Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Were you enjoying the fact that the media had more or less dropped any coverage of the proposed Islamic Center near ground zero? Well, it’s back in the news with a couple of updates. There’s the rumor that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia might want to buy shuttered St. Vincent’s Medical Center and move the Park 51 mosque to a new Islamic cultural center he would build on the site (story in the New York Post).
As is our practice this time of year — everyone say “Duh” — your GetReligionistas like to roll out some of the “year’s top religion stories” lists and allow readers to join us in making comments.
To fully appreciate The Dallas Morning News’ Texas-sized profile of Baylor University President Ken Starr, one must accept its basic premise.
Typically we discuss how the mainstream media handles religious news. Occasionally we look at treatment of religion outside of news pages. A former GetReligion contributor alerted us to the New York Times house editorial for Christmas Day. It’s short, but here’s the first paragraph:
Several publications recently published lists of their top stories of 2010, but The Economist tries to predict next year’s trends with its “The World in 2011″ edition. You can already see this trend coming from upcoming books: marking the 400th anniversary of the King James Version of the Bible. Here’s The Economist‘s prediction: “Prepare for a celebration of biblical proportions.”
Even in a health care bill that was unpopular, the panels that would make end-of-life recommendations in order to save the government on health care costs (said recommendations being passed on by paying doctors to share them with patients) were even more unpopular. Some people call these panels that make end-of-life recommendations “death panels.” Others, thought the term inaccurate and prefer terms like “end-of-life planning” and “consultation” and “directives.”
When I think back on Christmas coverage in the past few years, stories about the plight of Christians in Iraq always stand out for me. Things have been unbelievably bleak for a while and yet somehow this year they took a turn for the worse. It was only Oct. 31 that Muslim terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda seized the Syriac Catholic cathedral in Baghdad. Some 44 worshipers, two priests and seven security personnel died and 60 were wounded.
GetReligion was launched around the idea of ghosts — religious aspects to stories that went unexplained or ignored. Sometimes those ghosts are very straightforward. Sometimes they’re more about subtext and nuance. In this week’s Crossroads podcast, we discuss some of the lingering ghosts surrounding that provocative New York Times celebration of a marriage built on the failure of two previous marriages.
The other day we looked at how religion news can appear in a review of a museum exhibit — that is, outside of news pages. Last week a reader noted a couple of advice columns that discussed religion. The Oakland Tribune’s “Growing Older” column discussed holidays for people who are not religious. And the Washington Post‘s Carolyn Hax had a religion-themed advice column. Here’s the last question and answer:
