Journalism

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Girls State conflicts with Catholic Mass

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The last few months have seen a few stories about children managing conflicts with their religious beliefs. There was the story about the Orthodox Jewish day school in Houston that won its regional championship to advance to the boys basketball state semifinals but couldn’t play because the game was scheduled during their Sabbath. There was the story about a school run by the Society of Saint Pius X that forfeited a baseball game rather than compete against a girl, in violation of their beliefs about treating women with respect.


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When worlds collide: Scientology and the Nation of Islam

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The Tampa Bay Times reports the Pinellas County Florida Board of Education has revoked the license of a charter school that uses a religion-based curriculum after its students tested poorly in the state-wide FCAT exams (Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test).


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The media's next move on same-sex marriage

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Last week we looked at NPR’s self-analysis of its bias in favor of same-sex marriage. Even before I wrote that, I wanted to look at this earlier piece by Brian Stelter at the New York Times headlined “Did the News Media Drive the Gay Marriage Debate?” So we’re finally getting around to it.


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Pod people: Framing the Georgetown wars

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OK, readers, it’s time for a quiz about Catholic higher education. I don’t think that any readers will remember this column I once wrote for the Scripps Howard News Service (that would be a bit scary if anyone did), but I will provide enough of the content to help readers answer this question: Can you guess within five years when the following was written?


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Why don't we know more about Abdo's motivation?

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When I came across this Associated Press story about the trial of a Muslim U.S. soldier accused of planning to bomb Fort Hood troops, I had to go back and check out our analysis of stories from when then the news first broke last year. It’s instructive. In the breaking news, we looked at how the soldier, Army Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, was identified as well as how his religion was put in context with other aspects. For instance, he’d recently had his efforts to be given conscientious objector status held up because he’d been caught with child pornography.


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LAT: Insert cliche assumption about evangelicals here

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During election season, we will continue to see stories that make grand, sweeping statements about voter groups. As we saw with The Economist a few weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times makes some assumptions about evangelicals where an editor could have easily asked “where do you see evidence for your assertion?”


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Massive religious liberty lawsuit, minor broadcast coverage

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Do you remember the conflagration that erupted in the mainstream media, fueled in part by members of the mainstream media, when the Susan G. Komen Foundation decided to stop voluntarily giving a small portion of its budget to the even larger Planned Parenthood? Do you remember some of those nightly newscasts?


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