At a recent journalism conference I attended, a former Wall Street Journal and NYT reporter estimated that more than 70% of journalists who write for mainstream papers are secular in some form or another. He then showed a piece of data that less than 2% of all reporting from mainstream papers has to do with religion. He claimed there was an inequity there, and thus, what should religious journalists do about it?

He compared the responsibility of a Christian to that of a Journalist:

-Do the right thing.
-Speak for those who don’t have a voice.
-Speak the truth.
-Lead by example.
-Report unto others as you would have report unto you.

So, in my estimation, the speaker’s argument took the following form:

1. If mainstream media underrepresents religious ideas, then religious journalists should respond not by reporting more religious ideas, but conducting their investigations of non-religious ideas in a religious manner.
2. Mainstream media underrepresents religious ideas.
3. Therefore, religious journalists should respond not by reporting more religious ideas, but conducting their investigations of non-religious ideas in a religious manner.

My main objection lies in his first premise. Religion represents less than 2% of what mainstream media gets reported on, but a lot of social psychologists, such as Jordan Peterson, Jonathan Haidt, and Steven Pinker believe the crises of our generation is a lack of meaning. Observe the following trends: rates of suicide, depression, opiate use, anxiety— these are all up to record levels. Nobody seems to understand why that as all markers of physical health and medicine seem to be progressing: heart disease, cancer research, autoimmune diseases, etc.-- mental health seems to be plummeting in the opposite direction.

Many mainstream papers report on these sorts of problems, however, the vast majority of them don’t mention this idea that it may be from a lack of religion, predominantly from our secularization of society. So I would propose as a change to the argument that mainstream media report more on religion and bring it more into the conversation. This doesn’t mean you have to side with the beliefs or support them, just bring them into the conversation, since a lot of academics believe religion is at the core of our mental health crisis. We can’t fix something until we know about it.