Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Those of you who have missed the posts of our Elizabeth Evans should head on over to Reuters FaithWorld where she has written about clergy sexual misconduct. She digs a bit deeper and wider on the topic than most treatments of the issue.
Caught up in the holiday weekend’s spirit of thankfulness, I want to reach back to last weekend and Pope Benedict’s meeting with artists from around the world in the Sistine Chapel, which was covered by The New York Times’ Rachel Donadio:
It’s Thanksgiving, of course. So I would like to give thanks that I was not in Laurie Goodstein’s shoes the other day when she heard about the upcoming “Manhattan Declaration” announcement — click here for details — and then got the news that she could only write 570 words about this very complex ecumenical statement.
We’ve previously looked at media coverage of the rather public dispute between Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., and Bishop Thomas Tobin. Last week I suggested that reporters at least explain the Catholic understanding of scandal as it relates to the case. And this week, I noted the confusion many reporters have between banning a communicant and suggesting he refrain from taking communion.
It’s not every day you read a story where the reporter describes the same person as a Jehovah’s Witness, a fundamentalist and an evangelical.
Last week I wrote a news story about the recent passage of the amendment restricting abortion funding and subsidies in the House health care legislation. I was interviewing various activists and one of them told me that they’d had to work solely through alternate media for the last 10 months because the mainstream media wasn’t doing a very good job of looking at the abortion issue as it related to the health care bill. Until, that is, about 48 hours prior to the vote on Rep. Bart Stupak’s amendment to the House legislation.
That’s not a rhetorical question, but a literal one explored in a Washington Post story by William Wan entitled, “Christian Scientists seek reimbursement for prayers.”
I was having a private conversation the other day, soon after the Fort Hood massacre, with a specialist in issues of religious freedom and, in particular, Jihadist persecution of moderate Muslims and various religious minorities in predominately Muslim lands.
