Just yesterday, I praised a member of the Washington Post team for weaving valid religious content into the obituary of a former Washington, D.C., police official whose life led him from trailblazing work as an advocate of racial equality into a remarkable final act as a Catholic monk and priest. The story showed unusual grace in portraying the themes that were woven through the life of the man who died as Father James Murray.
Fact checkers agree: Lay off Sanger's eugenics!
Yesterday we looked at the Washington Post‘s “fact check” about Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s support of eugenics. In that fact check, Sanger’s distasteful views were contextualized and she was put forth as a “racial pioneer.” What’s more, the person who mentioned her racism was labeled not just a liar but the worst kind of liar.
A life: Police pro, father, monk and Father
Back in my reporting days, there was no assignment that I feared more than writing a simple obituary. I know many other reporters who feel the same way.
Moral cowardice and Mohammad
Get ready GetReligion readers for a new round of righteous indignation, moral cowardice and sloppy reporting about Islam. There will be a cartoon of Mohammad — quelle horreur — on the cover of the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo. The magazine is set for distribution on newsstands today, 2 Nov 2011.
Fine line between racial pioneer and eugenicist
We’ve been living under the “fact check” era at newspapers for three or four years now. I tend to agree with the Wall Street Journal‘s James Taranto when he writes:
Breaking church-state news in Oregon
“Stop the presses!” I joked three months ago when I critiqued a USA Today story on the years-old practice of churches renting public school facilities on Sundays.
'Amazing Grace,' how similar the sound
On Sunday, my congregation celebrated the Reformation rather gloriously. As one might expect for the day one commemorates the good news of the salvation of all sinners by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone, our pastor preached an amazing sermon. The organist pulled out all the stops. We even did the German Mass, which includes many, many hymns. But we didn’t sing “Salvation Unto Us Has Come.” And this disappointed me.
David Carr's faith; a duet with Terry Gross
During one of my college newspaper internships, the reporter who sat next to me told me nearly every day to flee journalism to find a more stable profession. He shares plenty of angst with others in the field, many of whom were watching their colleagues drop like flies in newsroom after layoffs and buyouts.
When ultra-Christian French fundamentalists attack
We joke about the overuse of “fundamentalist” to describe people that reporters don’t like, but I think we need a special award for whatever happened in this Associated Press report filed from Paris:
