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 news of the death of James Dungy, son of Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy, came from left field Thursday morning and hit a community that lived and breathed news of its pro football team. Appropriately, The Indianapolis Star fired up its reporting engines and published a half-dozen stories covering the variety of angles, not the least of which was how this news would impact the recently undefeated football team.
I have a friend who makes fun of the stories that repeat every year on local news stations. His favorites are “Grocery scanners rip you off!” and “Our blacklight shows hotel comforters are dirty!”
Kudos to the Denver Post, a paper I used to deliver in the wee hours, for devoting the resources necessary for last Sunday’s special report on the death of young Dylan Walborn.
As you might expect, various members of the GetReligion team are headed out various doors in various directions for various purposes for varying amounts of time during the Christmas season (which begins Dec. 25, thank you very much).
I am somewhat afraid to do this, but let me briefly comment on something Mollie said in the, as usual, lively GetReligion wars over media bias on evolution, creationism, naturalism, fundamentalism and various other terms that the media cannot get straight, in terms of using definitions that ring true to the activists being quoted (sometimes accurately and sometimes not).
I am glad Young Master Pulliam cited the story below, which properly states that the “War on Christmas” was — and is — waged most furiously by some Calvinists. But there was a doozie of a problem with it:
When Bill O’Rielly makes a lot of noise about something, does that make it a story? I would hope not.
I’m a rather disinterested party in the whole intelligent design versus evolution debate so I don’t follow it as much as I should. But there is something so bizarre about the federal judge in Pennsylvania’s ruling yesterday, and attendant coverage, that I feel forced to comment. I think we could write on various aspects of this story for weeks to come, but here’s a start.
A few weeks ago a mini-scandal broke out surrounding Ridgeway Elementary School in Wisconsin. It seemed that some official with the school play had secularized the words to the beautiful “Silent Night” (or as we Lutherans call it: “Stille Nacht“) to “Cold in the Night.” Various groups got enraged and sent out press releases and television networks ate it up and ran breathless segments about the war on Christmas.
