Cults and Sects and Doomsday Groups, Oh My: Media Treatment of Religion on the Eve of the Millennium

Abstract

Recognition that religion is now more newsworthy than at any time in postwar American history has increased both the salience and amount of news coverage devoted to it in major news organizations. However, religious elites on the one hand and religion journalists and secular scholars who have studied religion journalism on the other offer strikingly different evaluations of the degree to which this coverage maintains a neutral and unbiased stance towards different religious groups. Does news coverage of religion or religious groups at the millennium meet this basic criterion of neutral and unbiased description? This article reports empirical findings from a content analysis of newspaper and wire service coverage of stories involving preparations for the approach of the millennium by religious groups. Our findings show that more mainstream religious groups are typically described in neutral or favorable terms, while new religious movements are consistently described in pejorative language. This bias against new religious movements is troubling because the media can have a profoundly negative influence on the perception of religious group members by outsiders, the self-image of the groups themselves, and the direction that events ultimately take.