Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
From a media standpoint, Ted Haggard really is the gift that keeps on giving. And Associated Press reporter Eric Gorski has kept on the story of the former evangelical leader. His latest report tells us that Haggard will be assisting with promotion for a documentary following his life after he was brought down in a 2006 sex and drugs scandal.
News of a second video showing a Planned Parenthood of Indiana counselor providing advice that could violate state criminal statutes was enough to prompt The Indianapolis Star to provide front-page coverage Wednesday. The second video, released Tuesday, shows an individual posing as a 13-year-old telling Planned Parenthood staffers that she was pregnant by her 31-year-old boyfriend.
The Washington Post covered a new Bush administration rule that protects the conscience rights of health care workers. Or, as the Washington Post scare quotes it, “right of conscience.”
Believe it or not, I don’t have a whole lot to say about the mini-media flap about President-elect Barack Obama’s decision to ask his best evangelical buddy, that would be the Rev. Rick Warren, to offer the invocation on Jan. 20. Just imagine what the coverage will be like if Warren utters the J-word or prays that American will work for justice for all, born and unborn or something like that.
My high school, started by an Anglican canon and a Jewish atheist, started life blocks from Plymouth Congregational Church, former church of the 19th-century rock star abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher. The same neighborhood houses the Watchtower, ground zero for Jehovah’s Witnesses, and, more recently is home to the roughly 10,000-member Brooklyn Tabernacle.
Your Getreligionistas have heard from several readers who want to know what we think of the mainstream media coverage of that fire — it was arson — that gutted the Wasilla Bible Church up in Alaska. In case you have been off the planet for several months, that is the home church of an outspoken evangelical woman by the name of Sarah Palin.
Considering that the religion beat seems to be suffering with the rest of the media industry, it’s always nice to see a paper take steps to improve its religion coverage and marketing of same.
The Newsweek feedback blog notes the Human Rights Campaign has launched an email campaign to thank editor John Meacham for his overall coverage of the same-sex marriage issue:
