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The 25 October 2012 issue of The New Republic carries a story entitled âThetans and Bowtiesâ that I canât quite get my head round. By this I do not mean I do not understand what the article says â but I am having a hard time classifying its species.
I have a friend who once worked for Time (actually, several people fit under that umbrella) who once made a very interesting observation about the state of foreign news in that newsweekly, which was once famous for its excellent, sweeping coverage of world affairs.
The whole point of this website, since day one, has been to help mainstream journalists “get religion.” So I guess I should not be utterly disgusted and disappointed by so many reporters’ coverage of the big Richard Mourdock-theodicy kerfuffle right now. Instead I should view this as a great teaching opportunity.
Le Figaro, Le Monde and Libération are France’s newspapers of record, the Presse de référence. While the national edition of Le Parisien, Aujourd’hui en France, may have a larger circulation, I believe that these three best represent the voices of the French establishment: Le Figaro, the center right, Le Monde the center left, and Libération the left.
Some of the world’s most important religion-news stories are also the hardest for your GetReligionistas to write about because they happen over and over and over. Are we supposed to do a post a week on some of these topics? Criticize the same holes in mainstream stories again and again?
I got that headline from an interesting discussion at the Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University School of Law. Odd question, right? Well, not so much. Before we look at the media coverage of the case that inspired the discussion, let’s quickly discuss the case.
I know readers prefer us to harsh on stories rather than praise them, but I don’t care. I have to just highlight a great story from David Kirkpatrick in the New York Times. Now, most of what makes the story interesting is outside this blog’s bailiwick. The piece is headlined “Suspect in Libya Attack, in Plain Sight, Scoffs at U.S.” At a time when the White House is being criticized for its handling of events in Libya, the story is probably going to be a bit politically challenging.
It’s been about five years since I was last in Zanzibar. I was part of the press gaggle accompanying the archbishops of the Anglican Communion on a day trip from the mainland to Christ Church Cathedral in Stone Town — the island’s principal town. Built over 125 years ago on the site of the old slave market (the altar was built atop the sight of the market’s whipping post) the picturesque coral stone cathedral is a monument to the British suppression of the slave trade. Zanzibar had been the entrepôt for slaves captured on the mainland before they were shipped north to the Arab world.
