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Yesterday a U.S. Army major opened fire on a military processing center at Fort Hood in Texas, killing 12 people and wounding 30, according to various media reports. Whenever major news breaks, information flies around fast and much of it turns out to be inaccurate.
Mark Barna has his hands full covering religion at the Colorado Springs Gazette. This morning’s two news stories on evangelical leaders varied from solid to so-so.
TMatt has been looking at some of the larger issues of framing in coverage of Maine’s vote to overturn a law legalizing same-sex marriage. But I’m also curious about some of the nitty gritty. I’ve been meaning to look at some of the coverage for days so let’s begin with this pre-election story by the Washington Post‘s Karl Vick. The story explains the situation — the legislature passed and the governor signed a bill to permit same-sex couples to marry and gets his perspective that the “libertarian” Maine will note vote to overturn that law. The campaign against same-sex marriage, we learn, is drawing heavily on its communications strategy from their successful fight over the same issue in California last year. And then this:
As I continue to read the New York Times coverage of the Maine vote, my mind drifted back to these lines from Daniel Okrent, the newspaper’s former ombudsman, in his infamous 2004 column entitled “Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?” News junkies will recall that his lede said bluntly, “Of course it is.”
Elections are like Super Bowls for political journalists. It’s usually the big game that everybody has been waiting for, and although last night was quiet compared to last year, many outlets focused on the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia.
Here’s the thought for the day, as you ponder the headlines out of Maine. This famous quote is taken from “The Press and Foreign Policy” by Bernard C. Cohen:
USA Today put the following headline on Associated Press religion reporter Eric Gorski’s story about James Dobson stepping down from Focus on the Family’s main radio broadcast:
Noor Faleh Almaleki has died in Phoenix. Thus, we have another development in the case of her father, 48-year-old Faleh Hassan Almaleki, who fled the United States after it is alleged that he hit the 20-year-old Noor and the mother of her boyfriend with his car.
Mao had his little red book. Meanwhile, the influential Swiss psychiatrist and thinker Carl Jung had is own big red book. The only problem was that nobody outside a small circle of descendants and initiates had been able to see the century-old book since Jung’s death in 1961. Until now. (Amazon is taking orders for the just-published $195 book for $114.07.)
