Saperstein: Religion coverage unbalanced

A Reform Jewish leader joined a call for the media to give equal time to progressive religious voices. Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, was responding to the release Tuesday of a report showing that conservative religious leaders were quoted and interviewed in major newspapers and broadcast networks nearly three times as often as progressive religious leaders. The study was conducted between 2004 and 2006 for Media Matters for America, a liberal group.”The overwhelming presence in the news media of conservative religious voices leads to the false implication that to be religious is to be conservative, and worse, that to be progressive is to lack faith or even to be against faith,” Saperstein said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Saperstein acknowledged that his critique generally doesn’t hold for progressive Jewish views, which he said are adequately represented. “The Jewish community is so politically liberal that there is generally fair coverage of that,” he said, adding that “there is a fascination” with the role Israel plays in linking Jews to the religious right.