Whenever I travel overseas, I am always humbled by how much news consumers in other lands know about what is happening in America and around the world.
This sadness is linked to one of the saddest realities — for decades — in American journalism: American readers don’t seem to care much about international trends and news. Thus, far too many American newspapers dedicate little or no space to international news.
Now, combine that with the reality that has driven GetReligion for 17 years, which is the sad state of accurate, informed, fair-minded religion-news coverage in many, maybe most, American newsrooms (especially in television news).
So what happens when you put those two sad trends together? If way too many journalists don’t “get” religion and way too many news consumers don’t care much about international news, what do you think happens to coverage of complicated religion-news trends and issues on the other side of the planet?
That was the subject of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. Click here to tune that in.
In particular, host Todd Wilken and I focused on the media’s struggles to cover the complicated religious realities in the Middle East — such as Russia’s role in Syria, in the wake of Donald’s Trump’s decision to abandon Kurdish forces in the northern rim of that troubled land, leading to a Turkish invasion that threatened many religious minorities.
The big idea: Of course Russia has economic and political interests in Syria, ties that have been there for many years. It would be stupid to ignore those realities. But what about the religious ties between Orthodoxy in Russia and the ancient Orthodox Church of Antioch, for centuries based on the Street Called Straight in Damascus? How do you cover Russia’s interests in Syria without even mentioning that?
Come to think of it: How can reporters (even in elite newsrooms like The New York Times) cover almost anything that happens in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and elsewhere without taking in account religious trends and history?
Well, the pope gets it. There are some evangelicals, the Rev. Franklin Graham leaps to mind, who get it — even if you disagree with his conclusions every now and then. Ditto for Pope Francis.
It’s also true that way many evangelical and charismatic Christians in America are too focused on apocalyptic visions of what may happen in the Holy Land to spend much time worrying about the ancient Christian communities that are getting crushed in the here and now. That makes it easier for newspapers and television networks to ignore that life-and-death story.
So consider this typical news report that just ran at Crux, the independent Catholic news website: “Patriarchs press for preservation of Christian presence in Middle East.” Here’s the overture:
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Syrian-born Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs pressed the need to preserve the Christian presence in the Middle East during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The patriarchs — Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan, Melkite Patriarch Joseph Absi, Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II and Greek Orthodox Patriarch John X of Antioch — met with Peter Szijarto, Hungary’s foreign minister, in addition to Putin and Orban during their official visit to the Hungarian capital Oct. 29-30.
In a speech to Szijarto, Patriarch Absi said the exodus of Christians from the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Iraq, and most recently Syria, has become “an alarming issue” for Christian leaders.
“The failure of different groups to live together in harmony in Middle Eastern countries is a threat to convivial relations between different groups all over the world,” he said.
“Failure to help the Middle-East to remain an oasis for different religions to live peacefully together will set a dangerous historical precedent,” Absi warned. “Soon, similar conflicts will start to take shape in different places of the world.”
This crisis has been escalating, not for weeks or months — but for years, decades and centuries. It’s getting worse.
Is this news? Is this fact worth coverage? Are you seeing news about this bleak trend in your local news outlets? Why or why not?
All together now: Oh little town of Bethlehem?