{"id":83,"date":"2010-10-03T09:55:21","date_gmt":"2010-10-03T09:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html"},"modified":"2010-10-03T09:55:21","modified_gmt":"2010-10-03T09:55:21","slug":"apologia-pro-media-sua","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html","title":{"rendered":"Apologia pro media sua"},"content":{"rendered":"

In response to my post<\/a> suggesting that bishops appoint ombudsmen to independently monitor their actions, Andrew Barga writes, “[I]nstead of a critique, your “modest proposal” is an attempt to deflect or
\nparry the issues raised by Chaput. As a member of the reading public, I
\nwould be interested in an actual answer to his challenges.”<\/p>\n

The most extensive answer to charges like his–they’re old ones–is my book Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America<\/i><\/a>. I don’t feel too guilty about recommending this, since you can pick up a used copy on Amazon for a mere 60 cents. For something more recent, here’s a link to<\/a> my response to a critique of religion coverage by the sociologist Christian Smith that appeared in the January\/February 2004 issue of Christianity
\nToday’<\/i>s bimonthly magazine Books and Culture<\/i>, reprinted<\/a> over the The Revealer.<\/p>\n

I’ve spent the better part of two decades studying, writing about, and contributing to news coverage of religion. As in any other field of endeavor, there’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. And that means the field can be cherry-picked to make a case for hostility to one or another religious tradition, or to religion in general. But with the exception of certain cult-like groups (the Church of Scientology, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, etc.), across-the-board bias is not to be found–and certainly not against the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

Consider the big story<\/a> that appears above the fold this morning on the front page of my local paper, the Hartford Courant<\/i>. Dealing with how the church is using foreign priests to remedy the priest shortage in the U.S., it features an array of positive examples of how well these priests are doing in the Hartford archdiocese. <\/p>\n

While linguistic and cultural problems are discussed, the reporter, Marissa Pionzio, offers not a single example of a foreign priest who didn’t work out. I’m pretty sure this was not for lack of trying, since when I talked with her a few months ago, she was looking for one. While that would have provided a better portrait of the way things are, the reader sill comes away understanding the challenges. I can’t imagine that the folks over at archdiocesan headquarters have any problem with the article, which portrays the church as a worthy institution working with some success to solve a big problem.<\/p>\n

\"foreign<\/form>\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In response to my post suggesting that bishops appoint ombudsmen to independently monitor their actions, Andrew Barga writes, “[I]nstead of a critique, your “modest proposal” is an attempt to deflect or parry the issues raised by Chaput. As a member of the reading public, I would be interested in an actual answer to his challenges.”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nApologia pro media sua - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/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\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Apologia pro media sua - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In response to my post suggesting that bishops appoint ombudsmen to independently monitor their actions, Andrew Barga writes, “[I]nstead of a critique, your “modest proposal” is an attempt to deflect or parry the issues raised by Chaput. As a member of the reading public, I would be interested in an actual answer to his challenges.”…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-10-03T09:55:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/files\/import\/foreign%20priest.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Apologia pro media sua - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Apologia pro media sua - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"In response to my post suggesting that bishops appoint ombudsmen to independently monitor their actions, Andrew Barga writes, “[I]nstead of a critique, your “modest proposal” is an attempt to deflect or parry the issues raised by Chaput. As a member of the reading public, I would be interested in an actual answer to his challenges.”…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html","og_site_name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2010-10-03T09:55:21+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/files\/import\/foreign%20priest.jpg"}],"author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html","name":"Apologia pro media sua - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/files\/import\/foreign%20priest.jpg","datePublished":"2010-10-03T09:55:21+00:00","dateModified":"2010-10-03T09:55:21+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/files\/import\/foreign%20priest.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/files\/import\/foreign%20priest.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/10\/apologia-pro-media-sua.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Apologia pro media sua"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}