Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
As “old media” seek to reach new audiences through the use of online technologies, we’ve seen journalists, like the Boston Globe’s Michael Paulson develop blogs (his is “Articles of Faith”). Sometimes these are a way of posting less formal comments on a topic. Sometimes they offer another place to discuss issues that journalists can’t fit into the traditional news hole.
Religious persecution tends to make for sensational stories. There’s a lot of human drama, and for better or worse, it’s easy to confirm the worst fears of certain segment of the population that is skeptical of the “organized religion” behemoth. It’s no wonder that journalists pounce on them when they find them.
Rather than update my previous Armenian genocide post with a link to Julia Duin’s article on its anniversary in the Washington Times, I wanted to highlight it separately. I noted that most stories about the events of 1915 were solely or almost exclusively political. Very few touched on religion in any meaningful way.
There was something about the story in Monday’s New York Daily News that just didn’t have the ring of truth. The headline was “New Riverside Church Pastor Says His Raise Was Lord-Approved” and it began like this:
Though we’ve looked at a bit of the coverage related to Notre Dame University’s conferral of an honorary degree and speaking slot for President Barack Obama, there’s a lot that we haven’t highlighted. Mostly that’s because the stories are fairly straightforward or just local repetitions of previous stories. The Washington Times reported that, as of Friday, 46 bishops had publicly castigated Notre Dame:
Back in December, Daniel Pulliam looked at the rather curious lack of coverage pertaining to undercover videos of Planned Parenthood employees providing advice that could violate Indiana criminal statutes. A University of California – Los Angeles student, posing as a 13-year-old impregnated by a 31-year-old boyfriend, had taped Planned Parenthood counselors at two Indiana clinics telling her how to avoid state laws about parental-consent on abortion and the reporting of child sex-abuse.
What is a religion story when it surfaces in the Style section of the New York Times? Let’s add another layer of complexity: what if that story is told as part of an ongoing series that aims to chronicle a generation through story-telling and personal reflection?
On Friday, President Barack Obama broke a campaign promise to Armenian voters to declare the 1915 massacre of Armenians an act of “genocide.” As Glenn Kessler noted in a March Washington Post story anticipating that this might happen, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Joseph Biden for years have not minced words about labeling as “genocide” the deaths of Armenians. They regularly lambasted President George W. Bush for not using the word “genocide.” And Obama’s promise that he would use the word — compared with Sen. John McCain’s position — got him enthusiastic support among the Armenian community.
An aftermath of the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision to require the state to allow same-sex couples to marry is reported by the The Des Moines Register as a major story with potentially significant implications when in fact it is not that significant of an issue. At least it’s not significant based on the facts buried in the story. Here, a magistrate, not a judge as the headline inaccurately proclaims, announced that he will no longer perform marriage ceremonies partially in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling.
