Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
The first vote by the papal conclave on Monday cannot come soon enough, if only to relieve the incessant speculation about frontrunners. The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post all have repeated the forecast in Milan’s Corriere della Sera that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is the man to beat.
I sympathize with any reporter writing about Philip Anschutz, who has to be the most publicity-adverse tycoon in decades. That the self-made billionaire is now branching into buying newspapers and producing mostly family-friendly films makes him more a tempting target for journalists who believe, in the words of Slate‘s Jack Shafer, that “There’s got to be an angle.”
There is no one correct way to write a news story, other than to tell the truth of what you’ve observed and gathered. Reporting is more an art than a science, and that was clear earlier today in how The New York Times and The Washington Post differed in their descriptions of Pope John Paul II’s funeral in St. Peter’s Square.
Damon Linker, former editor of First Things, has written a provocative (and sometimes annoying) essay on how he believes Pope John II’s moral absolutism has affected Americans’ discussions of embryonic stem-cell research and the court-sanctioned dehydration death of Terri Schiavo:
By now many of you will have noticed that we’ve dropped our right sidebar column. If it’s still appearing on some browsers, such as Safari, try clearing your cache.
Did Pope John Paul II have a preference, or a premonition, about who might succeed him? This is not an angle appearing in many stories about the coming papal election, but two mainstream media outlets reported it in 2003.
Maura Reynolds of the Los Angeles Times reports today on President Bush’s plan to attend Pope John Paul II’s funeral, interpreting it as an effort to cultivate votes among Catholics:
The St. Petersburg Times‘ detailed report on Terri Schiavo’s final hours is elegant and rigorously balanced. The article, which appears under a five-person byline, is a moving account of the grief felt by Michael Schiavo and his brother, by Terri’s siblings and parents and by the protesters who have demonstrated outside the Pinellas Park hospice.
Scott Gold of the Los Angeles Times is the first mainstream reporter on the story about a new order of priests to be called Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. The order will devote the majority of its efforts to resisting abortion and euthanasia through political organizing.
