Uwe Siemon-Netto spoke to Clarion students about the importance of covering religion in news media. (Lamont Sinclair / The Clarion Call)

Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto spoke to a Clarion University news reporting class April 14 about “Religion Coverage in the Media.” Siemon-Netto is a former religious affairs editor for United Press International and director of the Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life, Capistrano Beach and Irvine, California.

He now works as an international journalist, editorial consultant, Lutheran lay theologian and a journalism instructor at various colleges. He is affiliated with The League of Faithful Masks, a nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to offer courses guided by ethos in journalism, economics, politics and many fields to all levels of schools.

His specialty is the coverage of religious topics for the secular media.

Siemon-Netto opened his lecture by asking the students what the most important idea of being a journalist was. “Being open minded” and “Knowing about the subject at hand” were some of the answers offered by students.

Siemon-Netto agreed that these are key points. “Curiosity is the most important idea of journalism. A reporter has to retain a childlike sense of wonder. To this day, I still get an almost erotic satisfaction of learning something new,” he said.

A journalist since 1956, Siemon-Netto has noticed the trend of reporters not mentioning religion in their articles.

“Journalists almost never ask questions about other peoples’ faiths because of this goofy idea that it is personal,” said Siemon-Netto.

He compared journalists to vicars who serve as interns with pastors at churches. The vicar doesn’t know the answers to all the questions, so he asks the pastor. Siemon-Netto said journalists are the vicars for the public. They ask the questions to get the information.

There are wars with religious radicals in foreign countries like Japan, Russia, and Sri Lanka and religion is hardly mentioned, said Siemon-Netto. He offered three examples of news reportage in which religion played a part but was never mentioned.

In 2009 in Sri Lanka, suicide bombers attacked a Muslim religious procession, killed at least 13 people and injured more than three dozen. News coverage only talked about fighting for a homeland in the northern part of the South Asian island nation, but nothing about religion. He pointed to the 1996 attack in Japanese subways and coverage on Hugo Chavez’s government in Venezuela as other examples.

Siemon-Netto said he wants to redefine journalism as a craft rather than a pseudo-academic discipline, and he teaches aspiring journalists to explore their sense of curiosity and trains them to report rather than opine.

He also works to teach student journalists, such as those in Clarion’s news reporting class, to look at the religious-sociological backgrounds of international crises and conflicts.

At the end of his lecture, Siemon-Netto opened his topic up for discussion.

One student asked where, as a journalist, he got all of his information.

“Research, research, research,” he said. “I get all this stuff from churches, dioceses – they have everything you want to know.”