Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Most Americans probably assume that the First Amendment has locked in solid free speech and press rights for all eternity, but that has not always been the case nor may it be the case in the future. One of the most important under covered stories received some much-needed attention Thursday in The New York Times: the erosion of freedom of speech and the press around the world.
GetReligion tends to focus on mainstream coverage of religion, but I wanted to take a little break from that to highlight a intriguing article out of an alternative newsweekly The Louisville Eccentric Observer on the community’s church services. Apparently this is the start of a 10-part monthly series of Christian church reviews.
Could The Topeka Capital-Journal do better than the following story on how local families balance church and sports? Check out the introduction:
It’s pathetic how American policymakers fail to recognize the significance of religion in the battle against terrorism. What is more pathetic, and likely a cause of policymaker’s failure to recognize religion as essential to understanding terrorism, is that journalists don’t really get religion in covering terrorism. If the newspapers and newscasts policymakers read and watch do not cover religion as an essential component of the story, it is not likely that the elected officials will understand its importance.
As a believer, I am not quite sure how a nonbeliever would react to Thursday’s story in the Philadelphia Inquirer about an interstate billboard intended to reach out to atheists and nonbelievers in the area. See here how the story introduces the billboard:
A news story from across the pond about Christian preachers being told by police officers not to preach in a predominantly Muslim area is an example of how a news organization slant can present a relatively simple factual situation in any number of different ways.
When my wonderful wife first told me about the mother fighting a church’s legal ban on her autistic son attendance at Catholic Mass, I worried the news coverage would be rather shallow. On Sunday, Dave Kolpack of the Associated Press was able to publish a longish well developed update of this ongoing story that has important Catholic theology at its heart.
Now that the Texas Supreme Court has ruled that Texas officials were wrong to remove more than 450 children from a FLDS ranch, journalists should be focusing on what is next in the legal process. The idea being portrayed in some news accounts that this case is over and the FLDS group will be left alone should be set aside because allegations and evidence of forced underage marriages and impregnated minors don’t just disappear.
While the news media has been focused on the sensational story of a breakaway Mormon fundamentalist denomination and its practice of polygamous marriage and allegations of child abuse, National Public Radio produced a solid two-part series this week on another significant religious tradition in the United States that allows for polygamy.
