Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
On Friday, Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel — who covered conservative groups — resigned his position after incendiary partisan emails he had sent were published by the Daily Caller. The day before, some of his intemperate emails were published by Fishbowl DC. He had apologized already for those and chalked them up to a bad day.
I trust that anyone who has read GetReligion for any amount of time whatsoever has noticed that we are not fond of labels. Take, for example, “fundamentalist Islam” or “moderate Muslims.”
I once knew a member of the clergy who warned parishioners that if they told him about anything illegal, he’d be compelled to report them. Now, usually when I confess my sins they’re of the variety where the state doesn’t have an interest. But it’s probably a good idea to clarify whether your confessor is bound to secrecy or not.
Religion Dispatches, a progressive blog for religion news and analysis, has a post about President Barack Obama’s newly appointed religion ambassador. The headline sums up the story very well:
If you’re not following Cathy Lynn Grossman on Twitter or include Faith & Reason & USA Today‘s religion stories bookmarked/on your RSS feed, stop whatever you’re doing and right that wrong.
So there’s a new movie coming out about the legendary (and I do mean legendary) female Pope of the 9th Century — Joan. It’s the job of movie directors to use good stories rather than tell accurate accounts of history. But we should expect more accuracy in media coverage. Let’s see how it’s going.
A reader sent in a poor example of how to cover a major Pagan holiday — the Summer Solstice. The Telegraph devoted only a few words to how the festival was celebrated at Stonehenge:
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.
Religion News Service has a story about Southern Baptist chaplains opposing reversal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. An edited version ran in the Washington Post on Saturday. They aren’t terribly different but I’ll be working from the Post version for this post. Here’s how it begins:
