Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Earlier today, we looked at a couple of media treatments of that abstinence study. Both the Washington Post and Associated Press coverage we looked at were much better than this Los Angeles Times story. It’s awful. Here’s a sample:
As I mentioned the other day, media coverage of the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., always offers conservative activists new opportunities to bash the mainstream press. As a journalist who has always worked in the mainstream, I frankly wish that the mainstream press would make their work a little harder to do.
Every now and then, a story that I have followed for years and filed over in category A gets connected in some completely logical way with another important story that I have filed in category B and, suddenly, I am shocked to discover something new — a major story in category C.
Let’s gather ’round the TV as we celebrate one of America’s biggest holidays, Super Bowl Sunday. And if the game’s a dud we can laugh at the commercials, many of which feature beer and babes.
Want to start your day with a real tearjerker (the good kind)? Take a few minutes to read this story by the Washington Post about a Maryland pastor whose family was stranded in Haiti after the earthquake. Yes, it’s five pages long, but hit the “print” button so you can read the whole thing lest I be accused of plagiarism for posting too much of it here.
When journalists who care about religion news make a case for improved coverage on this beat, we usually talk about the ways in which religious faith — in almost all cultures — helps shape the pivotal events in the lives of the overwhelming majority of people in this world. A wise, highly secular editor once told me that he recognized that, for most readers, it’s hard to talk about Life’s defining moments (births, baptisms, marriages, tragedies, illnesses, deaths, funerals) without talking about religion.
You can learn a lot about a family by observing how it handles fights. And Laurie Goodstein’s Sunday New York Times story shows that as the breach between James Dobson and Focus on the Family grows, all parties are keeping quiet and pretending everything is OK.
Of the many heavy-handed copy editing ticks employed over the years at the Washington Times, one of the most contentious was the use of scare quotes around the term “gay marriage.” Actually, I think they used the term “homosexual marriage.” One of the first acts former editor John Solomon performed when he took over two years ago was to tell the copy desk to knock off the quotation marks.
I’ve lived in Washington for a dozen years and as I was reading this fascinating piece by the Washington Post‘s Michelle Boorstein, it occurred to me that I knew next to nothing about the Unification Church. Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his church have strong ties in the area, including ownership of the Washington Times. And mention of the Unification Church, the Rev. Moon or the Moonies isn’t unheard of ’round these parts. But when was the last time you read a decent story about what the church teaches?
