From Yahweh to Yahoo!: The Religious Roots of the Secular Press (History of Communication)

By Doug Underwood

Book Overview

Presenting religion as journalism's silent partner, From Yahweh to Yahoo provides a fresh and surprising view of the religious impulses at work in contemporary newsrooms. Focusing on how the history of religion in the United States entwines with the growth of the media, Doug Underwood argues that American journalists draw from the nation's moral and religious heritage and operate, in important ways, as personifications of the old religious virtues.

Underwood traces religion's influence on mass communication from the biblical prophets to the Protestant Reformation, from the muckraker and Social Gospel campaigns of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the modern age of mass media. While forces have pushed journalists away from identifying themselves with religion, they still approach such secular topics as science, technology, and psychology in reverential ways. Underwood thoughtful analysis covers the press's formulaic coverage of spiritual experience, its failure to cover new and non-Christian religions in America, and the complicity of the mainstream media in launching the religious broadcasting movement.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 025202706X
• ISBN13: 9780252027062
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Fresh look at complicated issue

I found this book to be a very useful and fresh approach to the complicated relationship between religion and the media. My own research efforts have discovered similar hints, that the media may indeed have a kind of liberal Christian ethic, which makes them oppose right-wing Christianity. This book gives a solid historical analysis, and is written in a very engaging style--I highly recommend it.