The Monday after the October conference the first headline or front page of any Utah newspaper focused on the Gay/Lesbian Rights uproar. I have noticed throughout the years, a pattern in religious issues in the media and I wondered is this what everyone else is reading? Whether it is about; proposition 8, Glenn Beck the fanatic, or Mitt Romney in the 2007 election. After this week’s class reading I began to wonder how the media frames Mormons in the National setting. I will use Romney’s experience as a specific example of how the media frames Mormons.
According to the handy dandy theory sheet provided by Professor Randle: “Framing, a term used in media studies, refers to the social construction of a social phenomenon by mass media sources or specific political or social movements or organizations.” The paragraph concludes by saying that framing can have, “Selective influence over the individual’s perception of the meanings attributed to words or phrases.” For Mormons, it can be the skewing of religious beliefs, for example: categorizing Mormons as not knowing the Lord (a comment yelled at a Florida campaign event). So, is there a big deal about being LDS? Or has the media in Utah caused LDS to think that we are a big deal?
Pew research center focused on this exact topic, and from their analysis of the media they found that Romney was the lead newsmaker in stories that focused on the politician’s religion (as shown below).
An example of how media covered the issue of religion, was an article in The Boston Globe that was released just after Romney announced he would be running, “The Boston Globe reported that Romney had acknowledged he was thinking about running for president, it printed an article on July 21, 2005, entitled ‘Are we ready for a Mormon president?’" This was a topic that was not ignored by several media providers. The Times did a similar article, “A Mormon as President” Nov 26, 2006, “many Americans remain suspicious of them, maybe because so many aspects of their faith remain mysterious.” This article focuses on the LDS religion as a whole; but, was Romney not elected because he was Mormon or because of his political stance?
For our class reading Dixon concluded his case summary that “the coverage of the religious issue…was driven more by political considerations than by the religious content of the stories.” However, did Dixon consider what effect the stories would have on the reader’s perception of the religion? Sure, we can see the political issues but for those who are not LDS are they susceptible to the media framing us as an oddity, like a cult, or as a religion that America—and therefore Americans—are not ready to accept as a president yet? From what we have learned about stereotyping, I would argue that the media is framing a stereotype for LDS. And although there were other issues that prevented Romney from continuing on in the race I would say that media not only framed Romney as a religious radical but LDS as radical religion. Analyze the following links to news stories and watch it from a non-LDS standpoint. My question for you after reading through this article and looking at some examples is: How do you think national media frames LDS and what do you think are the consequences?
Coverage of Segregation in the church
ABC coverage of Hill Cumorah and Mormonism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1lNW7-sVFo
Is America Ready? From a comical standpoint
(careful at the 2 minute marker) Probably do not want to watch the whole thing..
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-june-12-2007/is-america-ready----mormons
I think this is a very intersting question and a situation the church continues to struggle with. It’s pretty hard to watch the stories from a non-LDS perspective because they stir up feelings in the LDS mind of mine. From a non-LDS perspective though, I think it’s interesting how a lot of things on news are very sceptical of the church. When memebers don’t want to give the answer they want to hear, it’s like they’re doing something secretive, something wrong.
ReplyDeleteI guess the hardest part is the fact that most news just can’t get the facts totally right. People are uncomfortable because they don’t have all the facts. It’s easy to be sceptical and to frame the church in a certain manner when they don’t really know what’s going on and I think news will keep doing so because there’s a level of comfort with not knowing. The consequence of this is that a majority of people only know the things they are tought through a general news medium. It is nice to have the church promoting awareness though – giving people the opportunity to really understand the church better.
I concur that the media is very skeptical of the doctrines of The Church. They also exaggerate and like to bring up the same topics over and over again: polygamy, blacks and the priesthood,temple secrets. So it is the same things over and over again.
ReplyDeleteFor example in the Daily Show clip it talked about how we abstain from caffeine. Which is false. I of course now it was for comedic relief, but if we never correct them on something small such as this we have no chance to change the schema that us Mormons have in the media.
I do like the efforts mad with the "I am a Mormon" campaign that Mormons are normal people and do not ear pioneer clothes and marry tons of women all day long.
From my standpoint I believe there are two sides to the story. One is the media and the other is us as members of the church. The first problem is that the media puts out what they want, whether it's true or not. Second, we as members of the church are so scared sometimes to be viewed in a false light that we get angry every time we are in the news. In reality it's both parties which make this a nightmare. We need to be more vocal and less scared of being so popular. The church is getting to the point where it is in the spotlight more and more. We need to take the initiative and proclaim ourselves. The reason why the media also makes us look bad is because they don't really even know what we believe. I really think if we didn't stay in a cave so much, especially in the U.S., we could get our beliefs across better so that people aren't making false statements about us. There are always going to be jokes, but we can at least do a better job at being more vocal in who we are.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you but I also see why the media would be curious about us because we really keep a lot to ourselves. The recent commercials about Mormons being regular people has helped but it does not change the fact that we still have temples that people aren't allowed in. In fact it may even be hurting us, the more normal we try to look, the more our secrets become more similar to a cult that only meets at night in the dark. We have to find a balance between showing that we are normal and keeping our secrets, secret.
