Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
I love all most of our reader submissions, but the other day we received one that sounded pretty surprising. It comes from Hasan Hakeem, a member of the Ahmadiyya Community and the Chaplain of the Kenosha County Jail in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I’ll go head and just quote it:
So we’re at the confession stage of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s sex scandal. For those who haven’t been following along, I’ll try to give a quick recap.
So, uh, this happened. Newsweek has a story on Mormons headlined “Mormons Rock! They’ve conquered Broadway, talk radio, the U.S. Senate-and they may win the White House. Why Mitt Romney and 6 million Mormons have the secret to success.” And as the headline might indicate, it’s a favorable article about Mormonism. We may look at the article in the days to come. I do have to point out this second paragraph about former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s candidacy and announcement for the presidential nomination:
In the latest Crossroads, I discuss with host Todd Wilken the media coverage of hypocrisy, the murder of a Pakistani journalist and virginity checks in Egypt.
A Pakistani journalist was found murdered this week. I wanted to highlight that tragedy here because his beat involved a lot of religion coverage. Here’s how the San Francisco Chronicle explained it:
If generic New York Times readers know anything at all about Anglican bishops in Africa, surely they know that most of them are quite conservative on matters of faith and practice. For example, they are opposed to homosexual activity of any kind — a position that is very common on a continent in which their growing churches often directly clash with conservative Islam.
Much will be discussed today about the future of the New York Times and women in journalism as Jill Abramson is set to become the new executive editor of the Times. We would not usually pick up on this type of transition unless we see direct impact on religion coverage, but two particular quotes caught our eyes.
I don’t typically watch cable news, but too many people I follow on Twitter were insisting that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interview with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) was must-see TV. I was able to watch a repeat of the interview, which was good TV, for what it’s worth. Afterwards, there was a segment on crisis communications and how poorly Rep. Weiner has handled the situation.
