Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Surveys are tricky things to report, especially when the data is sole sourced, to use a bureaucratic term. Sometimes I get the feeling that those doing the research are stretching a bit to reach their conclusions with the aid of supposedly scientific numbers, and you always have to question to motives of those commissioning the survey.
The mainstream media explanation for the tragic actions of a young college student in Blacksburg, Va., has been that he was troubled, sick, mentally ill and a textbook case of a school shooter.
What would the news coverage look like if three Muslims were found with their throats slit in an Islamic publishing house in a northern Scotland town? Two victims were citizens of the United Kingdom and one was from Morocco, and the apprehended suspects said they did it for their country because “they are attacking our religion.”
The tragic shootings Monday at Virginia Tech tell a story about life and death, and whenever those subjects are discussed religion will no doubt become involved. Tmatt wrote on Tuesday that the “religion shoe” would soon drop. And as predicted, religion did drop throughout the day’s memorial service.
In response to tmatt’s post that GetReligion should comment on more stories about non-Christians, a reader Liv submitted this New York Times piece on religious tensions in Turkey. I mention this because it is an example of a story unrelated to Christianity that has massive application to the largely Christian nation that is the United States of America.
This week’s long (2,000-plus words) and much-discussed Wall Street Journal feature about the growing militancy of atheists in Europe raises a lot of questions. Sadly, it is available only to subscribers, but let’s not let that little detail keep us from talking about it.
The big cats on the evangelical right spoke out at a breakfast on Wednesday about two of the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. According to Gannett News Service political writer Chuck Raasch, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said a Rudy Giuliani candidacy would be “a ticket for Hillary Clinton to win the White House.” And Gary Bauer of the 2000 presidential campaign said that the 2002 speech by Sen. John McCain denouncing the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance” has already doomed his candidacy.
I’m never sure what to make of news articles on Internet-based virtual worlds. This is partially since I have never participated in a virtual world, and while I play the occasion video game, the closest I’ve ever been to a “second life” on the Internet is the rare occasion that I play Halo 2. By no means am I suggesting that there are not legitimate news stories in these second Web lives. It’s just that I’m perplexed that there are enough people out there with enough time to make these genuine news stories.
In a New York Times op-ed, veteran religion writer Kenneth Woodward says Mitt Romney should use a May speech at Pat Robertson’s Regent University to dispel the challenges he faces in convincing evangelical Christians to vote for him.
