Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Any discussion of when the U.S. Catholic bishops began to get more interested in religious liberty issues needs — at the very least — a flashback to March 10, 2006. That’s when Catholic Charities of Boston did the unthinkable.
During election season, we will continue to see stories that make grand, sweeping statements about voter groups. As we saw with The Economist a few weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times makes some assumptions about evangelicals where an editor could have easily asked “where do you see evidence for your assertion?”
It’s safe to say that several major themes continue to manifest themselves in most — but not all — of the mainstream news reports about the religious liberty cases linked to those Health and Human Services mandates on religious organizations.
Back in my college days, a missionary kid-journalist friend of mine (who later spent some time as a presidential speechwriter) turned me on to that fabulous “Sittin’ In” album by Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina. The songs were OK, he said, but his advice was to check out the horn charts and keyboards. We both said: Who in the world is Michael Omartian?
One of the media templates we see frequently in discussion about whether to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions or other groupings is a supposedly rhetorical question about how such a change in law would ever affect anyone other than gay couples. I’ve always thought it showed a surprising lack of imagination for reporters to not be able to realize that changing marriage law, whether you support it or oppose it, is radical. It was radical when marriage law was changed to allow married couples to dissolve their unions with ease, for instance. It had massive changes for American society and men and women and children. And it would be radical, of course, to change the law to say that gender or number are unimportant characteristics or limitations on marriage.
The mainstream press has been on a tear ever since President Barack Obama announced that his liberal Christian faith had inspired him to change his beliefs on the definition of marriage. One of the most common stories, produced by news outlet after news outlet, has focused on the ways that this doctrinal issue has divided various groups of believers.
If you are interested in religion news (as opposed to pure politics), and you are willing to look at Mitt Romney’s Liberty University commencement speech from the point of view of the audience, then it’s pretty clear which paragraph deserves the most attention. Here it is:
One of the things that unites readers and reporters is that we are writing or reading news because we’re curious about the world around us. USA Today runs a story about something quite common — the celebration of Mother’s Day — and yet I found it interesting because it satiates some of that curiosity I have about Mother’s Day.
It’s amazing how much news and information one misses when attempting to follow hot stories in the online versions of major newspapers.
