If you want to start thinking critically about the news you consume, there’s one important thing to remember: journalists are biased. Just not in the way you might think.
Yes, journalists tend to identify themselves on the liberal side of the political spectrum. But when it comes to what they actually write, the bias that skews their coverage is a bias toward cohesive narratives. Journalists are storytellers -- their job is based around taking people and events, and fitting them into a narrative structure that’s easy to understand. Often, this is useful. Often, this is necessary. But just as often, it distorts the truth.
In the case of Pope Francis, the distorting effects of a devotion to clear-cut narrative have been on display for the world to see.
Journalists began their coverage of the new papacy with a simple narrative about the Catholic church already fixed in their brain. In short: the Catholic church is locked in a battle between conservatives and liberals, and the primary importance of any new pope is which of these two camps he’ll end up siding with. The first flaw of this narrative is the assumption that all religious conflicts are battles between liberals and conservatives, groups that mirror their counterparts in secular politics. For journalists, this makes sense, because they have a pretty good grasp of politics, and little to no grasp of theology. But while this conservative / liberal divide does exist in a certain form, most of the issues that any given religion deals with don’t fit into this political dichotomy. (See, most of the church schisms and divisions that have taken place over the past few millenia).
Due to this ready-made narrative, journalists have one goal when the Pope opens his mouth: find bits of information they can plug into the story they've already decided to tell. Because Pope Francis is a nice guy, doesn’t look like Emperor Palpatine, and sometimes takes selfies, journalists have largely decided that Pope Francis will tilt the church in a "liberal" direction. When the Pope talks to the public, only things that fit into this story will make the headlines.
Thus, after the Pope gave a complicated and nuanced interview to a Catholic paper, it’s not surprising that American journalists only noticed a few sentences. The sentences that happened to fit into their narrative.
You’ve probably already seen the headlines. The Pope wants to find “new balance” when it comes to social issues! The Pope says the church doesn’t need to talk about abortion and homosexuality “all the time”! In other words: THE POPE IS A LIBERAL AND HE LIKES GAYS AND STUFF.
Which would be fine, if those headlines were an accurate assessment of the Pope’s own words. If you read the full interview, which is incredibly fascinating, you’ll find it isn’t primarily a statement about how the church has become too conservative, and must adopt the cultural values of modernity. Much of the interview centers around the Pope’s influences from Catholic history, and meditations on the nature of Christian spirituality. Translation for journalists: boring religious stuff. He does talk about the way he wants to shift his papacy's focus -- but he doesn’t speak in a way that adheres to liberal / conservative thinking. What the Pope seems to be communicating is that he wants the Catholic church to become more focused on evangelism, which means proclaiming God’s offer of salvation before all else. All the moral teachings of the church on social issues -- which Francis affirms as “clear” -- are important, but they’re useless when they’re not paired with the message of the gospel.
(It’s important to note that if journalists wanted a completely different narrative, they could also back it up with another out-of-context quote from Francis: Pope Francis: Church Teaching on Homosexuality “Clear.”)
For most Christians, this isn’t groundbreaking material, but it's refreshing to hear it expressed in an articulate way. As an evangelical protestant, I was impressed by the Pope’s richly textured expression of faith. It's true that Francis doesn’t go on an angry screed against gays and nonbelievers, but then again, neither do the vast majority of Christian leaders, regardless of how "conservative" they are. The press's breathless reaction to the Pope's interview is reminiscent of the awful coverage of “hip” evangelical churches that largely consists of ignorant statements along the lines of, “Pastor Coolface believes in the bible, but on a recent Sunday, he didn’t even mention gays!” Journalists have a narrative about “conservative” Christianity in their heads -- that all churches care about is gay marriage and abortion -- and they’re not sure what to do when they encounter an authentic statement of faith that defies this narrative.
I don’t expect that coverage of Christianity in general -- and Catholicism specifically -- will improve in the near future. Religion is hard, and journalists have to pump out stories with click-ready headlines as fast as their underpaid fingers can manage. Even if fitting facts into simplified narratives is frustrating to me as a consumer of news, I understand it. And since he’s such a swell guy, I’m sure Pope Francis forgives journalists for it.
But as fellow consumers of news, it’s your responsibility to dig deeper, and question the narratives. Sometimes they’re right. Sometimes they’re not.
In other words: Do journalists get caught up in artificial narratives? Is the Pope Catholic? Contrary to what you might have heard recently, the answer to both is yes.
