Every reporter is trained to ask six questions: who, what, when, where, how, and why. The first five of those questions are asked regularly; the sixth is not. Ernest Hemingway once reminisced, "After I finished high school I went to Kansas City and worked on a paper. It was regular newspaper work: Who shot whom? Who broke into what? Where? When? How? But never Why, not really Why."

Christians who have adopted the slogan "family first" as a euphemism for biblical morality might be surprised to see how frequently the Bible puts family second.

Look, for example, at chapter 8 of Luke, when Jesus' mother and brothers, thinking he is out of his mind, ask to see him. Jesus replies, "My mother and brothers are those who hear God's word and put it into practice."

Amid April showers, orators are diligently preparing flowery addresses for delivery at May commencement ceremonies. Parents will applaud supposedly profound droning about cloning, often unsure about what their children have learned, but relieved that they no longer have to pay steep tuition bills.

On inauguration day, 1997, Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois, faced the president during a prayer service and praised "the wisdom and the leadership and the vision in your life the last four years." Mr. Hybels lauded "the development of your heart, your increasing desire to know God, and to live for him ..."

President Clinton's political survival strategy reminds me of a Texas story about a lawyer, R.E. L. Knight, who arrived home very late one evening. When Mrs. Knight asked for an explanation, Mr. Knight said he had been worrying about an old and ill woman, a friend of the family, so he had stopped in for a long chat.

This Easter, will news media do a better job of reporting the scandal and glory of the Christ-centered holiday? Or, will newspapers merely run stereotypical tales about Easter bunnies? Is there a way to tell the real story in terms that make contact with reporters?

The problem is clear. Even mainstream media thinkers at universities have acknowledged throughout the 1990s flaws in press coverage of religion and religion-related issues, and then debated whether the problem is bias or ignorance:

When one television talking head recently noted that Bill Clinton, by being elected to a second term as a Democrat, was following in the footsteps of Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt, a colleague jocularly responded that Mr. Cleveland, at least, was not much of a role model.