BASIC REPORTING PROGRAM 2

What makes a UCA News story

As a UCA News reporter, you probably understand your reporting area and have an in-depth knowledge about local and national Church affairs. You are in effect the "eyes and ears" of UCA News.

Deciding what is a UCAN story and what is not takes some thought.

Let’s take a look at the definition of a UCA News or Feature story:

News about the Church or of interest to the Church in Asia.

In essence, this definition offers two main categories, news about the Church and news of interest to the Church, which we outline in more detail below. Whatever the story, it needs to help the reader understand an important issue:

Church reality.

As you will see from the categories and descriptions below, a UCAN story needs to reflect Church reality. What is the Church doing in a country, a region or a parish? What is it like to be a Christian there? How do people of other religions relate to Christians there? And does the story reflect Church values? So keep this term Church reality in mind.

As we say, there are essentially two main categories of stories. Let’s take a look at them.

1. NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH IN ASIA Firstly, “news about the Church” are news stories or features that focus on events, developments or trends that involve the Catholic Church as well as other Christian Churches in Asia. When we talk about the Church in Asia it means Christians in Asia.

The stories aim to help readers understand the reality of Church in Asia. This category is essentially focused on Christian clergy and/or lay people in action.

Take a look at the following simple examples:

- Nuns help tribals

- Christians promote foregiveness

- Church runs education programs for youngsters

- Church leader opposes government decision

- Lay Catholics initiate trust fund

- Parish becomes center of protest

- Church serves people with AIDS

- Protestants fund new church

- Bishop offers Church people advice on investing

- Christians pray for Muslims

- Priests say focus on election candidates’ policies

Action

In all these simple examples there are Church people doing things. An action is taking place. So focus on the action and focus on the verb - help, runs, serves, prays, funds, etc.

Take the example of a story on the work of a Catholic priest who runs a small home for disabled children in Ho Chi Minh City. Here is a story of the Church “in action,” caring for children who might otherwise be neglected in this southern city of Vietnam.

Maybe you live in neighboring Laos. This is both a communist country and a primarily Buddhist country. There are not many Christians. But in your travels along some of the narrow dirt roads upcountry, you might come across a priest who uses an unusual but practical way of reaching out to Catholics and Buddhists. He uses a motorized plowing machine and teaches farmers how to sow seeds as part of his ministry. Here is the Church in action.

Newsworthy

Keep in mind the reader. In the next module we talk about writing for an international reader. The story needs to be of enough significance to be of interest to the reader. It needs to be newsworthy.

An obvious example is the difference between a story that might go into a parish newsletter and a story that might be used by an international news service.

For example, Mass is held in churches all over Asia every Sunday. So a story on a Mass in your local church is not news. But if this was, say, the first Mass to be held in a newly rebuilt church in northern Vietnam, 50 years after Catholics fled the area, then this would be news.

Take another example of a story about a Mass. Suppose a bishop in China who belongs to the “underground” Church is arrested for holding Mass. This is clearly “news about the Church.”

Even small stories

Some small events or developments may not be sufficiently important or newsworthy enough. But don’t ignore what at first glance might appear to be a small story. Even what seems small and insignificant may help to offer an insight into the reality of Church in a particular area or parish if it was written up as a feature story.

Interreligious stories

In Asia probably more than any continent, Christians interact with people of other religions. The continent is the birthplace of all the major religions in the world today, if you consider the continental mass of Asia goes up to the shores of the Mediterranean and includes what is known as the Middle East. Christians are a minority in all countries in Asia apart from the Philippines, where the vast majority of the population is Catholic. Because of this, many of the stories about the Church in Asia involve interaction in some form or another with people of other religions.

So stories may involve the following:

Dialogue

Cooperation

Sharing

Help

Conflict

Animosity

Discrimination

Another story might be local Church leaders in Bihar in India meeting with Hindu and Muslim religious leaders to try to come to some agreement on local community problems that have been exacerbated by conflicts between religious groups. The story on this interreligious gathering might focus on a plan of action and what this means in concrete terms – members of the different groups working together to build a local community center, for example. This is an example of how the local Church interacts with those of other faiths.

