One of the primary themes of this blog is how the media portrays and reports on modern Paganism. While there are the occasional bright spots, for the most part coverage is flawed at best, and downright insulting at worst. So I always take great interest when other commentators on religion in journalism take a look at the Pagan “problem”. Most recently, journalist Daniel Pulliam a contributor to the Get Religion blog, critiqued an article that appeared in the Portland Tribune.

The piece itself is your general ‘lets interview a real live Witch around Halloween’ article that pops in ever-growing numbers every Fall. The usual bases are covered, modern Witches aren’t green-skinned Satan-worshiping hags, Witches don’t have powers like in “The Craft”, and quotes from Christians on their views (in the name of “balance” I would suppose). In short the kind of article I generally ignore unless it offers some interesting twist on the usual theme. However, Pulliam as an outsider to modern Paganism, felt that the article didn’t tell enough and was too vague to be useful.

“Rather than focusing on the fact that there are witches in the community who are not afraid to talk about it, why not go a bit deeper and explain the actual beliefs of witches and other modern pagan believers? Like, what exactly are those things that take a lot of involvement? Watching Monday Night football? I do that too.”

But really, the frustration that Dan faces here is the same frustration that the Get Religion blog covers all the time. The press just doesn’t get religion. Especially if that religion is outside of the Judeo-Christian mainstream. Journalists often don’t have the time or inclination to dig a littler deeper and explore the intricacies of our faiths. That matter isn’t helped by the fact that many Pagans go out of their way to seem as benign and “good” as possible to the mostly Christian audience reading the article. Something I explained in the comments of the post at Get Religion.

“Frankly, modern Pagans are tired of being the media’s freak show every Halloween (well, most of us anyway). So it has been learned through painful experience not to trust the press to do right by us. So you’ll often get superficial platitudes instead of the “off-beat” stuff because we don’t want to see another Pagan get fired, or lose their kids, or get their store burned down, or get “holy” salt thrown at them by Catholic youth. There is no pay-off for your average Pagan to talk in-depth about practice and belief. If a reporter wants more, there are experts, scholars, and elders in our faiths ready to be talked to. But that takes determination and effort, effort most journalists looking for a good Halloween Witch story can’t be bothered…”

Yet, from Get Religion’s commentary, I feel like what Dan was looking for was dirt. To be entertained with our “wacky” religion’s practice and belief. That he was a bit peeved by a perceived agenda on the part of the article.

“…the article focused heavily on how the religion, if you can call it a religion, has been heavily persecuted in the past. And those stereotypes continue, the article tells us, and gives a few examples of those who have been persecuted. Wicca is nevertheless growing in popularity, but we are never told why. Just that if you join Wicca, you should be prepared to be discriminated against, but for no reason at all because their beliefs are so benign that just about anyone could embrace them…Since when do alternative newspapers attempt to force their subjects into the mainstream of normalcy? I don’t want to read about how Wicca is oh so normal. I expect to read about it’s more off-beat characteristics.”

In short, Dan seems to believe modern Pagans are outside the mainstream of faith and should be treated as such. That journalists should explore the “controversy” of our faiths (as if that theme hasn’t been done to death in the sixty years since modern Paganism “came out” to journalists), and why some Christians don’t like us very much. The idea that modern Paganism could be adopted by any normal rational person seems to rankle a bit. Perhaps what Dan is really looking for is “how we are very much not like Christians”. In which case the answers are numerous. Feminine divinity, polytheism, magic, not seeing the Bible as the word of God, attributing divinity to nature, duotheism, and not acknowledging Jesus as our personal savior among them.

This article was just fluffy journalism, and its easy to trash fluffy journalism (believe me I speak from experience). If you want good journalism dealing with modern Paganism I would suggest this transcript of an interview with Adrian Ivakhiv on the radio show Speaking of Faith. I would also suggest that any journalist who cares to report on modern Paganism accurately and in-depth should go beyond Wikipedia and read at least one good book on the modern Paganism movement. “Drawing Down the Moon” was just updated and re-released, and I have several recommended books listed, here. But if your deadline is too tight, just drop me an e-mail and I’ll provide a list of people you should contact to give you a deeper look our our faiths. Like the bloggers at “Get Religion”, I too await the day when most journalists “get” our faiths.

Tags: Paganism