Is the “Good News” News?—Part 2

EXCERPT:
Based on my own experience as executive editor of a Catholic newspaper, I find that many church people struggle to grasp what makes any event “newsworthy.” Consequently, they sometimes fault the media for slighting an event they regard as significant, when all along the journalists do not see it as particularly “newsworthy.”

It turns out that “newsworthy” is a fairly tricky concept. It is a little like obscenity and religion: hard to define, but you know it when you see it. At least, a good journalist does. And here lies much of the trouble between church people and secular media.

The first thing to know is that the “newsworthy” events are not necessarily the most important ones. I often made this point to pastors or readers who felt we covered minor stories while missing major events in the diocese or their parishes. They were often baffled when I asserted that even the most significant events might not be “news.” To persuade them, I developed the habit of using an example that would be unmistakably clear to them.

“If our job at the newspaper were to cover the most important events,” I would say, “we would just print the same banner headline on top of page one every week: Bread and Wine Transformed into Body and Blood of Jesus Christ at 125 parishes!”

They got the point: nothing they wanted to see in print was as important as the Eucharist, yet they could see that the Eucharist itself is not news.

So what is “newsworthy”? Some Christians think only bad things count--negative events like disasters, accidents, and crime. Thus, they think, the “Good News” of our faith gets excluded or at least short shrift.

But mass media publish lots of happy stories: moon landings, sports championships, election victories, dramatic rescues, even papal elections. And the typical modern English description of the Gospel message as “Good News” is a misleading translation that creates a false conflict between faith and mainstream media. The “Godspell” means “Good Word’” and the biblical term “Evangelion” means “Good Message.” It is, of course, our most important message--but it is not “news” in the usual sense.

Typically, “newsworthy” events are somehow unexpected, things that are not routine and not predetermined. They are outcomes we do not know until they happen. So not only do they matter (that is, they are important somehow), but they must be reported or people will not know about them.

Even dramatic events lose their newsworthy character if they become routine. The first moon landing got 24/7 coverage on every media outlet, but the last space shuttle mission was relegated to minor status; space travel had become routine.

World Youth Day may be critically important, and it is certainly big--but that’s been true since it since its inception by Pope John-Paul II in 1986. If memory serves, the overwhelming and unexpected response to WYD 1997 in Paris garnered widespread media attention. But like most regular events, its newsworthy character has faded as it has become a matter of routine. Only something unexpected--like the protests--breaks that routine and attracts the attention of the general media.