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’ve been mildly obsessed with the horrific beating of an Iraqi-American woman in Southern California. Shaima Al Awadhi succumbed to her injuries on Sunday. She was 32 years old and a mother of five children. Her oldest daughter is 17.
If you are going to read the latest New York Times piece on candidate Rick Santorum and the “Catholic vote,” your first task is to keep reading — past the headline, the one that simply says: “Santorum Fails to Capture Catholic Vote.”
In the lead-up to Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to Mexico, news reports were oddly obsessed with a sort of popularity contest between the current and preceding pope. We kept joking about the secret “enthusiasm meters” reporters must be consulting to come up with stories such as this one from December:
The Guardian has a really interesting story (“Cross and bed found in Anglo-Saxon grave shed new light on ‘dark ages’“) about how Cambridge archaeologists are thrilled by their recent discovery of a 7th century grave with body of young woman on a bed with an ornate gold cross:
An article from the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times has left me perplexed. On one level the story entitled “Punk riffs take on God and Putin” is a silly piece of journalism.
It is impossible to cover sports without, somehow, studying sports. It’s impossible to cover business without — formally or informally — studying business. Ditto for politics, the arts, science, etc., etc.
I guess it was only a month or so ago that I had the weird experience of watching a nightly newscast and screaming. What sent me over the edge was an ABC News piece that was so riddled with errors and bias it enraged me.
One of the more tragic religion news stories of recent weeks has been the murder of three Jewish children and a rabbi at a school in Toulouse, France. The shooting earlier this week was quickly linked to the killing of French paratroopers a week prior. Some of the journalism surrounding these events has been great. I particularly liked this Associated Press piece on how people are grieving the deaths. It does a great job of weaving religious practice into a brief update. I also loved this CNN Belief blog piece on why the dead were flown to Israel for burials. It covers everything fro the scriptural basis to the practice to the costs of same. A great piece.
