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Jan. 25, 2008
Having faith in media
Journalist discusses how to report on religion.
RON FRIEDMAN
"The best beat in journalism is religion," said Ari Goldman. And he should know. For the past 20 years, Goldman has been a practising journalist and a professor at Columbia University School of Journalism in New York. For half that time, he has been covering religion. He's also written several books about religious subjects, including the best-selling The Search for God at Harvard.
"I think religion writing is a great thing to do, it's a great subject, because it gives you a great amount of versatility. You get to write a lot of different types of stories," said Goldman, speaking in front of a packed lecture hall at the University of British Columbia's School of Journalism.
Goldman was in Vancouver last week, giving lectures about reporting on religion, at UBC and Beth Israel Synagogue. The talks Goldman gave at Beth Israel – Judaism North American Style, Religion in the Media and Living a Year of Kaddish – were part of the David Rubin Memorial Shabbaton. He was invited to UBC as part of a weekly program called Brown Bag Lunches, which features speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds, including politics, academics, business and journalism. The fact that Goldman's Brown Bag lecture drew the biggest crowd ever for this type of meeting, gives some indication of the level of interest the topic raises.
"One thing I really like about religion writing, is that you talk about people's feelings," said Goldman, who spent most of his journalism career at the New York Times. "Usually, you [journalists] write about things people do, but religion gives you an opportunity to write about people's inner motivations, why they do things, and to get into their psyches, into their lives in a more intimate, deeper way."
Before becoming a religion writer, Goldman was in charge of the transportation beat. He joked that, when he changed over, he moved from the netherworld, writing about the underground subway, into the higher realm of spirituality. One of the things he said he enjoyed about the beat was the fact that he got to speak to excellent sources.
"While many transportation engineers or city designers have difficulty putting into plain language what it is that they do, rabbis, priests, imams and ministers, because of their jobs, are very good at expressing themselves in a way that is accessible to ordinary people," explained Goldman. He also said that finding material sources on the road was never difficult, since every hotel room comes equipped with a Gideon Bible.
But not everything about religion writing is easy, explained Goldman, who has been teaching at Columbia University since 1993. He told the UBC crowd of how it was often difficult for him to pitch religious stories to editors who frequently didn't see the interest in the opening of a new mosque or the ordaining of a new cardinal.
"But if you can show that religion is part of what's going on in the world, it's part of our debate over gay marriage, part of the debate over abortions, part of the debate over any number of social issues, you can look at those social issues through the lens of religion. To be a religion writer isn't to be limited by institutions and by faiths, it's really to try to look at religion and how it permeates society," said Goldman.
For the last seven years, Goldman has been taking his religion writing class at Columbia to various countries across the world to help them better appreciate the different religions and, through close observation, to gain a more nuanced understanding of the issues that are meaningful to them. The first class trip, in 2000, was to Israel and Jordan, where he took his students to the holy sites in Jerusalem, the Negev and the Galilee, to learn about the roots of the three monotheistic religions. Since then, he's been all around the world, including places like India, Russia and Ireland, to learn about the local religions.
The key to good religious journalism, argued Goldman, is properly describing ritual. "If you describe somebody eating a piece of bread, it's a pretty boring thing to describe ... but if you describe somebody taking holy communion, that is a profound moment in that person's life, that is an encounter with the divine.... It's easy to write about numbers, what the budget is, what the score was in the baseball game or how much someone embezzled, but to write about feelings is a much greater challenge."
This was a challenge that Goldman faced head-on when writing his book Living a Year of Kaddish, in which he relates his own experiences of being an avel (mourner), after the death of his father. In the book, Goldman describes the process of mourning in the Jewish tradition, with its different stages and the customs and rules that accompany them.
At one stage of the UBC lecture, Goldman was asked how his Judaism (Goldman describes himself as a modern Orthodox Jew) affected his ability to cover other religions. He replied that he believes that his being religious was actually advantageous because, being a man of faith, he could better relate to other people of faith than were he been an atheist or an agnostic.
"It's hard, but I think it's possible. I think you can say 'I'm a Jew, but I'm not here as a Jew. I am here to understand this service and to try and see it from the perspective of the person who is a believer,'" said Goldman, adding that he "almost always" discloses his Judaism, telling people that he comes from a certain background, but that it won't prejudice his reporting.
Goldman spoke about how, when he began his career as a religion reporter, he was somewhat afraid that the encounters with other religions would change and maybe even shake his faith, but that all his years in the business have actually served to enrich his belief.
"My faith remains within Judaism, but my Jewish practice has been really enriched by Buddhist meditation, has been enriched by singing in a gospel church, it's been enriched by the people I meet who have given their lives to their own faith. I can take something away to help my own religious practice, without changing it," he said.
Goldman was asked if he was ever offended by the religious practices he witnessed or if he found any of them repugnant. He answered: "A lot of it has been very strange, but I haven't found the repugnant side, maybe it's because I like the strange.... I try to open my mind to what it means to the people who are there worshipping, rather than make a judgment on it." He does, however, draw the line at criminal acts.
Goldman acknowledged that, in most cases, journalism does a bad job of representing religions. By focusing on the extremists and fundamentalists of the different sects, he said, journalists misrepresent the vast majority of the faithful who are moderate and tolerant of others. He sees the most important aim of journalism as education.
"If I have this knowledge about religion and I can share it, as a reporter, I can teach people. And I hope that I am teaching them something positive. I hope that I am teaching them that other people aren't scary or that other rituals aren't threatening. If I can use that educational function of journalism just to show how different religions evolved, how they are lived and how they can get along with one another, then I've done something more than just publish an article or put on a TV show. I want to use that almost as a pulpit."
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