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American Morning

Does Media Focus on Religious Crisis Only?

Aired April 26, 2002 - 09:42   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We are going to move on now to our "America's Talking" segment. There are a lot of issues out there that we need to tackle, so let's get right to it with our guests, "Washington Post" media critic Howard Kurtz, also the host of CNN's "Reliable Sources," and rejoining us now, "New York" magazine writer Lisa DePaulo. And in few minutes, we are going to take your e-mails and your phone calls on the subject, and the subject of does the media only report on religion when there is a scandal? You see that phone number there, call us. We will take your calls.

But I wanted to -- first off, talk about Sally Jessie Rafael saying she regretted that she didn't complain about the show being pushed to go more low-brow. She wished she had produced -- pushed her producers harder.

LISA DEPAULO, "NEW YORK" MAGAZINE: It is very revealing of how little power she must have had. I mean, you can't imagine Oprah or Rosie having a topic they don't want, you know, shoved down their throats. So -- but my guess is if she was that powerless, if she had made a stink before, she probably would have been crushing her eyeglasses on the air a lot sooner.

ZAHN: Well, Howard, what about this? I mean, she was on the air for almost two decades here. If you were that upset about the content of the show, don't you think you might have had an impact a little bit earlier into the process.

HOWARD KURTZ, "WASHINGTON POST": I'm not buying this 'my bosses made me do it' line. I mean, Sally Jesse Rafael made a lot of money doing teen-age daughters who slept with their step fathers and became prostitutes. No body forced her to do it. You know, Geraldo Rivera once told me when he was finishing up his daytime extravaganza that he felt like taking a shower after the show. Well, it is easy to be critical after you have taken the money and done it, and this seems like a little late to be expressing those kind of reservations.

ZAHN: Howard, I want to quickly turn you to the issue of the coverage of the Bush administration by the press. The media took a lot of heat for taking too much of a hands-off policy post-September 11. Is that changing?

KURTZ: Well, there's no question, Paula, that the president has hit a rough patch here between handling of the Middle East conflict which might be charitably described as inconsistent, the coup in Venezuela, losing the Senate vote on oil drilling in Alaska, the budget deficit doubling, we learned this morning. But, he is still doing pretty well. What cracks me up is to watch these journalists say the president's poll rating has dropped to 69 percent. Well, most presidents would run over their grandmothers for 69 percent approval rating.

But of course, Bush coming down from a stratospheric 90 or 92 percent, the knee-jerk journalistic impulse is to portray that as he is in trouble. I don't think he is in very big trouble right now.

ZAHN: All right. On to our viewers' calls, and their e-mails about the issue of how the media covers religion. Our first one comes from Kel. He writes, "Yes, the press only covers religion when there is a scandal, and that is the way it should be. In this case, the media is doing the public a great service." -- Lisa.

DEPAULO: Actually, we cover the Catholic Church during scandals, and when there is a death. We're right there if something happens to a cardinal, but it is -- it's interesting if you notice the last real religion story that came out of the church was the pope's visit to Cuba, and all these reporters were there, and then the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, and they all flew home, and the pope couldn't get arrested in Cuba at that point. Of course we do.

ZAHN: We are going to take a phone call now from Father Joseph.

Good morning, Father Joseph. Where are you joining us from this morning?

CALLER: Hello, Paula (ph). Michigan.

ZAHN: And do you have a comment or a question for our panel today?

CALLER: I have a comment, and maybe I would like their reaction. The comment is that many of the decision makers, like editors, vastly underestimate the number of people that are involved in churches, synagogues, and mosques, on the weekend, and would be their audience.

And secondly, many of the major news sources, papers and stuff, do not have anyone who knows anything about religion as a speciality, and therefore, they only response to the crisis.

ZAHN: Well, Howie, I'm sure -- you at CNN -- the "Washington Post" as well as CNN has some very smart religious experts on staff. Do you want to take a stab at that one?

