🌪️ WWJD: How Journalists Can Cover Natural Disasters Without Exploiting Victims 🔌
Weekend Plug-in 🔌
Editor’s note: Every Friday, “Weekend Plug-in” meets readers at the intersection of faith and news. Click to join nearly 10,000 subscribers who get this column delivered straight to their inbox. Got feedback or ideas? Email Bobby Ross Jr.
CHICAGO — Don’t ask me to explain nuclear science, but I can offer intelligent insight on a few subjects.
The beauty of baseball. My love for Chick-fil-A. News coverage of natural disasters.
In my 35-year journalism career, my role as a reporter has exposed me to way too many tornadoes, hurricanes and wildfires, as I noted earlier this year.
I traveled to the Windy City this week to share my experience at the Associated Church Press annual convention. Rebecca Snyder, the faith-based journalist group’s executive director, invited me to tackle two key questions:
— “How can journalists cover natural disasters without exploiting the tragedy?”
— “Are there practical tips for going to disaster-affected sites and producing quality pieces?”
In response to the first question, I proposed a few simple ideas. They all mostly revolved around the same biblical principle: the Golden Rule.
Not familiar with that rule? It’s best summarized by Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:12: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”
The Associated Church Press is meeting this week at the Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago. (Shutterstock photo)
“To put it another way,” I said to the reporters, “how would you want a journalist to treat you if you were a victim of a storm? If you lost your house in a wildfire? Or if a loved one died in a tornado?”
I urged the journalists to make time to be human — and to put people first, not deadlines.
I advised against what I characterized as “drive-by interviews” designed to gather quick facts and quotes. If someone’s voice is important to a story, I suggested, that source deserves adequate time and attention to tell their story.
I’ll resist the urge to repeat my whole talk in this space, but you can read my thoughts — all 3,399 words of them — at this link.
Bobby Ross Jr. speaks at the Associated Church Press annual convention in Chicago on covering natural disasters. (Photo by Adelle M. Banks)
Many of the ideas expressed will sound familiar to those who read these recent Plug-in columns:
— “Faith, hope and LA: The positive side of reporting on way too many disasters”
— “‘We Will Never Forget’: How covering the biggest story of my life changed me”
— After monster storm, the story can’t be told without recognizing faith
I enjoyed seeing Religion News Service’s Adelle M. Banks — winner of the Religion News Association’s 2024 William A. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award — at the ACP conference.
Banks gave a keynote speech on her 2024 book “Becoming a Future-Ready Church: 8 Shifts to Encourage and Empower the Next Generation of Leaders,” which she co-authored with Daniel Yang and Warren Bird.
Since this week’s column is a little shorter than normal, feel free to check out these recent pieces you might have missed:
• ‘The pope is dead’: How news outlets prepared in advance to cover Francis’ passing
• Meet Clemente Lisi, Religion Unplugged’s executive editor: 7 things to know
• $171 million for better sermons: National program blesses preachers
• Surprise! What we learned (and didn’t) from a big new study on religion in America
• COVID miracle: At the pandemic’s 5-year anniversary, it’s time to tell the story
Inside The Godbeat
A big case involving a proposed Catholic charter school in my home state of Oklahoma made it to the U.S. Supreme Court this week, as Baptist Press senior writer Diana Chandler explains here at Religion Unplugged.
Will the justices accept state funding of a religious school? The answer — expected this summer — may depend on Chief Justice John Roberts, according to Deseret News religion writer Kelsey Dallas.
A majority of justices seemed open to the idea, the Washington Post notes.
The Final Plug
Anna Salton Eisen’s late father, George Salton, was 17 when the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division liberated the Wobbelin concentration camp in Germany on May 2, 1945.
“Let us never forget the things in life worth fighting for and celebrating,” Eisen said in a Facebook post marking the 80th anniversary of her loved one’s freedom.
Amen!
For more insight on Eisen and her family, see my 2021 Associated Press feature on the descendants of Holocaust survivors finding each other decades later.
Happy Friday, everyone! Enjoy the weekend.
Bobby Ross Jr. writes the Weekend Plug-in column for Religion Unplugged and serves as editor-in-chief of The Christian Chronicle. A former religion writer for The Associated Press and The Oklahoman, Ross has reported from all 50 states and 18 nations. He has covered religion since 1999.