Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
After my last post about whether young people increasingly are pro-life, several readers responded to my statement that the March for Life resembled a “gigantic Catholic pep rally.” There was no real disagreement about this assertion.
When I was growing up, two of my favorite books were In Cold Blood and Dead Man Walking. Both exposed the desolation, inhumanity, and cruelty of capital punishment — and both were hugely popular. But did either of them make the death penalty less popular? The data is not encouraging.
In 1960, Catholic Democratic leaders were fractured over the presidential candidacy of John F. Kennedy. On the one hand, governors David L. Lawrence of Pennsylvania and Pat Brown of California had not thrown their mighty support behind the young Catholic senator. On the other hand, Connecticut state party chairman John M. Bailey and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley had come out for Kennedy. The rift seems to expose the decline of Catholic voters in the United States.
Reporter Manya A. Brachear of The Chicago Tribune had a fascinating story on her hands: a young Jewish movement that does not worship God. Brachear’s story began this way:
Reporter Molly Ball of the Las Vegas Review Journal scooped the national press on a major political story Sunday. While covering the presidential campaign of Democratic candidate Barack Obama, Ball reported that a pastor endorsed Obama from the pulpit (Hat tip to Spiritual Politics):
While reading the voting breakdown of the New Hampshire primary, I noticed two trends among Catholics. One trend was that Hillary Clinton won a large plurality (44 percent) of those Catholics who voted in the Democratic primary. The other trend was that Mike Huckabee underperformed among those Catholics who voted in the Republican primary; he got 7 percent of the Catholic vote, compared to 11 percent overall.
After reading stories about the New Hampshire election results last night, I remembered that 12 years ago Mark Penn and Dick Morris, two all-powerful pollsters for President Clinton, had discovered a remarkably effective polling technique.
The abortion debate in the United States is described as emotional. So what are we reporters doing to make it rational?
