Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Monday morning’s popular-with-journalists Romenesko linked to an item about a local high school graduate heading off to the Big Apple to work for the website operated by the Fox News Channel.
Audrey Hudson’s very long story in Tuesday’s Washington Times takes the Council on American-Islamic Relations to task for its alleged falling membership. The civil liberties organization struck back in a strongly worded press release the same day that says the Times is a “right-wing” newspaper that publishes “agenda-driven reporting.”
Thanks to reader Jerry for pointing out this tremendous read in The New York Times about the religious pronouncements, or fatwas, being issued in Egypt that govern the daily lives of the millions who live there. Reporter Michael Slackman highlights the scandalous, sensational edicts, but he does not merely highligh fatwas about women breast-feeding grown men and drinking Muhammad’s urine.
It is, sadly, the kind of story that you see in the newspaper regularly if you live in a big city, especially one in the urban Northeast.
A week ago I strongly criticized the tongue bath interview that 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace had with Jack Kevorkian. Kevorkian was just released from prison for the murder of one of the 130 people whose lives he ended or helped to end.
Matt Stearns of the McClatchy Washington Bureau has a nice piece in the The Sacramento Bee that deals with the religious faith of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. The essence of the story is that McCain, while known to have professed a Christian faith, is not that vocal about it, and some say this is hurting him at the most and a missed opportunity at the least.
Bill Moyers interviewed The Episcopal Church’s Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori the other day for his show on the Public Broadcasting Service. I don’t watch Moyers because, frankly, I am not much for his style of one-sided journalism. Then again, I don’t really watch much broadcast journalism period. But enough readers pointed to this transcript of the interview that I gave it a read.
There is no way to come to Turkey to talk about issues of journalism and religious freedom without realizing that, the whole time you are here, there is a very large elephant in the room, a subject that is hard to talk about openly.
Time‘s profile of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is a well-timed and mutually beneficial piece. Time has landed the in-depth “get” interview that religion writers will envy, especially since Williams withheld a few invitations to the Lambeth Conference. Williams has taken another opportunity to telegraph signals to his fellow Anglican bishops — especially those who would prefer that he take sides in the conflicts about homosexuality and church order.
