Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
You may have heard that the son of a major Hamas leader announced that he is Christian. But if your curiosity was piqued as to why he converted, read Haaretz reporter Avi Issacharoff’s story about Masab Yousuf.
Yesterday we looked at that Pew report which criticized the mainstream media’s coverage of Obama’s speech on race and religion. The report claimed that the media got the race angle at the expense of the religion angle.
Faithful GetReligion readers will remember the story of William Lobdell, the Los Angeles Times scribe whose first-person account of how covering the religion beat cost him his faith ran on the front page of that newspaper.
We like our readers to know that we pay attention to their emails and tips. So allow me to jump in here for a moment with a quick, laugh-to-keep-from-crying update on that strange New York Times story the other day about the sex shop next door to the Orthodox Jewish synagogue on the Venice Beach boardwalk out in greater Los Angeles. Click here to read the original post on that fascinating free speech conflict.
The New York Times headed out West the other day for a very interesting look at a clash between traditional faith and modern sensibilities, in a “Los Angeles Journal” entry that ran under the lilting headline, “At the Intersection of Synagogue and Boardwalk, a Feud.”
Let me say, as a follow-up on the Divine Ms. MZ’s post about Neela Banerjee of the New York Times getting caught in the newsroom downsizing wave (click here), that your GetReligionistas have also heard the news out of Orlando.
As a gentile, I learned to think of the Jewish people mainly in religious terms. Reading the Old Testament alongside the New Testament will do that to a goy.
Religion is one of the specialty beats in the modern newsroom where knowledge and experience can really pay off. There are times when it really helps to have seen the same kinds of stories develop over and over again, which allows you a chance to look further down the road and anticipate what might happen.
There is nothing the media like more than to sensationalize undeserving stories. Usually this involves either the disappearance of young, attractive white women or alleged revelations about Jesus. in the latter category, we’ve read that Jesus walked on an ice floe (not water), that he wasn’t crucified in the manner in which people think, that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier named Pantera, not Joseph, and that Jesus didn’t die on the cross so much as pass out after being doped up.
