News Coverage of Religion, Ethics Gaining Attention

CHICAGO, IL (January 2, 2004) - Judy Valente lives on the 15th floor in downtown Chicago in a high-rise building, right where the action is.

Valente seems to have the perfect vantage point as she considers her career as well. She is an on-air correspondent for Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, a television show that is affiliated with the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in more than 200 markets. She started her current job in December 1997, three months after the show's executive editor, Bob Abernethy, hosted its first broadcast.

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly is the lone weekly television show primarily focused on religion and ethics, and that's right where the action is these days, Valente says. Scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant denominational splits have received much front-page attention from media outlets in recent months. And as experts now delve into the cause of wars and acts of terrorism, the religious realm is scrutinized much like the political one, representing a major shift in public focus.

"I feel that religion writers have the best beat in the country," says Valente, who was raised a Roman Catholic and earned her undergraduate degree from a Jesuit school, St. Peter's College in New Jersey. "You're talking to people about their most fundamental values or beliefs - whether what they believe is the ultimate meaning in life. What can be better than that?

"The misconception is that religion is a feel good beat, a features beat, because you are covering an intangible – God," Valente continues. "But it's not all good. It has been tough to write about the Roman Catholic Church in the past year or writing about the issue of 'holy unions' within the United Methodist Church. It was hard to witness good people, people of integrity, disagreeing so vigorously on an issue with seemingly no room for compromise."

Since working in television, Valente has been honored on multiple occasions by the U.S. International Film and Video Festival and won a 2003 Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Association for a series entitled "Exploring Religious America." She earned an Angel Award in 2000 for a television piece documenting churches trying to integrate those with physical challenges into leadership roles. Valente was recognized for her poetry, having a recent entry selected for "Best Catholic Writing of 2003," and earned a Masters degree in Fine Arts (Creative Writing) from the School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

Going from newspaper reporting to television reporting hasn't been as difficult for Valente as one might imagine and she thanks her boss for that. Abernethy had been a national and foreign correspondent for NBC television, but had always valued religion and ethics - he even took a year off to attend Yale Divinity School. "He took a chance on me," she said. "He said he wasn't concerned that I was a print reporter with no experience in TV. He only cared that I was a good reporter."

However, certain subjects she reports about - and the angles she takes in covering stories that other media outlets also cover - often differs from the norm, at least in the television industry, and co-workers noticed the difference right away. "The first few times on television I worked with a former NBC producer," she said. "I remember there were things I wanted to ask . . . and the producer said this stuff would have ended up on the cutting room floor (at other places)."

A native of Bayonne, New Jersey, Valente worked at the Washington Post for seven years before heading to the Wall Street Journal from 1987 to 1994. While with the Journal, she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a 1993 feature story she wrote about a father taking care of his son, who was dying of AIDS.

In those days, the AIDS epidemic was a hot topic and it shaped how she wrote the story. Valente said that she would report the story differently if it were part of her beat today. And because religion is covered more frequently in the media, she knows it would be more acceptable to do so.

"The son had originally wanted to be a Presbyterian minister, but disagreed that homosexuality was a sin," said Valente. "The real story was that the father came to see that his son was not a sinner. I would have allowed the father to talk more about the conversion he had - how he came to reconcile his own beliefs as a Presbyterian with that of the views about his son. It was quite a spiritual leap for him to make."

Along with helping put religion and ethics into the public forefront, Valente gets a close look at the changing trends in religion around the U.S. as a result of traveling around the country for Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. She was privy to information about some of those trends even before heading to television journalism. She served as a consultant at Medill-Garrett Center for Religion and News Media at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, after leaving the Wall Street Journal.

Although many "experts" might now surmise that people are more "spiritual" than "religious", her field research has concluded something quite different. She believes that people might just be looking for something different in religion than what was previously offered.

"Studies seemed to say that we were becoming our own individual church, that people did not want to delve into organized religion," said Valente. "We were almost sounding the death knell for organized religion. After six years of this (research), I want to say that that perception is not completely correct and certainly not set in concrete. I find that people, even those who consider themselves spiritual seekers, want to ally with some spiritual organization or community. We were a bit wrongheaded to think people wanted to practice a spiritual discipline, but would not associate with a community. That was one of the surprises to me.

"I think people may be seeking a different worship structure," Valente continued. "A lot of people are getting spiritual sustenance from small faith groups. It might be with some larger organization like a Neumann Center (a Roman Catholic college ministry organization) or something affiliated with college ministries on campus. Or it might be through Bible studies. For example, I know a lot of people in Chicago who go to monthly Taize services. They may not go to weekly services, but Taize is a community for them."

Valente isn't sure which religion and ethics issues will be hot topics in 2004, although she believes the Roman Catholic Church's evolution as a denomination in the U.S. is worth watching. "The real crisis will be when people realize the extent of the mismanagement of money that has occurred due to the sex abuse scandal," she observes. "When churches announce cutbacks of programs because of legal payments being handed out, lay people are going to say, 'No more.'"

However, other religion and ethics issues are sure to get headlines and Valente feels her television show will be right in the middle of the action as those issues are reported upon and analyzed. She believes her professional goals for 2004 are as ambitious as in the past. "I want to find the next 'best story' out there," she notes.

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York. Funding is provided by Lilly Endowment, Inc. Additional support for extended program distribution is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts. To learn more about the television program, visit http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/.

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