KURTZ: Well, newspapers have a number of very good religion reporters, but it is a sad commentary that of the three broadcast networks, only ABC has a full-time journalist covering religion. I do think that only bad news is news when comes to this area, and given the impact that religion has on the lives of millions of people around the world, it clearly is an under covered arena, accept when we are in the midst of a scandal like the current fiasco.

ZAHN: Let's move on to the e-mail from Justin, and he writes, "the media generally only reports the bad in the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox priest, Protestant ministers, and Jewish clergy all have sexual predators, but you seldom hear of those."

Lisa.

DEPAULO: That's interesting. One of the things I think is surprising about the coverage of this scandal is that it's in many ways, not too little, but definitely too late. You know, a lot of these cases were 10, 15, 20 years old.

ZAHN: But the problem is that a lot of these people didn't come forward until they felt they had the latitude to do so.

DEPAULO: That's right, that's right, that's right. So Geoghan blew it out of the water. Suddenly we were looking at all of the other dioceses. But, you know, I think we should be taking a hard look everywhere for what's happening with these priests.

ZAHN: Let's pick up with our phone call with Barbara. Good morning, Barbara.

CALLER: Yes, good morning. First of all, let me just say that I -- I don't think that -- that the question is fair in a sense. The media reports on the news, and what's happening in the church is news. If this was happening in education, if this was happening in the Scouts, it would be reported because it's news, just as you report on a church fire. So I think religion -- news, per se, about religion should be in the church news letter, not reported on news -- in news media.

ZAHN: Barbara, you make a very good point, and it's a point that people often make about crisis governing the editorial process. But Howard, that is the reality isn't it, when you look at the news cycle and how we cover news?

KURTZ: It is -- I am not going to try to justify our general neglect of religion as an important subject, but on this story, and you may want to roll on this, Paula, because you may never hear me say this again. I think the media have done just about everything right. This began with a couple of dogged "Boston Globe" reporters digging out details about the cover up by the Boston archdiocese of this wayward priest, who we learned this morning, among other things, had venereal disease. Others reporters in other cities jumped on the story, and then you have the pope summoning the American cardinals to the Vatican. That has got to be a big story. Almost impossible to over-cover it, and so I don't think we ought to be too hard on -- if it was not for the press, this would still be going along without the kind of worldwide scrutiny That it is getting today.

ZAHN: Yes, I think most of us would agree with that.

Karrie is our next e-mailer, and she writes, "where are the stories about religious leaders who give up their time -- or give of their time, money, and energy to help people who are in need? What? Report that? How boring!" The fact is there is a place for feature reporting in broadcast. There's a place for feature reporting in newspapers and magazines. That kind of reporting gets done, but maybe doesn't get the attention this person thinks it deserves.

DEPAULO: And there is plenty of reporting on -- I believe on people that do good things like that. I mean, you look at the coverage of Father Judge and, of course, it because of -- but I do believe that you know, there was incredible attention devoted the good works he had done for years.

ZAHN: Father Michael Judge was, of course, the chaplan who was performing last rites for New York City Firefighters and lost his own life in the process. Howard Kurtz, a closing thought on the media usually concentrating on the negative and not the positive.

KURTZ: Well, a lot of the more upbeat feature story tend to get done in the style sections, but they don't make the front page. And what people remember are the screaming front-page headlines, the top of newscast, that the media only bestow when there is a scandal of this magnitude. So, I think we could do a better job, but I think we have done a pretty good job on this particular story.

ZAHN: All right. Well, thank you very much. Howard Kurtz, we will be looking for you. We should remind everybody that "Reliable Sources" is on this weekend, and what is your topic -- your lead topic? The coverage of...

KURTZ: We'll be talking about...

ZAHN: Is the honeymoon over for the president, right? In the media?

KURTZ: The press suddenly turning on President George W. Bush.

ZAHN: Check out those program notes right there. Lisa DePaulo, good to see you again. You have been one busy woman. Let's get her pieces out on the affair between Suzy Wetlaufer and Jack Welch in the latest edition of "New York" magazine.

DEPAULO: All the details.

ZAHN: All right you will find right there. Thank you both.

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