Terry Mattingly at Religion Communicators Council NYC February 2010

Terry Mattingly, author of the weekly Scripps-Howard News Service “On Religion” column, spoke to the Religion Communicators Council on February 16 and said that media bias by journalists do exist, and religious communicators need to be prepared to educate those journalists to provide a clear and factual story of your organization and message.

Some points include:

• Provide information about your religious institution for a journalist in the most easy to understand manner. Use material from Sunday School that is so simple a young child can understand. Posting materials that you would hand out to a newcomer also helps the journalist.

• Before you accept an interview know who the reporter actually is and what he writes about. Identify all the good and bad blogs.

• Do not hide. Make a condition of the interview that you will record it either via video and/or audio. Terry recorded an interview and his interviewee also recorded to avoid any incorrect quotes.

Mattingly is the author of Pop Goes Religion: Faith in Popular Culture and runs GetReligion.org.

Besides doing the audio recording of this presentation I also did the recorded via a digital videorecorder as well. This is the first time using the video camera and I will have to get a tripod to keep it steady, and decide on a video software program as I used a trial version of Muvee.

You can listen to the full audio here.