Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
No one is surprised when reporters are found to have certain biases. We all have personal opinions. Some of us handle our biases better than others, of course. Here at GetReligion, we tend to worry about the lack of diversity in newsroom biases. So many reporters have similar educational and economic backgrounds and similar views on the contentious issues of the day. I’m not breaking any news here.
If you want to see an incredibly moving collection of Washington Post photographs of Amish believers mourning the deaths of the five girls lost in the Lancaster County school massacre, then click here.
The political firestorm over former White House official David Kuo’s Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction is as much about religion as it is about government bureaucracy and election-oriented politics. Is it a seminal work exposing the Bush administration as a bunch of frauds and political opportunists? No, journalists have already told that story, but it could prove to be a tipping point in prompting some evangelical leaders to reconsider their GOP allegiance.
First, let me praise the Baltimore Sun for realizing that there was a news story linked to the rites in which the veteran nurse and health-care administrator Irene Forbes Perkins became Sister Teresa Irene of the Heart of God.
This, from Tim Townsend at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Go Cardinals!), would have to be my favorite lead in a religion story this weekend:
The final two articles in the New York Times series on “how American religious organizations benefit from an increasingly accommodating government” deal with money. Lots of money. Reporters are known for being those students who failed miserably at math and thus decided to go into a career that supposedly would keep them far far away from numbers.
As we slide closer and closer to election day, some political reporters are looking ahead to 2008 and the status of “value voters” and the evangelical vote.
To my amazement, the Baltimore Sun continues to do something that must be really, really hard — offer virtually faith-free coverage of the Amish school massacre in Nickel Mines, Pa. The Sun did it the other day and now they’ve done it again.
Readers in Denver should be thankful for Eric Gorski, the wonderful religion reporter at the Denver Post. I’ve read and enjoyed him for years. Gorski never takes the easy road when describing complex religious ideas. Because he takes the time to understand nuance, his stories are much more fleshed out.