ReplyDeleteI attended a class by Robert Millet during Education Week titled "Myths and Realities About Mormonism." He concluded the introduction to his topic by referencing the 2007 Pew study and what Church members should take away from the results:
ReplyDelete"One of the things we learned is that we’re not as well-liked as we thought we were. Pollsters described the challenge that Mitt Romney faced in this regard as the ‘weirdness factor’ — not
about Romney himself, but about his religion, the ‘weirdness’ of Mormonism.
“The ‘weirdness factor’ certainly accompanied Mitt Romney. It will accompany Mitt Romney again [if he runs in 2012]. Whether he wins or not is not the issue here — the issue is,
we’re sort of on trial.”
He concluded: “It rests upon us, whether we want to assume it or not, the burden or responsibility to speak the truth in love, as
Paul said, and to do so in a matter that will help people better understand us."
The Church as a whole is doing its part to accomplish this through the new "I'm a Mormon" TV ads and the revamped Mormon.org, but I side with Millet that the majority of the responsibility lies upon us as individual members of the Church to present the best image of ourselves that we can and actively respond to how the media portrays us.
Julie, great post, you really brought up some great insights. A lot of your questions aree questions I have had myself. Something I have wondered about continually is why does the media find our religion so mysterious? They cite this as a reason for why people would not be reasy for a Mormon president, but is that simply people's self imposed ignorance? Islam and Hinduism are mysterious to me, yet I would be completely open to a president of those faiths if their political stance mirrored the ideals I hold true closer than other candidates. The reason people are not ready fpr a mormon president is because the media has framed mormonism in a negative way, and people have cultivated their perceptions from inaccurate or biased sources.
ReplyDeleteGreat question. I think the media definitely frames the LDS church as something that is mysterious and unknown, and because of that, cannot be trusted, as was show with the Romney stuff.
ReplyDeleteexample: I was in middle school and I was telling some friends about some weekend toilet papering I had done. One of my non-member friends looked at me and said: "Aren't you Mormon?" It made me laugh. I'm sure he didn't hear from the media that Mormons are not allowed to toilet paper, but even the fact that he felt I was restricted in my decision making; like I was literally controlled by my religion, is evidence of the framing that happens in society.
Unfortunately, I don't feel that this is a new concept for the Church. Throughout history we see countless examples of misrepresentation and misunderstanding of what the religion is really all about and what its members believe. The same is going on today as outlined by your post.
ReplyDeleteThe effect is exactly the same: misunderstanding and stereotyping. I believe this will always be the case for the Church and it is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean that in the sense that the few news stories every year slamming the Church are not going to bring it to its knees. The Church has always moved forward and will continue to move forward when blasted by the media. It's one of those situations that we as members should already be familiar with and not stress about when we see it pop up over and over throughout our lives...
No, it is not a new concept. Thanks, Tyler for your comment. I think the media frames LDS in using the stereotype theory. I think the media looks for balance and they have to use the stereotype theory to make sense of things. I liked Cansirboi's point about correcting small and exaggerated "secrets." We need to break the stereotype. It is time for a different theory to be used on us...maybe critical theory?
ReplyDeleteThe consequences of stereotype theory and the way we are portrayed in the media are that we get to deal with issues of caffeine, blacks holding the priesthood, and polygamy over and over again. We don't get to talk about Jesus Christ and His glorious atonement and faith, baptism, the Holy Ghost, etc. because we get bogged down with these other issues.
I wonder why the media chose the Hill Cumorah Pageant and Mitt Romney to cover? Why not attend an LDS sacrament meeting and cover this?
I think it’s because the media is looking for newsworthiness and things that are outside the box.
I thought the ABC Coverage of the Hill Cumorah Pageant was nicely done, but why did they choose it? Is it because it they wanted to highlight fantasy and Mitt Romney as a presidential candidate being a fantasy.
The Mormon religion is a peculiar religion. We do not do things because we know it will be popular with people’s views today. As a result, we are often scrutinized for kicking against society’s norms and trends. These oddities in our religious beliefs make for good media and because of that the church becomes subject to a lot of media attention. Though we are not always framed in a negative light as being secretive and abnormal, those media outlets that do frame the church in that way get more attention than those who focus on the good that the church does—and that, unfortunately, is the way it is with any religion.
