Shaping the news

The Catholic Church is big news these days, even in South Africa–alas, for all the wrong reasons.

Some Catholics have voiced their suspicion of the media’s motivations in covering the issues of clerical abuses and the subsequent conduct of the hierarchy. Indeed, the journalistic profession has, rightly or wrongly, acquired a reputation for periodically conceiving and hyperbolising scandals.

This, of course, does not hold true in the case of the recent abominable news. The scandal has been caused by people in the Church itself; journalists have done their job in reporting it.

The endorsement ends here, however. In the United States, many representatives of the news media have taken the scandal as a pretext to denounce everything else they find objectionable about the Catholic Church (one many do not even belong to).

In short, some agents of the media have established an agenda quite distinct from the scandal.

We note with gratification that South Africa’s media have, mostly, stuck to the issue. Whether the coverage has always been conducted in a spirit of fairness is debatable. It is alarming, however, that local journalists have frequently exhibited a deplorable level of ignorance about the Catholic Church.

A trivial yet symptomatic example concerns the description of Cardinal Wilfrid Napier as “the head of the Roman Catholic Church in South Africa,” a general presumption perpetrated in the electronic and print media. Our readers need not be told that Cardinal Napier is, in fact, the highest-ranking Church figure in South Africa–but his authority does not extend to any diocese other than his own (and the diocese of Umzimkulu, which he administers).

Editors of the secular news media are acting in negligence when assigning the “religious beat” to reporters who are indifferent to that field in first place, and fail to research their subject matter with the requisite professionalism.

The ignorance is mutual, however. Over many years, the local Church hierarchy has depreciated its obligations in the media field. Tellingly, what was once the social communications (or media) department in the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference has been gradually downgraded to the status of a mere desk. This is plainly inadequate.

It is evident that the bishops, when caught in the media spotlight, engage in ad hoc crisis management. Experience, it seems, has taught no lessons.

Indeed, the bishops seem to lack even the fundamentals of a coherent media strategy–the natural charisma and eloquence of spokesmen such Cardinal Napier or Bishop Reginald Cawcutt notwithstanding–or even the impetus to formulate one.

The Church’s recent encounter with the news headlines has confirmed that it is imperative that the bishops engage the media coherently and proactively–for the good of their mission.