Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
At GetReligion we must often acknowledge how difficult it is for reporters to tell complex stories in shrinking news spaces — which makes it so important to praise reporters who do an exceptional job.
As a rule, your GetReligionistas focus our attention on the mistakes that mainstream journalists make, or the holy holes that they leave in stories, when they fail to “get religion.” We also like to praise news organizations when they get it right, but whenever we do that readers don’t leave many comments. So, you know, we have to focus on the negative.
Independence Day weekend might not be the best time for a major story to get its due. Case in point is this fascinating New York Times story about Iranian clerics defying Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the rigged presidential election there.
The Iran story has faded from the headlines in recent weeks, in large part because the Obama White House has not worked to keep it in the headlines, perhaps knowing that “America” and “Satan” are terms that tend to flow together in the minds of millions of Iranians.
Here’s a question that we have asked here at GetReligion — more than once, in fact — and, now, it’s being asked at the Wall Street Journal.
It will take time for mainstream reporters to find the thread that connects the young Michael Jackson, going door to door as a Jehovah’s Witness missionary, to the otherwordly middle-aged man who, after two decades of personal crisis, allegedly converted to Islam, like his brother Jermaine.
Time.com has published a short, brilliant report on Iran’s tensions by an anonymous writer whom it identifies both as “a Time reporter in Tehran” and “a resident of the capital.” The basic facts of the story are simple. In an effort to keep Iranians at home, rather than marching in the streets, the besieged theocracy has turned to a 21st-century version of bread and circuses: Broadcast plenty of movies.
On Monday President Nicolas Sarkozy told French lawmakers that he supports banning women’s Islamic full-body veils like burqas and niqabs in public. Tuesday the Parliament voted to establish a commission to study whether women in France would be allowed to wear these garments.
A week ago, I returned from a long, fast trip that ended up in Bangalore and New Delhi, where I had the sobering opportunity to discuss religion writing in the context of modern India with several audiences of journalists, old and young, and a collection of academics and politicos.
