Second Thought

Looking again at news and commentary

"Journalism's Blind Spot" by D. Patrick Miller

Columbia Journalism Review

"Society's move toward more individual, deeply felt spirituality is going largely unexplored by the press....

"According to San Francisco State professor of philosophy Jacob Needleman, 'The journalist's perspective on reality has to do with what will excite people: scandal, violence, money and sex. Internal events don't make the news.... By the way they frame their questions, they never elicit the most profound aspects of human experience.'

"Perhaps the typical journalist's tool kit of investigative techniques has become empty of qualities such as wonder, empathy, tenderness and compassion. Such inner qualities are the wellspring of America's modern spiritual light, which glows steadily despite the blind spot of American journalism. What many journalists cannot now see may develop into a grace that amazes them."

Excerpted with permission from "Journalism's Blind Spot" by D. Patrick Miller, Reader's Digest, May 1991.

Editor's comment: This assessment certainly isn't true of all journalists, some of whom point to people's search for spirituality as the most significant "story" of the decade.

But the general human assessment of what's really "happening"—what's really important and worthy of note—is often out of focus. The assessment of this age as essentially the era of technology, political power plays, and the loss of faith may be as off base as first-century writers who relegated a small religious band called "Christians" to a minor historical footnote.

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March 9, 1992

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