{"id":1015,"date":"2007-05-14T11:52:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-14T11:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2007\/05\/2020s-failed-faith.html"},"modified":"2007-05-14T11:52:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-14T11:52:00","slug":"2020s-failed-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/05\/2020s-failed-faith.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8217;20\/20&#8217;s&#8217; Failed Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You know that feeling of disappointment you get when you tune into your favorite TV show expecting to get a new episode, and it turns out to be a cleverly concealed clip-show? Sure, it&#8217;s artfully put together, but you wanted fresh entertainment. Or in the case of &#8220;20\/20&#8217;s&#8221; &#8220;Seeing and Believing: The Power of Faith,&#8221; fresh information.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always enjoyed when ABC&#8217;s John Quinones has taken on matters of faith. Think back to his &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/116\/story_11635_1.html\" target=\"_new\">John of God<\/a>&#8221; coverage, since Quinones&#8217; coverage is respectful yet colored by healthy journalistic skepticism. In fact, I&#8217;ve likened Quinones to &#8220;The Mythbusters,&#8221; who set out to prove or disprove myths without any real prejudice. So, when I saw that Quinones was part of the stalwart newsmagazine\u2019s two-hour special on faith, I was very excited.<\/p>\n<p>But, instead of getting real insight, we got 10 minute fluff pieces, many of which were taken from previous reports. Sure, I&#8217;ve worked for many media companies where content has been &#8220;repurposed,&#8221; but to pull bits and pieces from exemplary investigative pieces and mush them into Oprah-esque segments about the definition of faith is to do the previous reporting a grave disservice.<\/p>\n<p>Not that &#8220;20\/20&#8221; didn&#8217;t try to find some balance some of the less than neutral vignettes. Author\/geneticist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/story\/136\/story_13688_1.html\" target=\"_new\">Richard Dawkins <\/a>(&#8220;The God Delsuion&#8221;) and debunker James Randi were interviewed. And they exposed Rev. Peter Popoff\u2019s latest scam&#8211;Dead Sea healing water&#8211;and presented the heartbreaking story of Nichole, a young atheist in a small, religious town in Oklahoma. But neither story was given enough time to develop properly.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the only story left to simmer was that of ABC news&#8217; elder stateswoman, Diane Sawyer, who posed tough, probing questions to her subjects. But, even Sawyer\u2019s segment had its drawbacks, which is extremely unfortunate, as I would have enjoyed two hours devoted just to the story of four modern women (would-be nuns) looking to <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/2020\/story?id=3160621&amp;page=1&amp;CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312\" target=\"_new\">join an ascetic, cloistered community<\/a>. But, the report seemed to skip between interviews that Sawyer did in the mid-80s with a group of Poor Clares (nuns) in New Mexico and the more recent documenting of the young women trying out the vocation for the weekend.<\/p>\n<p>To top it off, Premiere Magazine\/MTV\u2019s Chris Connolly showed up reporting on the mega-selling &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/features\/top10\/secret\/readergallery.html\" target=\"_new\">The Secret<\/a>,&#8221; but his prime example of someone using visualization to attain a dream, didn&#8217;t even mention using &#8220;The Secret.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But, even within this disappointing clip show, there was one redeeming segment that asked if we, as humans, are <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/2020\/story?id=3157321&amp;page=1\" target=\"_new\">hard-wired to believe in God<\/a>. Building on studies by Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania and a founder of the field called neurotheology, the segment explored how the brains of meditating Buddhists&#8217; engage or disengage versus those of Pentecostals who speak in tongues versus those who do not believe in a greater being at all. The results were truly amazing: The Buddhists&#8217; brains deactivated the lobe that controls the sense of individuality, thereby giving themselves over, so to speak. With the Pentacostals, the frontal lobe&#8211;the area that controls language&#8211;went dark. But this absolutely fascinating topic was given only ten minutes of air time.<\/p>\n<p>So, c&#8217;mon &#8220;20\/20,&#8221; show a little faith yourself and your audience&#8211;break these segments out into full-bodied shows. Then, seeing would be believing.<\/p>\n<p>*************************************<\/p>\n<p><em>While Beliefnet.com and ABC News have a partnership, Beliefnet.com was not involved with the production of this special.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know that feeling of disappointment you get when you tune into your favorite TV show expecting to get a new episode, and it turns out to be a cleverly concealed clip-show? Sure, it&#8217;s artfully put together, but you wanted fresh entertainment. Or in the case of &#8220;20\/20&#8217;s&#8221; &#8220;Seeing and Believing: The Power of Faith,&#8221;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-television"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&#039;20\/20&#039;s&#039; Failed Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/05\/2020s-failed-faith.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&#039;20\/20&#039;s&#039; Failed Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You know that feeling of disappointment you get when you tune into your favorite TV show expecting to get a new episode, and it turns out to be a cleverly concealed clip-show? Sure, it&#8217;s artfully put together, but you wanted fresh entertainment. 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