PERSPECTIVE ON RELIGION : Press Reduces Religion to Politics : Reporters need not be believers to get stories right, but a nation of believers deserves better, unbiased news.

As Easter becomes a memory, religious news typically fades from the columns of America’s newspapers. But this year may be different, because of New York Cardinal John O’Connor’s highly publicized complaints that the secular media are biased against Catholicism. His charges of “Catholic-bashing” raise anew the recurrent tension between a nation of believers and a political culture that increasingly relegates religious perspectives to the far corners of the public square.

Studies show that references to religion have virtually disappeared from history textbooks in public schools. And the biggest “religious” news in recent years concerns the misconduct of TV evangelists. The public image of major social institutions depends largely on their media portrayal. So it is not only Catholics who should be concerned over how the press portrays the nation’s largest religious organization. It raises the broader question of how the news presents the major faiths of a religiously diverse public.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs has just completed a study of news about the Catholic Church during the post-Vatican II era. We examined a sample of 1,876 stories from the New York Times, Washington Post, Time magazine and the CBS evening news from 1964 through 1988. For each story, we noted the topics, sources, viewpoints and language used to describe the church. On most controversies involving Catholic teachings, the church came out the loser in media reports.

Although the opinion breakdown varied from one issue to another, sources supporting the church were consistently in the minority on the broad range of debates involving sexual morality and church authority that dominated coverage. These included heated controversies over birth control, clerical celibacy, the role of women and minorities in the church and its response to internal dissent and issues involving freedom of expression. For example, the Washington Post quoted an activist group that condemned, “the blind idolatry of wealth which has resulted in sexism, racism and classism in the church.”

The major exception to this involved ecumenical efforts, which the media treated as a kind of “motherhood and apple pie” issue, supported by all people of goodwill. Even here, however, opinion was split over whether the church was helping or hindering efforts to promote inter-religious unity. Similarly, opinion was about evenly divided on the church’s involvement in political affairs.

But most of the praise was for church pronouncements condemning war. On domestic disputes over church-state relations--such as public support for parochial schools--most sources opposed the church’s doctrines and activities.

Controversial issues were frequently presented as conflicts between the church hierarchy, on one side, and lower-level clergy, lay Catholics and non-Catholics on the other. Journalists frequently approached such subject matter from a political vantage point. Debates were structured less in terms of religious significance than as conflicts between authorities and dissidents, outsiders and insiders.

The result was a long-running media drama that pitted a hidebound institutional hierarchy against reformers from within and without. This portrayal was reinforced by the language used to describe the church. The descriptive terms most frequently applied to the church emphasized its conservative ideology, authoritarian forms of control and anachronistic approach to contemporary society. For example, the New York Times quoted a dissident priest who called the church a “dying patriarchy” and a “fascist state.”

In many respects, moreover, long- term trends in the coverage of the church have been unfavorable. The sheer volume of coverage has dropped sharply since the 1960s, even as its topical focus has gradually diverged from the perspectives of Catholic editors (as reported in Catholic News Service surveys). Official church teachings are reported less frequently and are challenged more often when they do appear. Finally, the language used to describe the church increasingly carries connotations of conservatism, oppressiveness and irrelevance.

The more confrontational and negative tone of recent news coverage may have less to do with the media’s image of the church than with changes in journalism. Journalistic standards have shifted away from the goal of neutral, factual, dispassionate reportage to a more interpretive, critical and socially engaged approach. Because the political culture of major-media journalism is strongly secular and egalitarian, these tendencies have probably colored the tone of news coverage.

Ultimately, journalists are less fact collectors than storytellers. Their stories become, to a large extent, the reality that we experience. And the stories they tell about the Catholic Church rely on politics as much as religion for their dramatic appeal. Over the years, plots have focused on bureaucratic infighting, political intrigues, styles of leadership, policy disputes and the battle for public opinion. Increasingly, the story line revolves around a beleaguered authority struggling to enforce its traditions and decrees on a reluctant constituency.

When journalists reduce religion to politics, they tend to favor the dissidents, reformers and underdogs who engage their own political sympathies. The result is a picture that is not only one-sided but also one-dimensional. It is a tale filled with the sound and fury of partisan struggle but emptied of its spiritual significance. Reporters need not be believers to get religious stories right, but a nation of believers deserves better of its religious news.