What is the Religion Communicators Council? I’d never heard of it before yesterday. I’ve heard of it now though, and I’m curious. Is it, like, a household name? Is everybody aware of it off in the background somewhere, taking care of Religious Communication?
I don’t know. I think it sounds pretty horrible though.
The Religion Communicators Council, founded in 1929, is an interfaith association of religion communicators at work in print and electronic communication, advertising and public relations.
It’s a PR-advertising outfit for Religion, all Religion, Religion as such.
So it would be a peculiar kind of laurel for a journalist to get an award from them, wouldn’t it? Journalists don’t really want awards from PR outfits and advertisers, do they? Isn’t an award of that kind an announcement that one is not a journalist but rather an advertiser or PR-rep? Aren’t the two lines of work considered opposites rather than colleagues? Isn’t journalism supposed to be fundamentally not about marketing? The way the Religion Communicators Council itself puts it, that seems to be obviously the case:
The Religion Communicators Council and its members promote excellence in communicating religious faith and values in the public arena and encourage understanding among faith groups on a national level. Testaments to our goal of excellence are the Wilbur Awards.
It’s an award not for reporting but for communicating religious faith and values in the public arena. Fundamentally different and antagonistic kinds of thing.
Yet the Religion Communicators Council does give the award to practicing journalists. There’s one for Christopher Hitchens, which seems surprising. And there’s one for Chris Mooney’s Playboy article about “spiritual” scientists.
Comments
22 responses to “The Religion Communicators Council”
I’m reminded of Lord Northcliffe’s dictum: News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.
I dunno, but there are a lot of outfits that exist to give out legitimate sounding awards for publicity/vanity purposes so that companies and individuals can show off how wonderful they are, for a price. I wonder to what degree the RCC is one of those?
Here is the press release for an “award” they gave to Scientology
http://www.prweb.com/releases/scientology/psychiatric-drugs/prweb2215274.htm
It is for a magazine article against psychiatric drugs.
Reposting: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2011/his-elbow-slipped/#comment-76828
Sorry, I didn’t get a screendump.
Scote, right – so how odd for someone who (as far as I know) claims to be a journalist, to boast of winning such an award.
Maybe he just flat-out doesn’t claim to be a journalist any more, I don’t know.
Scientology? Scien-fucking-tology? I think if I got an award from someone who also gave one to the Xenu cult, I’d send it back PDQ (like maybe, ballistically, through their front window).
Their first award for 2010 is to the Christian Science Monitor on promoting child abuse: “Raised in Faith: Parents Take a Stronger Role in Helping Forge Religious Beliefs.” Makes me shudder just reading the title.
What really confuses me about the award given to Christopher Hitchens is that it’s for his New Ten Commandments, which is really quite acerbic about religious morality in the final paragraph.
There’s also nothing online yet about CH’s response to the award. It’ll be interesting to see what his reaction is…
As soon as I read the first line here, I knew the last line. Sad, isn’t it?
booga-booga scientists.
Freedom Magazine basically exists to smear Scientology critics. It’s so over the top, its’s shameful.
http://www.religioncommunicators.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=114338
Haw haw hilarious. This guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvHpFtjNg_c
“The Religion Communicators Council” sounded way to modern to me. Their more detailed history shows the original name to be:
The Religious Public Relations Council
–a much more appropriate name, I think.
http://www.religioncommunicators.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=70897
Oh, and before that: “Religious Publicity Council”
Don’t underestimate the effect PR firms have on what gets printed as news. Paul Graham wrote a <a href=”http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html”>fairly large article</a> on this. One specific example he gives is that you can find articles almost semi-annually that declare “Suits are back in” in major publications all over the globe. I just saw one of these stories in the local newspaper (one of the more major ones) a couple months ago, and coincidentally it was adjacent to an ad from a company that just happens to specialize in suits.
Okay, so I fail at HTML today…
To me, RCC seems like a pure lobbying organization for its members:
http://www.religioncommunicators.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=70899&orgId=recc
Mr. Mooney seems to be happy to be part of the game. I am very surprised if Mr. Hitchens fetches his award.
I can’t help but read RCC as Roman Catholic Church. I just can’t decide if that’s deliberate or not.
Sili: Snap! I thought it was a kind of subliminal thing. RPC, wouldn’t have the same kind of effect.
No, quite. There’s a website devoted to this very subject – “churnalism.”
That link is great, Scote. Religious publicists indeed.
Serious question. Wouldn’t the Mooney who wrote The Republican War on Science have spurned (or at least ignored) an award from a PR outfit?
By the way, and belatedly, thanks to Stephen Tapply for alerting me to this.
Oh, oh, and they offer **Accreditation** in PR!
Hmm…makes sense for “Religious Communicators.” I think an accreditation in PR has just as validity as, say, ordination in religion.
And, for some reason, they proudly note that their past president has just also been accredited in military PR.
http://www.religioncommunicators.org/mc/page.do?sitePageId=64516&orgId=recc
Accept no substitutes :-p
Just like Templeton! Only Templeton doesn’t call it that…
I just got Lawrence Krauss’s new book Quantum Man, which is about Richard Feynman’s contributions to physics. At the beginning it has this quote from Feynman:
“Reality must take precendence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled”