Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
We spend a lot of time reading stories that miss an obvious religion angle or ones that don’t give enough space to explain some fundamentals. Our eyes widen at stories that do a nice job of explaining complex issues in under 1,000 words.
One of the things that annoys me about reporting is how we spend so much time looking for and writing about dramatic news hooks that we miss the day-to-day drama of real life. I almost never see my religious life reflected in a given news story. My congregation is not driven by trends. We worship in largely the same way Lutherans have always worshiped. This does not make for exciting news coverage, as you might imagine.
As I may have mentioned here a few times, I bleed orange and blue. My dad raised me to be a Broncos fan and I will never shake it. This year’s pre-season coverage is interesting because we obtained one Tim Tebow in the draft. Now, I’ve had lots of discussions with other Broncos fans about whether they think this was a fantastic move or not, and none of them have centered on Tebow’s faith in Christ.
Well, the battle over same-sex marriage is right where everyone expected it to be at this point. As the New York Times analysis noted, it’s pretty clear that Judge Vaughn R. Walker’s opinion was written to an audience of one.
In a move surprising precisely no one who followed his handling of the case, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8. Something tells me we’ll be looking at media coverage of this story for a while. I’m reading the 138-page ruling now but it will take me a while to get through. Imagine being a reporter on deadline who needs to get a story up as quickly as possible. I may have never said this before when it comes to coverage of Proposition 8 but the Los Angeles Times actually got a lot done in a short period of time, I think. That may be because they had to keep the analysis to a minimum and just get a quick take on the facts out:
The blogosphere and the wider world of digital social media is such a strange, strange place. It has its own unique joys and sorrows.
I was really hoping to avoid another Clinton-Mezvinsky-wedding story after Monday’s discussion of the poor coverage of the Jewish traditions included in the ceremony. Really hoping. It just feels a bit too paparazzo for me.
The Associated Press reported on the return to the pulpit of a Minnesota Lutheran pastor. He’d taken some time off after a gay publication crashed a support meeting for those facing unwanted same-sex attraction. The journalist did so under false pretenses and it created quite a bit of a firestorm because the pastor in question was a vocal opponent of changing church doctrine to affirm homosexuality.
Last year, I wrote a news story for Christianity Today titled “Modern-Day Lepers,” on the effort by churches to balance grace and accountability toward sex offenders:
