For former Miss America and Fox News Chief Religious Correspondent Lauren Green, acknowledging that everyone is made in God’s image is an important part of good journalism. She said on the “Jesus Calling” podcast, “Everyone is made in God’s image. So, first and foremost, whoever they are, whatever they’ve done, you have to see them first as someone made in God’s image. And so, with that in mind, when you talk about being objective in a story, I don’t think any journalist is truly objective in that sense.”
She continued, “If there’s a grand narrative of creation, everyone has a stake in what they believe and how they live it out. So, with that in mind, you have to be respectful of a human being. How do you do that if you don’t agree with what they believe?” Green said, “The best you can do is present this person’s story in the way that their heart and their mind needs it presented. I think that’s the best a journalist can do.” Green first joined Fox in 1996. For her, learning journalism wasn’t all a breeze. But by using her background in music, she eventually figured out how to make words sing.
She explained, “Before I was in the Miss America Pageant, I actually did some commercial work and some voiceover work and modeling work, so I was used to being in front of people,” she explained. “I think the thing that really concerned me was being able to write well because I had an understanding of how I wanted a story to flow. Journalism is very interesting because, for me, my communication skills have really developed very, very highly in music. I understood sort of the emotional life of a person through music. And when I became a journalist, it was as if I was trying to translate from one language to another.” The biggest challenge she faced was finding the right words that would flow well.
She shared, “I was trying to find words to communicate something that I only felt in music. And I think that has been the challenge in journalism my entire life, to find the exact words and exact phrasing that would say what I knew that the music could say differently. The challenge now is to find words that could kind of get close to interpreting and expressing the same thoughts, same feelings.” Green sometimes reports on stories that have no religious content but also reports on stories that cover various religious issues.
She said, “That is one of the challenges for living in a very secular world, is understanding and seeing God in the everyday. I grew up in the AME church. I was baptized in a Baptist church when I was in my twenties, and I was married in the Greek Orthodox Church. And one of my dearest, dearest friends is a very devout Catholic woman who is a member of Opus Dei.” So, the journalist possesses a broad knowledge of Christianity across its many denominations.