Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
The terrible story out of China of a toddler run over by a van as she wandered alone through a market has seen extensive news coverage. As two-year old Yue Yue lay in the street badly injured, a security camera recorded 18 people passing by before a woman stopped to help. There has been an outpouring of outrage on blogs and social media, some of it prompted by the passers-by making excuses for their behavior.
One of those news outlets that does consistently great religion coverage, most of it of the global variety, is Reuters. Its Faith World blog is one of the best ways to stay on top of big news from around the world. Case in point — this fascinating story about Macedonians being pressured to convert to Islam in Pakistan. Elswhere on Reuters is a good discussion of how newsrooms should approach graphic image distribution when it comes to showing the corpses of men who’ve died as Moammar Gadhafi did. (Confused about all the spellings for Gadhafi? See here.)
Remember Harold Camping, the man who predicted that many would be raptured on May 21? Camping (who has wrongly predicted these kinds of events before), set a prediction for the end of the world for October 21.
The New York Times has a very sad story about the lack of religious freedom in Afghanistan. It comes on the heels of news from the State Department that not a single Christian church remains in Afghanistan, following years of crackdowns by Muslim leaders.
One of the complaints your GetReligionistas hear the most is that we spend too much time complaining about the same old things. Why can’t we just understand that the stupid and/or enlightened members of our mainstream media are never going to do W or X or stop doing Y and Z and just move on?
GetReligion readers of a certain age may remember the catchphrase: “This just in … Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.”
Violent, chaotic events are hard for journalists to cover — period. This means it is especially important to pay attention to second-day news reports.