Meeting stories

Beware of meeting stories! Every year there are thousands of meetings, conferences, seminars, celebrations and services that involve Christians. Normally, in themselves, a meeting is not news, unless it is so big and important that it can’t be ignored. If there is news in a meeting it may be because of the views put forward by participants or the public decisions or plans participants make.

Let’s take a look at what is not a story. For example, the Holy Cross congregation in Bangladesh might hold a celebration to mark its 150^th anniversary in this part of South Asia. It is guaranteed that there will be a Mass and some good words spoken. This is an event and may only warrant a one or two line Asia Note on the UCAN website. But if the story can convey more, such as the challenges this congregation faces or its plans for the next year or 10 years, then there may be value in the story for a reader outside Bangladesh.

2. NEWS OF INTEREST TO THE CHURCH IN ASIA Stories do not always need a "Church angle" in the strict sense of the term. When we talk about stories that are "of interest to the Church" then we find a wide range of issues and events that might make a UCAN story.

The Church is concerned about many things including social issues, environmental issues and religious issues that may not be Church stories in the sense that they may not be focused on Church people – lay or clergy. Let’s look at the following issues:

- The challenges and problems that women face

- The difficulties young people face

- The pressures on families today

- Refugees and migrants

- Poor and the dispossessed

- Indigenous people’s problems

- Human rights

Then there are other issues, for example:

- Globalization and its negative effects

- Environmental problems

- Fundamentalism and extremism

- Militarization and conflict

- Politics where it affects the Church

- Other religions

For example, take this story we ran on a protest in South Korea. This is a subject of “interest to the Church” but it is not specifically a Church story:

KOREA Military Base Change Arouses 'Peace Wind' Against War And U.S. Army

PYEONGTAEK, South Korea (UCAN) -- A group of Catholics and others in South Korea is staging a mobile anti-war campaign amid a relocation of U.S. troops here and a move to send more Korean troops to Iraq.

Peace Wind is traveling around with their flower-painted van presenting performances and encouraging discussion. Father Bartholomew Moon Jung-hyon formed the group in November to conscientize Seoul residents and encourage them to oppose war and any deployment of combat troops to Iraq.

A first series of protest performances ended Dec. 20, but a second phase of activity began Feb. 11, after a U.S. troop relocation was announced. The governments of South Korea and the United States have agreed to move the 8th U.S. Army and Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command from central Seoul to Pyeongtaek, 65 kilometers south of the capital, by 2007.

LOT OF SCOPE If you look at these subjects, you will notice that when added up they involve much of what goes on on this planet – or at least in the Asian region of the world. In other words, there is a lot of scope for stories.

When we assess whether a News story is suitable for UCAN, the key elements to bear in mind are topicality and news worthiness, the relevance and interest to the Church, and international appeal.

What then are UCAN stories? Let's briefly look at some fictitious examples:

Pope John Paul II speaks out on "respect for life" on trip to Kazakhstan;

Bishops in India call for dialogue with Hindus;

Muslim mobs attack a church in Sulawesi, Indonesia;

Social workers speak of need to tackle poverty in Vietnam;

Mixed reaction from bishops on U.S. troop deployment in the Philippines;

Interreligious dialogue called for by Church leaders in Malaysia;

State of emergency in Nepal hampers work of the Church;

Taiwanese bishops call for more dialogue with the Church on the mainland;

Abode seekers in Hong Kong demonstrate against their planned expulsion;

Appeal made against death sentence for Christian in blasphemy case in Pakistan;

Ban land mines deployment on India-Pakistan border, activists say

Injustice leads to religious extremism in Indonesia, scholars say

Women speak out against discrimination at book launch

Girls forego Lunar New Year holiday to earn more for family.

In other words, issues concerned with one or more of the above may provide a story. For example, a story may be written about a seminar on women's rights, an issue of concern to the Church. But if that is the case, it may be helped if there is Church input, say for example, comment from a nun who attended the seminar or from the organizers if the seminar was organized by a Church-related body.

However, not all developments or incidents concerning youth, women, family, and other issues will provide a story for UCA News. For example, although ecological damage caused by the building of a dam might appear to fit, in itself it may not be relevant to the Church and Christians in the country concerned or wider afield.