ReplyDeleteNational media does have a tendency to frame LDS people as if they are terribly odd and separate, but they do not frame it in the same tender way they might frame odd and separate Anabaptist groups. I thought the story about the pageant was interesting. At the beginning, it sounded like they were going to do an overview of the beliefs of the church, but they focused just on the pageant. While the story wasn’t super negative, it did have a skeptical and “this is weird” kind of vibe. At the end they said that this is how Mormons want to be portrayed. I just thought that last comment was interesting, like they had really made an attempt to represent how the Mormons want to be viewed.
ReplyDeletePeople are always afraid of what they do not understand. Instead of taking the "mystery" out of the Mormon faith, the media likes to play off of the mysterious religion frame and portray Mormonism in a shady, suspicious light. Mystery always comes off as a cool story in the media. It never ceases to amaze me that media stories continually talk about the controversies of our religion instead of focusing on what we really believe and what we do as far as helping others. One of the "newsworthy" traits of media is conflict. We as Mormons do buck against the trend in a myriad of subjects and I guess that is in conflict with the world, so why would the media not talk about it? I have a feeling this will never change...
ReplyDeleteI'm probably going to write my paper on this topic, but as it relates to gay marriage. I think there is definitely negative framing going on against the LDS Church, even in Utah. I think the Utah media takes different approach usually regarding the power the church has in the state. Most people in Utah know more about the church than they do in other states, but they still come away from the media with a negative perspective because the media paints a picture of an all powerful brainwashing religion, rather than just a church with a lot of members. It is true that the Church does have a lot of power and that power should always be challenged, but that doesn't mean the media should take words from the leaders out of context, which they totally do.
ReplyDeleteWe're a peculiar people and people notice it. Stereotyping LDS people has been happening since the church was restored and people of God have always been a peculiar people. I agree with the comments above that talk about how Utah frames the church from a different angle and uses terms that most people from Utah understand like: stakes, wards, quorums, etc. understand. I don't think that it's just in Utah that these LDS issues seem like a big deal. I'm from Washington State and I remember back in high school, having a lot of questions thrown at me because of things that my friends had about our faith that they had heard in the news, about polygamy, temples, etc. I think that the best way to fight against these criticisms, false stereotypes, myths, is to live an honorable LDS life. My friends who are of other faiths always feel comfortable asking me questions about my faith and when I talk to people who know other LDS people, the majority of them speak very highly of the LDS people. :)
ReplyDelete-Emily Borders :)
It's hard to change a reputation. Unfortunately, media viewpoints on this church are lumped together with opinions that were made and have existed for decades, such as polygamy and blacks with the priesthood and other examples already mentioned in these comment threads. We're about as misunderstood as another prominent group that has it's roots in early America - the Ku Klux Klan. The LDS church and the KKK are night and day when you compare when they actually represent, but the news does seem to lump them together as radical, mysterious groups of white people with cult-like attitudes. It's incredibly unfair, but that's the way it is, and it seems to be more about the organization and appearance than the fact that the LDS church is a religion.
ReplyDeleteAs an American people we are inclined to want to know EVERYTHING. Secrets drive us crazy! And the media feels its role as a watchdog involves exposing any and all secrets...whether they're related to the government or not. The truth is, when we hear of religions like Scientology that have practices you can only know about once you've worked your way up into the religious elite, we become suspicious, skeptical, and very wary of that particular denomination and its followers.
ReplyDeleteI think the same goes from Mormonism. We're framed by the media as this ultra-conservative religion that promotes good ideals upfront...but is ultimately built on secrets and crazy ideas that we aren't really willing to share. As Latter-day Saints, we know that's false. We're ready and willing to share our religion whenever, wherever. But people in the media don't always believe in going straight to the source because they're always so intent on avoiding bias...and, less nobly, thrive on creating controversy.
I'm not sure what the answer is to changing that...I wish I had it.
The LDS religion, like other religions, has it's secret aspects to it. But there are many things that we are very open about. I think many times people are just too curious about what happens "behind closed doors" that they just can't get over all the other aspects of the Church. We' don't get a whole LOT of media coverage when it comes to good things, except by Carol Mikita. The national coverage is especially attentive when the Church comes out with big statements and voices their opinion on controversial issues. Nobody seems to care that we donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to countries around the world. They care that we make statements about marriage rights that go against what is "popular." I think there is definitely a certain opinion people have about the LDS Church, but there isn't much we can do about it. We aren't going to change opinions in massive amounts. We've just got to suck it up, not let them affect us, and show them the kind of people we REALLY are.
ReplyDelete