Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Alexei Barrionuevo of The New York Times really wants you to know just what everyone wears to church in Brazil: churchgoers wear jeans, sneakers and caps turned backwards; jujitsu fighters, including Pastor Dogao Meira, show off their bare chests; and the preacher, Pastor Mazola Maffei, hops onto the stage clad in a t-shirt and “army pants,” which I can only assume means camos.
Don’t tell the folks at Westboro Baptist Church, but there was a story out of Kentucky last week that was bound to be circulated in newspapers and on TV Web sites. “Church to ordain sex offender” was the headline of an AP report from the Cincinnati Enquirer. First the news, then I’ll get to what was missing from it:
Here’s a gridiron-and-God story for all of our readers in the beautiful state of Texas who just got home from a high school football game:
I feel a bit like a sandbagger when I critique religion stories reported by network and cable news. Fish in a barrel. It’s just one step above criticizing the editorial strength of a college newspaper — and a rung below the college paper I worked for.
The arrest of Phillip Garrido last month left a lot of questions unanswered. How had he kept the 11-year-old girl he kidnapped captive for 18 years? How had he fathered two daughters with her and why had his wife agreed to keep the three in a backyard shed? And what was the role of religion in all of this?
When elected officials promote BS about politics or world affairs or the state of the economy, it’s a reporters responsibility to let readers know. (Not saying it happens often enough, but that is the expectation.) But what about when a pol says something religious that doesn’t pass the smell rest?
An encouraging headline got me started on this memo from Cairo in Saturday’s New York Times: “Hints of Pluralism in Egyptian Religious Debates.”
While tmatt has his guilt folder, as the child of a Catholic and a Jew I simply have guilt. And I’ve felt an unbearable weight for more than a month now to write this post about news coverage of those de-baptism ceremonies.
One of the most unbelievable stories I think anyone’s heard in a long time emerged yesterday. Some are, not surprisingly, calling it a miracle. It’s certainly miraculous.
