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There really isn’t any question about the facts that belonged at the top of the obituaries for Eunice Kennedy Shriver in 2009 and, now, those noting the passing of her charismatic husband R. Sargent Shriver.
In the latest Crossroads podcast I talk about how the media invented a papal war on celebrity names out of whole cloth. That led into a broader discussion of how the media lost a bit of credibility this week with some poor decisions about how to cover the tragedy in Arizona.
Greetings, GetReligion readers. Here’s your third-string quarterback with a post about a Baltimore Sun story on the Ravens’ Todd Heap, one of four Mormons on the Baltimore squad.
Every now and then, elite organizations such as the New York Times run strange, colorful stories about those strange people who live out there in flyover country, by which I mean the Bible Belt and other locations between the Hollywood sign and the Hudson River.
Done right, journalism can be downright messy, filled with complex subject matter and competing voices — all given a fair chance to explain their points of view.
Remember Father Alberto Cutie, a.k.a. “Father Oprah”? He was the, ahem, “hunky” and popular Miami priest and media personality who was caught in some rather compromising tabloid photos gallivanting on a beach with one of his parishioners. It was a big scandal at the time — it even made the New York Times. Well, guess what — he’s back!
It must be so confusing to try to cover the churches of the East in the context of North America. Things are so complicated here in the New World.
New York Times religion columnist Mark Oppenheimer has another fascinating piece about how a religious divorce dispute has led to a protest. Here’s how he frames the story, which was running prominently in the online version of the paper:
There is a religion story that has haunted me for years. It was based on an idea I picked up during a weeklong Gralla Fellowship at Brandeis University. A story I started working on when I was at the LA Daily News, one that I pitched soon after I joined The Jewish Journal, and one that in the end I was never really able to execute.
