of us blindly accept news outlets that omit a major part of our lives: religion.
It shouldn't require a shooting in a Texas church to attract the attention of the news media to the world of religion. It should be a beat they cover routinely because it's an essential part of the lives of the people in their community.
Imagine clicking on cnn.com and finding no link to world news. Unthinkable? It should be just as unthinkable to go there and not find "religion."
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