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In a day and age in which newspapers fail so miserably at answering the question “What does Christmas mean?” (apart from generic platitudes of goodwill and commercialism), I have to commend Tim Townsend and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a story that gives a completely theological response.
One of my favorite reporters covering the Iraq War is the New York Times‘ Damien Cave. One of his two stories for today’s paper is about a Christmas service in Baghdad. Cave skillfully packs details into his account of the festival service:
The Washington Post Foreign Service has an interesting story today about the revival of church bells and bilos in the Russian Orthodox church. The other day we looked at the New York Times foreign desk’s treatment of the rise of piety in Islamic Egypt. That story used the prevalence of a mark of piety to explore larger cultural trends but also focused on the religious meaning.
The New York Times‘ Michael Slackman had a great idea for a story: the increase in public displays of piety among Egyptian Muslims. For women that means covering their heads and for men it means having a zebibah:
After former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney gave his speech on the role of religion in public life, more than a few pundits and columnists criticized it for not including atheists and agnostics in the “symphony of faith.” But while the chattering class chattered, I didn’t see too much in the mainstream media. Truth is that atheists have a much more difficult voting audience than Mormons. Here’s how Jacob Sullum put it in Reason magazine:
When dramatic news events occur, early reports can be riddled with errors or, by necessity, relatively shallow. Sometimes the best coverage comes days, weeks, months after the event. Los Angeles Times reporter Nicholas Riccardi had such a piece on Youth With a Mission, the group that was victimized by Matthew Murray in the Colorado shootings earlier this month.
U.S. News & World Report‘s Jay Tolson has an interesting piece that looks at a return to traditionalism amongst Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, Jews and Muslims. Because the article attempts to cover so much important ground, it ends up being necessarily shallow. I think journalists and editors think they are being more respectful of major religions by including so many in stories such as this one, but they end up doing every religion a disservice through superficial treatment.
Time‘s Jay Newton-Small reports on presidential aspirant Fred Thompson’s work in Iowa. Though he’s trailing behind Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, Thompson is gaining some traction by offering himself up as the true conservative in the race:
We’ve seen many stories over the years of women proclaiming that they are Roman Catholic priests. In many of these articles, reporters forget to mention that the priests are in no way recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. Tim Townsend has been a notable exception to this rule, and he had a nice follow-up story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch last week.
