By Tom Minnery, Vice-President of Public Policy, Focus on the Family

June 1998 – If the nineties is truly the decade of diversity, then no institution has given itself to this cause more than our nation’s news media. But just how critical is it that newsrooms create “diversity” based solely on the politically correct basis of race?

Not critical at all, in my view, especially if the reporters all think alike. That’s because journalism is an enterprise of ideas, and American journalism needs diversity of ideas far more than it needs a precisely calculated balance of AfricanAmericans, Asian-Americans, and Hispanic-Americans.

I shared this notion recently at the University of Michigan, during a conference of journalists entitled “Diversity and the News.” The meeting was attended by big-city reporters from across the country, and I could not have been more surprised at the response to my message. Not a single chair was thrown. In fact, many of the journalists agreed.

I was invited to the conference to reflect back to those who point the microphones the views of one organization at which the microphone is frequently pointed. Many national reporters have trooped through the halls of Focus on the Family over the last few years, and we are continually astonished at the religious ignorance and skepticism among the journalists we meet, especially among people who profess to be capable of producing fair stories about our organization.

We at Focus believe the cause of Christianity is of utmost importance, and I said at the conference that we wouldn’t at all mind meeting reporters who believed the same. To be blunt about it, I said, not only do we seldom meet journalists like that, but too many of the reporters who visit us don’t have even an entry-level understanding of religion. Many don’t know the difference between an epistle and an apostle.

I gave the audience an illustration. As this conference took place, hundreds of sports reporters had just flocked to the Super Bowl to write about the Big Game. I assume that nearly all of those reporters understood the game of football, and all of them believed that this particular game was very important.

Does that make them biased? Are they unable to report fairly on the game because they are enthusiastic believers in the “cause” of football?

What about the sports reporters from Colorado, who wrote openly about the best strategies for the Denver Broncos to win the game? What about the journalists from Wisconsin, who no doubt were reporting the same kinds of stories about their home team?

Why didn’t the managements of the papers and television stations in Colorado and Wisconsin bar their reporters from covering the game, since they were not impartial about their beliefs?

I said to the conference audience that if religion had been at stake in the Super Bowl, and not football, I firmly believe that most reporters who held a particular view of religion would not have been sent to cover the event. All of them would have been disqualified as “biased.”

In fact, some of the least competent coverage of Focus on the Family has appeared in Colorado newspapers. The Denver Post spared no effort to boost the hometown team, the Broncos, in the Super Bowl. But when it comes to coverage of a home-state religious organization – us – they are seldom found guilty of writing knowledgeably about their subject.

We still remember the difficulty the Denver Post and other local papers had in reporting accurately on Amendment 2, a statewide initiative in 1992 that prevented state and local governments from extending special rights and privileges to homosexuals.

And reporters still routinely mislabel Dr. Dobson as “the Rev.” and “televangelist.”

We are not accustomed to complaining aloud about ill-prepared reporters who come to Focus, but I was encouraged by the audience response in Detroit – many of the journalists at the conference wanted to know how they sometimes misfire, and many agreed that more knowledgeable reporters ought to be hired.

My remarks stung at least one reporter whom I had no intention of offending. She was Laurie Goldstein, a very competent religion writer – and wit – for The New York Times. Later in the day she referred to my comments and said she knows her subject matter quite well, thank you very much, including the writings of Paul the “Epistle.”

Touché, Mrs Goldstein.