Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
I hope I’m not jinxing anything by asking this, but do you think we may be witnessing less “War on Christmas” media hype this year? It seemed the story was escalating annually, but I think we may have a reprieve this year.
The Washington Post has a religion-heavy article on Nicaragua’s therapeutic abortion ban. Until a few weeks ago Nicaragua permitted abortions to be performed on women who had been raped, whose babies were abnormal or who faced medical risk, according to reporter N.C. Aizenman. Abortion opponents claimed that the loophole for therapeutic abortions was being abused.
Can you believe it was less than one month ago that we first discussed coverage of Ted Haggard’s fall from prominence? As November has progressed, we have seen quite a few stories related to the ordeal. The early days of the story focused on the hypocrisy angle, about which I highlighted an alternate view.
In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas law against sodomy. “Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court.
Back in December of last year, a federal judge ruled against a Dover school board including intelligent-design theories in curriculum. The ruling basically said that intelligent design is religion-based and therefore false science. Mainstream coverage pounced on this. I raised a question about the coverage then:
I like to believe my reading comprehension skills are adequate. But my confidence was dampened when I read The New York Times Magazine‘s advocacy journalism piece on gay parenting. The mash note ran 8,000 words, which was at least 2,000 too many.
When the Ted Haggard sex scandal broke, Lexington Herald-Leader religion reporter Frank Lockwood posed an interesting question:
Of the topics that are both universally experienced and wildly controversial, procreation has to rank near the top. Kudos to Eileen Finan at Newsweek for a remarkably balanced piece about a landmine-prone issue. (And thanks to reader Jon Swerens for letting us know about the article.) In an online-only piece, she looks at a movement of Protestant Christians opposed to birth control of any kind:
When Mike Jones went to the media with claims that New Life megachurch pastor Ted Haggard had paid him for sex and meth, he said he did so because of Haggard’s hypocrisy. Jones said he felt that Haggard was a hypocrite because he preached against homosexual behavior while also engaging in it.
