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News Coverage of Religion, Ethics Gaining Attention
By Craig Pinley
CHICAGO, IL (January 2, 2004) - Judy Valente lives on the 15th floor in
downtown Chicago in a high-rise building, right where the action is.
Valente seems to have the perfect vantage point as she considers her
career as well. She is an on-air correspondent for Religion & Ethics
Newsweekly, a television show that is affiliated with the Public
Broadcasting System (PBS) in more than 200 markets. She started her
current job in December 1997, three months after the show's executive
editor, Bob Abernethy, hosted its first broadcast.
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly is the lone weekly television show
primarily focused on religion and ethics, and that's right where the
action is these days, Valente says. Scandals involving the Roman
Catholic Church and Protestant denominational splits have received much
front-page attention from media outlets in recent months. And as experts
now delve into the cause of wars and acts of terrorism, the religious
realm is scrutinized much like the political one, representing a major
shift in public focus.
"I feel that religion writers have the best beat in the country," says
Valente, who was raised a Roman Catholic and earned her undergraduate
degree from a Jesuit school, St. Peter's College in New Jersey. "You're
talking to people about their most fundamental values or beliefs -
whether what they believe is the ultimate meaning in life. What can be
better than that?
"The misconception is that religion is a feel good beat, a features
beat, because you are covering an intangible – God," Valente continues.
"But it's not all good. It has been tough to write about the Roman
Catholic Church in the past year or writing about the issue of 'holy
unions' within the United Methodist Church. It was hard to witness good
people, people of integrity, disagreeing so vigorously on an issue with
seemingly no room for compromise."
Since working in television, Valente has been honored on multiple
occasions by the U.S. International Film and Video Festival and won a
2003 Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Association for a
series entitled "Exploring Religious America." She earned an Angel Award
in 2000 for a television piece documenting churches trying to integrate
those with physical challenges into leadership roles. Valente was
recognized for her poetry, having a recent entry selected for "Best
Catholic Writing of 2003," and earned a Masters degree in Fine Arts
(Creative Writing) from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.
Going from newspaper reporting to television reporting hasn't been as
difficult for Valente as one might imagine and she thanks her boss for
that. Abernethy had been a national and foreign correspondent for NBC
television, but had always valued religion and ethics - he even took a
year off to attend Yale Divinity School. "He took a chance on me," she
said. "He said he wasn't concerned that I was a print reporter with no
experience in TV. He only cared that I was a good reporter."
However, certain subjects she reports about - and the angles she takes
in covering stories that other media outlets also cover - often differs
from the norm, at least in the television industry, and co-workers
noticed the difference right away. "The first few times on television I
worked with a former NBC producer," she said. "I remember there were
things I wanted to ask . . . and the producer said this stuff would have
ended up on the cutting room floor (at other places)."
A native of Bayonne, New Jersey, Valente worked at the Washington
Post for seven years before heading to the Wall Street
Journal from 1987 to 1994. While with the Journal, she was
nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a 1993 feature story she wrote about
a father taking care of his son, who was dying of AIDS.
In those days, the AIDS epidemic was a hot topic and it shaped how she
wrote the story. Valente said that she would report the story
differently if it were part of her beat today. And because religion is
covered more frequently in the media, she knows it would be more
acceptable to do so.
"The son had originally wanted to be a Presbyterian minister, but
disagreed that homosexuality was a sin," said Valente. "The real story
was that the father came to see that his son was not a sinner. I would
have allowed the father to talk more about the conversion he had - how
he came to reconcile his own beliefs as a Presbyterian with that of the
views about his son. It was quite a spiritual leap for him to make."
Along with helping put religion and ethics into the public forefront,
Valente gets a close look at the changing trends in religion around the
U.S. as a result of traveling around the country for Religion & Ethics
Newsweekly. She was privy to information about some of those trends even
before heading to television journalism. She served as a consultant at
Medill-Garrett Center for Religion and News Media at Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois, after leaving the Wall Street
Journal.
Although many "experts" might now surmise that people are more
"spiritual" than "religious", her field research has concluded something
quite different. She believes that people might just be looking for
something different in religion than what was previously offered.
"Studies seemed to say that we were becoming our own individual church,
that people did not want to delve into organized religion," said
Valente. "We were almost sounding the death knell for organized
religion. After six years of this (research), I want to say that that
perception is not completely correct and certainly not set in concrete.
I find that people, even those who consider themselves spiritual
seekers, want to ally with some spiritual organization or community. We
were a bit wrongheaded to think people wanted to practice a spiritual
discipline, but would not associate with a community. That was one of
the surprises to me.
"I think people may be seeking a different worship structure," Valente
continued. "A lot of people are getting spiritual sustenance from small
faith groups. It might be with some larger organization like a Neumann
Center (a Roman Catholic college ministry organization) or something
affiliated with college ministries on campus. Or it might be through
Bible studies. For example, I know a lot of people in Chicago who go to
monthly Taize services. They may not go to weekly services, but Taize is
a community for them."
Valente isn't sure which religion and ethics issues will be hot topics
in 2004, although she believes the Roman Catholic Church's evolution as
a denomination in the U.S. is worth watching. "The real crisis will be
when people realize the extent of the mismanagement of money that has
occurred due to the sex abuse scandal," she observes. "When churches
announce cutbacks of programs because of legal payments being handed
out, lay people are going to say, 'No more.'"
However, other religion and ethics issues are sure to get headlines and
Valente feels her television show will be right in the middle of the
action as those issues are reported upon and analyzed. She believes her
professional goals for 2004 are as ambitious as in the past. "I want to
find the next 'best story' out there," she notes.
Religion & Ethics Newsweekly is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York.
Funding is provided by Lilly Endowment, Inc. Additional support for
extended program distribution is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
To learn more about the television program, visit
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/.
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
