Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Someone should inform American journalists that there is something of a shift going on across the pond regarding the Christmas wars. Thanks to Jerry for sending us the following story from Reuters that should be put on the desks of The Washington Post‘s features department editors for reasons that shall be discussed later in this post.
When American legal scholars talk about defining limits on religious liberty, it doesn’t take long to map out the extreme borders.
I have mixed feelings about ombudsmen, but the latest effort by The Washington Post‘s Deborah Howell makes me think again about their usefulness. Howell dealt with the story the Post did a couple of weeks ago about the baseless rumors surrounding the Barack Obama presidential campaign that he is a closet Muslim. Even Post opinion cartoonist Tom Toles had a useful opinion on the piece.
What is the point of reporting on Web rumors that are plainly false and contribute little to the political discussion? Unfortunately it becomes necessary when the rumors and false reports become too much of the story.
For several days, I have been trying to decide what to write about the teddy bear named “Mohammed” in the Sudan. I was trying hard to avoid it, since the GetReligionistas strive to write about how the press covers religion events, as opposed to commenting on the religion events themselves.
My two favorite parts of some newspapers are the obituary and corrections sections. And Sunday’s New York Times did not disappoint:
Stories about interfaith issues are tricky these days, particularly when they involve conflict. Down in Austin, Texas, a Baptist church’s rejection of an interfaith Thanksgiving service because of the involvement of Muslims has sparked an intense discussion of the holiday and how people and organizations of different faiths are supposed to interact with each other in today’s society.
The opening sentence in Time‘s guide to the conflict in Pakistan is quite appropriate: “The turmoil in the streets of Pakistan stems from a mercurial mix of history, religion and politics — with explosive results.”
As regular GetReligion readers will know, I have a thing about that vague word that mainstream journalists keep using to describe the Muslims that America likes, or that the journalists like, or that the Taliban dislikes, or something. That word, of course, is “moderate.”
