Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Kudos to The Washington Post for picking up this Religion News Service article by Piet Levy on the problems religious broadcasters see with à la carte cable plans. The subject has been around for awhile. It has received heavy coverage in publications such as National Journal‘s Technology Daily and a segment on NPR’s On the Media, but mainstream press coverage has been scant.
This Sunday’s Washington Post carried a relatively long inside-page article on the growth of home churches. I have quite a few beefs about this article, written by Michael Alison Chandler and Arianne Aryanpur, primarily that the reporters missed a key facet of Christianity that is encompassed in Matthew 18:20: Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
The idea of doing a post on the fact that today is June 6, 2006, and that somehow has religious significance made my head hurt due to its absolute silliness, and my colleagues suggested that I list six reasons why this is the case. Feel free to contribute your own reasons for agreeing or disagreeing.
To the sophisticated readers of the New York Times, this article acts as a warning: your Major League Baseball games could soon be infiltrated by religion! To others it raises the often-asked question of whether Christians in America will succumb to the “fine and potentially dangerous line” of mixing Jesus and marketing, as a friend said to me recently.
Sometimes a reporter has an idea for a story, but the facts just don’t hang together tightly, and the story must be modified to fit the facts on the ground. Usually this means the story is less dramatic.
This has to be the most ridiculous Pat Robertson story ever. I’m only highlighting it to show how ridiculous Robertson coverage can be. Sometimes people should just ignore the guy. All this story is doing is driving up the sales of an energy shake.
The Washington Post‘s front-page article on the political dynamics of a Sen. Hillary Clinton presidential run is Exhibit A in a political reporter’s attempt to answer the questions that leading candidates historically refuse to answer. As expected, those questions center on “What does [Clinton] stand for? And where would [Clinton] try to take the country if elected?”
Reporters searching for the rise of the “religious left” don’t have to look hard to find people to talk about the surge or growth in the movement. Never mind that no one has really defined exactly what this movement stands for politically, let alone theologically.
Major U.S. media outlets are all over a report [PDF] released Tuesday by Freedom House’s Center for Religious Freedom, which found that Saudi Arabian schools are teaching their students things the U.S. government told them not to teach after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
