Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Earlier this month in the midst of election craziness, The Detroit News took what could have been a simple crime story about a rash of church robberies and interlaced the article with theological themes, historical trends and even sociological explanations.
Remember the media narrative from the 2004 election? To explain how the country could have possibly elected George W. Bush for a second term, we were told that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls. Never mind that it wasn’t true. Bush got more evangelical voters than Republicans traditionally had, but he got more of all sorts of groups.
Remember August (yes, it seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?) when the McCain campaign produced this Internet ad?
Love it or hate it, the Washington Post is a fine newspaper and it is very rare to see a story hit its front page with a large and glaring hole in it. But that’s what happened today, with the story that ran with the headline “Some Abortion Foes Shifting Focus From Ban to Reduction.”
There are almost too many stories about California’s Proposition 8 to keep up. But let’s look at a few dealing with religious groups.
A few weeks into Major League Baseball’s off-season, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had a short story on long-time major league pitcher Salomon Torres and his announcement of his second retirement. The article focuses almost 100 percent on baseball but contained one of those classic paragraphs that briefly mentions religion and then runs away from it like it was some sort of third rail.
A few days ago we looked at some decent media coverage of a Roman Catholic Womenpriests story. A few more stories worth looking at have been filed or discovered.
A few days ago I was trolling through the religion pages of the online version of the Houston Chronicle and I came across a story about the Roman Catholic clergy singing sensation known to their fans as the Priests. Written by John Jurgensen. the story originated at the Wall Street Journal.
We have noted the generally weak coverage of Roman Catholic Womenpriests so it’s worth noting a publication that did better. The New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote about the looming excommunication of an actual Roman Catholic priest who participated in a Roman Catholic Womenpriests ceremony.
