Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Last week I noted that Beliefnet‘s Steve Waldman listed Sen. Barack Obama’s “pay grade” answer at the Saddleback Forum as one of the reasons he’s struggling with the evangelical vote. He also cited the Obama campaign media buy of a staunch abortion rights ad that didn’t mention anything about abortion reduction. The Politico is running a list of the eight top gaffes from this campaign season. Guess what’s not on it?
Hold on to your hats, folks. We’re in for a wild ride. Or, rather, we’re continuing the wild ride of Gov. Sarah Palin media coverage. And Palin’s religious views are dominating the stories for the weekend. Let’s begin by looking at the New York Times piece on Palin’s religious views.
Amy Sullivan of Time wrote an uncharacteristically unsubstantiated story about Sarah Palin’s possible difficulty in attracting support from moderate and young evangelicals. Usually, Sullivan’s stories are marked by thorough and insightful reporting. This was not one of them.
Mark Silk’s Spiritual Politics blog notes that 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s speech Thursday night used the word “God” as much as Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden in his acceptance speech. Mark notes that the two “candidates [Obama and Palin] most identified with religion mentioned God least.”
So what are evangelical voters up to this year? For a while now, we’ve been told that evangelical voters are up for grabs.
I recently wrote a GetReligion post about the Rev. Joel Hunter’s closing prayer at the Democratic National Convention, the prayer that ended with that “On the count of three” pray your own prayer interfaith twist.
The Wall Street Journal took on the challenging task Thursday of reporting on and explaining the faith of 2008 Republican Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin and how it might impact her public policy views. Needless to say, despite the Journal‘s good efforts, more journalistic work remains to be done.
OK, I knew that this was coming. Yet part of me really didn’t want to admit that I knew it was coming.
I dislike criticizing newspapers stories that are well reported, not to mention detailed and interesting.
