Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
When I received a one-line e-mail that there had been a mass shooting at a Sikh temple, I had a .5 second heart attack. We have family who live across the street from such a temple in Wisconsin, and the line didn’t include information about location or whether the shooter was on the loose.
Some readers sent in a recent piece from Salon, which (for those who stopped reading it back in the 1990s) bills itself as “the leading progressive news site, combining award-winning commentary and reporting on the most important issues of the day.” But we don’t really look at “progressive” or “conservative” sites for how well they report the news because we’re more interested in mainstream publications. If they want to publish a piece about Gabby Douglas and how it would be easier to like her “if she were not so, so, so into Jesus,” that’s their business.
So I was driving through this astonishing Appalachian thunderstorm last night, punching the radio over and over trying to get weather information, when the tuner hit a strong signal and I heard something really bizarre coming out of the car speakers.
Can a dog be a good Catholic? Must a dog be baptized before it receives Holy Communion? For that matter, can a dog be saved? Will all dogs go to heaven, or does Laika’s 1957 launch mark the apogee of canine celestial progress?
A friend in Turkey alerted me to a weird situation of two media outlets telling different versions of the same story. First, from Hurriyet:
This morning, a Sikh gurdwara was the scene of a horrible shooting. Police have confirmed that seven people, including a gunman, have died.
Sports reporters write stories very quickly, feeding editors literally on deadline. My sports reporter husband jokes that political reporters stress out maybe once a year during election nights when nearly every weekend has at least two election-like nights for sports. In many ways, they have been doing what Twitter users are now figuring out, how to report reactions professionally as you experience them before writing the big picture piece later.
Finding the line between sensation and responsible reporting can be a difficult task. There are times when the subject of a news story will say something outrageous that causes a reporter to lay down his pen and ask, “Did you really mean that?” Over the top quotes can make a story pop — providing better placement in a newspaper and a brief “buzz” for the story. It can also distort the narrative, changing the story from the issues under discussion to comments about the issues.
