Often, the national news media cast religion in terms of narrow political debates, contentious disagreement or moral failures. This is what many, especially outside of the United States, have come to believe is the American religious scene.

Part of the problem with television news, in particular, is intrinsic to the medium. A reporter has to set up a story, give sufficient background to make some sense to the average viewer and try to include interviews with opposing points of view, all mixed together with relevant video, in somewhere between 30 to 90 seconds.

To the religious person who may be the subject of the story, the consequences of such superficiality are often perplexing. Theology can’t be reduced to a bumper sticker or a 10-second sound bite. Fairness and accuracy have to be more than simply portraying two opposing viewpoints in the name of impartiality.

A national TV journalist asked me recently, after an hour’s intense, back-and-forth, off-camera briefing on the tenets of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, how I would summarize the whole thing in 30 seconds. Then, evidently realizing the absurdity of his request, he added: “I know that’s unreasonable.”

From his point of view he was right to ask, however. In the modern media world, we all have to play the game to some degree despite its silliness, and churches and their spokespeople have to be able to compete with the secular world for attention. In fact, I object less to the request for a sound bite than I do to those reporters who lazily compile their stories from unofficial Internet sites without ever coming to the source.

There is a more somber complication to add to this picture. I saw recently the word “toxicity” used to describe a new defining trait of American public debate. Sadly, this trait does not exclude people of religious faith. The toxins include anger, abuse, insults, name-calling and invective that are common elements in the “New Media” (defined as blogs, talk radio, talk TV and Internet sites).

The editorial filters and self-restraint that formerly curbed excesses in the “Old Media” of past years don’t exist in much of this New Media world – its advocates even laud that fact. And so the Old Media, challenged by falling revenues and a loss of monopoly on news dissemination, have responded by aping these very trends.

Civility and inclusiveness, consensus and reasonableness are – like depth, substance and context – becoming casualties of a mass media trend. Our society will be the worse for it if the trend isn’t checked.