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Here’s a quick follow-up note on that post I offered about the disputed quotes between former President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Ed Young of the giant Second Baptist Church in Houston.
Any news story that is reliant on statements from public interest groups is bound to have some problems. News stories involving the appointment of federal judges with lifetime tenure are often Exhibit A, along with nearly any other story involving a controversial person being considered for a lifetime job.
Remember that little discussion of “theodicy” that we had last weekend? This is actual a topic that journalists, as a rule, do not mind digging into from time to time. They enjoy putting God in the dock whenever there is a great tragedy, especially natural disasters.
The Clinton era has, so far, produced more than its share of he said-she said, or she said-he said or even he said-he said stories. It does not seem that this will end anytime soon, which puts journalists in an interesting position.
The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University has set up an indispensable Internet tool for those tracking religion in the 2008 presidential election. Any reference to faith by a major presidential candidate is logged on the Web site and categorized by topic.
As regular GetReligion readers know, in my day job I am the director of the Washington Journalism Center, which is one of the semester-length student programs associated with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. One of the schools that has been most active in our journalism-education work here has been Union University in Jackson, Tenn.
The Kansas City Star had a great story a couple of weeks ago out of its Washington, D.C., bureau about a couple of million federal dollars that went to an inner-city religious ministry by means of the infamous earmarking system on Capitol Hill.
I wish I knew where I heard the statistic claiming that 85 percent of the growing churches in America have added large-screen video technology to their worship centers (the large rooms that once were called “sanctuaries”). As a religion columnist, I receive so many letters and emails making so many claims and it’s hard to keep track of it all.
Writing about church-state conflicts is not easy. What is the issue at hand? How does it affect ordinary people? Alas, two stories by the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post about a controversial legislative proposal failed to answer both questions adequately.
