Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
A significant story is brewing in California as diverse groups of people with clashing social values conflict with the American promises of religious freedom and tolerance. The themes of the stories are filled with religious values and terminology, but some news articles are not quite as precise or as informative as they could be.
What role did journalists play in the fact that one out of every ten Americans believes Illinois Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama is of a religion other than Christianity? A depressing poll from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that ten percent of Americans mistakenly believe that Obama is a Muslim.
It must be very difficult to maintain any sense of journalistic objectivity while writing about a family’s religious beliefs when it is almost certain that those beliefs are linked to the death of a child.
Feature news stories on social trends and movements should avoid the temptation to start the article with an extreme. In what seems to be a continuation of the newest beat at The New York Times — home schooling — the story starts out with an interesting anecdote about American Muslims homeschoolers with what likely will become an unfortunate stereotype if it is not already:
Sometimes a news story should mention the absence of an issue if only to calm the passions of the readers so more important issues can become the focus of the response to the story. Over in my old stomping grounds dubbed the Quad Cities, the region’s two local newspapers have jumped on a fascinating legal story that has a man with an extensive and violent criminal record agreeing to attend church as part of a probation sentence.
I think it’s tremendously interesting when the local newspaper gives a local story a completely different angle than the non-local news source. Case in point is the difference between the Watertown Daily Times coverage of their town’s attempt to crackdown on Old Order Amish home builders for violating housing codes (think no smoke detectors) and the Associated Press.
You know you’re a journalist who cares about religion when you based your NCAA Tournament Bracket picks on the religion of the school. I tend to use some combination of my head and my heart, which usually leads to utter disaster and ruin. A more successful way I’ve observed is to pick teams based on a hypothetical match-up between the two schools mascots.
Once again, the local Indianapolis media are ignoring the religious issue involved in the second Muslim being elected to Congress. A week ago relatively high voter turnout for a special congressional election propelled local city council member Andre Carson into Congress. He is facing a stiff Democratic primary battle in less than 8 weeks, and if he wins will run against the Republican nominee in the general election in November.
A major challenge for reporters covering Tuesday’s speech by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on the subject of race in America is getting the right amount of background. Obviously there are libraries of potential context that could arguably be inserted into a newspaper’s coverage, but that’s just not practical.
