So here we are at GetReligion post No. 6,000. I might also note that this landmark comes only a few weeks before our seventh birthday, which falls on Feb. 1.
Ghost in the Shriver obits (again)
There really isn’t any question about the facts that belonged at the top of the obituaries for Eunice Kennedy Shriver in 2009 and, now, those noting the passing of her charismatic husband R. Sargent Shriver.
Whatever happened to papal infallibility?
The Atlantic has a “flashbacks” feature, where the magazine highlights previous pieces. One of the more recent ones was a reflection on what the magazine had written about Pope John Paul II. Here’s the set-up:
Correction? That picky fact about Isaiah 40
Join me, please, in meditating on our journalism question of the day: When publications make an error of fact and correct it, should they (a) change it quickly and move on or (b) change it and run a correction notice? Some of you may want to add a qualifying clause that says something like, “It depends on how important the error is, yada yada.”
"Far right" or "mainstream" angst?
I get most of my foreign religion news from Reuters. They consistently report on stories of global interest with an eye toward religious details. But this story left me a bit cold. It promises a lot with the headline “In France, far right seizes on Muslim street prayers.” But I never quite understood what that meant, much less whether “far right” was an accurate description of who we were talking about. It begins by describing how streets and intersections in Paris are flooded with Muslim worshipers on Fridays. They don’t have room in buildings so they pray in the street, rain or shine. No big deal to the locals, we’re told:
The Herod in all of us?
Last week we discussed the invention of a quote and related fraudulent framing of a story so that Pope Benedict XVI’s words on the importance of baptism became a treatise on celebrity baby naming trends. Some readers were surprised that journalists might stray so far from reality when composing their stories. Others pointed out that it happens often when the subject of the story is the Pope.
Tunisia's Islamist-free revolution?
Al Jazeera was the only outlet heavily covering the growing protests in Tunisia over the last month. But the news that its president had fled the country on Friday night has been widely reported. If your knowledge of Tunisia doesn’t extend past something related to Carthage or Star Wars, there’s a lot of catching up.
Asking questions about Sarah Palin, 'blood libel'
Americans received a nice little history lesson this week, thanks to Sarah Palin’s video reaction to the shooting in Arizona. We were quickly informed by just about every national news outlet that the “blood libel” is generally used to historically mean the accusations that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals.
Chaos, alternate realities and media narratives
Some of the journalism being produced in the wake of the Tucson tragedy had been terrific. Much, of course, has been abysmal. I’m still trying to wrap my head about just what went wrong and why it continues. To that end, a few thoughts on how the media choose to frame different issues.
