Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Reader Martha pointed us toward an article by Reuters religion reporter Michael Conlon. The piece takes the increasingly common view that Pope Benedict XVI will focus on education when he visits the United States next month. For a particularly insightful look at the matter, I commend this piece by someone you may be familiar with.
Your GetReligionistas have, of course, been following the post-Easter and pre-Denver Armageddon coverage of the ties that bind Barack Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Let me ask, once again, a question that I keep asking at this here weblog: When did it become liberal for liberals to attack conservatives for defending the rights of liberals?
I watched Barack Obama’s speech on race and religion yesterday morning. But I imagine that I was one of relatively few people to actually watch the speech in its entirety (see it here) or read the whole transcript. That means that it’s been up to the media to summarize, translate and convey meaning about the speech to a larger audience.
At this point, I do not think that GetReligion will be creating its own special web site to cover the upcoming visit by Pope Benedict XVI to the United States (at least, to the parts of the U.S. that really matter).
So frequently the mainstream media reduces religion to a litany of moral statements. The only time you can get coverage of religion, it seems, is when these moral views intersect with public policy or politics. But then when there is a major moral issue in the news — be it prostitution, plagiarism or embezzlement — religious understanding is noticeably excluded from the coverage.
One more time, into the whirlpool of questions about how newspapers should handle stories that raise moral questions, yet questions that are — for many readers — may or may not not religious.
Texas’s El Paso Times had an interesting story Tuesday on a development in the state’s law that initially seemed to require public schools to teach a non-sectarian Bible course that would be an elective taught by teachers who received some sort of specialized training.
A recent California appellate court ruling raises major questions about whether parents have the right to educate their children. While the ruling will be appealed, parents who homeschool their children are reacting to their uncertain future.
