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Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Survey of religion on network TV Yesterday's Catholic News Service brief caught my attention, leading me here to look at the full report: http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/reports/religionstudy/main.asp I thought that the darling of conservatives, Fox, would have done better than second-worst in the overall treatment of religion. Since I rarely watch commercial network television, this study is more of an interesting tidbit than a warning bell for my living room. First, I'm not surprised networks struggle to get it right. Their executives, writers, and producers are generally not religious people. Network people get science fiction wrong, even on the SciFi channel; so why would I expect they could get religion right? Second, the sad truth is that negative examples of anything get more press than positive ones. Negativity sells. I wonder how lawyers, doctors, soldiers, politicians, teachers, and parents rate on the networks? The survey would be more significant if it compared religious people with other categories. Then we could see if the networks paint other groups generally in a poor light, and where religion might stand in a continuum with other treatments. Along those same lines, drama will especially portray a specific character or set of characters negatively. It's part of good plotting. Also interesting would be to see how religion plays out in drama, sit-coms, reality, news, sports, and other categories. Maybe drama writers are falling over themselves to get their twist on clergy sex abuse on the tube. I admit indulging in religion jokes on occasion--what if the sit-coms are the top offenders. If so, does a joke or gag make it more palatable? I suppose the bottom line is that my family watches very little network tv. For our daughter, we set strict limits and supervise everything. When I catch a Law & Order episode in syndication, a portrayal of clergy as criminals doesn't affect my faith or regard of priests at all. I've known people on the abuse end and nothing I've seen on the tube -- even in Dick Wolf-dom -- quite matches the horror of the real thing. Go check out the survey and if you like, tell me what you think.

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