Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Another gem from the Godbeat at the Los Angeles Times. If you didn’t pick up on my sarcasm, here’s a post from last week about the litany of bad religion stories that have been coming forth from Spring Street.
Once again, we need to flash back in time to look at that amazing and increasingly relevant memo that New York Times editor Bill Keller wrote to his staff in response to an in-house study of his news operation. You may recall that the study was called “Preserving our Readers’ Trust (pdf)“.
The Pew Research Center examined the recent coverage of the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. They analyzed U.S. newspapers, websites, network television programs, cable television programs and other media and found that it was the most intense coverage the church had received since 2002, when coverage of the American scandal flared up.
I’ve already lamented the demise of the once-delightful Column One feature on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. And I feel that I’ve dissected more than my tolerable share of articles by Mitchell Landsberg, the LAT‘s recently new scribe on the Godbeat; add to that Mollie’s commentary yesterday on Landsberg’s Vatican coverage.
That’s some bad timing on Time‘s current cover story, pictured here and previously discussed by tmatt. Pope Benedict XVI delivered the concluding homily at the Vatican’s big celebration marking the Year of the Priest. And while he had many interesting things to say, it’s pretty clear that media outlets are all running with and highlighting the section of the homily in which he begged forgiveness for the sex abuse scandals that have been in the news recently.
As you know, the basic idea behind this weblog is that it is, as a rule, impossible to do an informed, accurate and balanced job of covering real news in the real world without taking the power of religious faith seriously.
The San Francisco Chronicle had a story out of its Washington bureau that shows the importance of checking information you get from a press conference. Apparently the progressive Center for American Progress had an event about the fight for gay rights in Uganda. The event featured New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson and a former Anglican bishop of Uganda named Christopher Senyonjo. (In years past, his name was frequently spelled Ssenyonjo.)
