Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
There are many bright lights on the religion beat but for consistency, you just can’t beat the Public Broadcasting Service’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. The journalists there produce a great show week after week. Readers of this blog would be remiss to not check it out.
What we have here is the first positive review of “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion” that grasps the mission of the book, yet rejects our — or to be specific, my — proposal to address the problem. To cut to the chase, Herb Denenberg’s review in The Bulletin (Philadelphia’s Family Newspaper) argues that reporters in the mainstream media are so blind, dumb and biased that it is time — you guessed it — to kill off the idealistic concept of an “American model of the press” and move on to alternative, niche publications.
This past week saw two excellent examples of the American media’s efforts at finding and portraying in the most positive light possible Muslims that make claims of being moderate. These two examples, one in The Los Angeles Times and the other in The New York Times, both portray Islamic preachers. Both reach their audiences primarily via the television. And both articles keep the basic beliefs of both preachers fairly obscure.
There’s an episode of 30 Rock where the main character, played by Tina Fey, turns her Arab neighbor into Homeland Security because she thinks he’s training for an act of terrorism. As she’s contemplating whether to turn him in, she walks by a public service announcement that says “If you suspect ANYTHING, do EVERYTHING.” She finds out, after he’s taken away, that the neighbor was auditioning to compete on The Amazing Race.
All kinds of people do all kinds of Top 10 lists at the end of the year. Some people like ‘em, some people don’t.
Unlike all other Americans (give or take a few) I’m not a big fan of civil religion. I dislike the way it forces a syncretism and watering down of sacred beliefs in service to political goals. But there is a long-standing tradition of civil religion in America — invocations at political events, mentions of religious texts in inaugural speeches, veneration of Lincoln and other great politicians, interfaith events for political causes, etc. And so we will be witnessing a tremendous amount of civil religion in a few weeks when President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office to lead our country.
Back when I was a full-time religion-beat reporter, I was involved in covering several papal visits to the United States. There was a game that I used to take part in with several other mainstream reporters when we covered papal speeches, a game that I called “Spot the soundbite.”
Sometimes I get the feeling that reporters struggle to cover annual events. This leads to less coverage of the liturgical calendar and its festive celebrations and penitential seasons than to events marked by trend-driven church bodies. You don’t see much coverage of Pentecost, marked annually by millions of American Christians, compared to, say, the sex sermon series being pushed by some pastor in Michigan.
