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Over the years, I’ve enjoyed surveying media coverage of feasts and seasons of the liturgical calendar. And particularly when it comes to local news, the coverage can be quite good.
It’s no secret that the mainstream media have struggled to understand what’s happening politically in the country right now. You could say they’re more Stewart/Colbert than Tea Party. They’re just not terribly well suited to understand or explain how, exactly, the Republicans likely are about to retake the House of Representatives.
That’s my precious little cheeseburger pictured here. I also have the cutest little baby bat you’ve ever seen. We are enjoying Halloween and have been practicing our “Trick or Treat//Does that have nuts in it?//Thank you!” lines for weeks. But I have been having some scheduling issues with another holiday that falls on Oct. 31: Reformation Day.
News broke this week that Farooque Ahmed had been arrested in connection with an alleged plot to bomb Metro stations here in Washington, D.C. The first draft of the story I read didn’t mention anything about religion but the mentioned ties to al-Qaeda and Pakistan suggested it might become a part of the story. When the breaking news story was updated by the Washington Post, we got:
We’ve had an interesting discussion after a post yesterday about an article on a group that monitors Muslim extremism. One of the last commenters, Irenicum, had a few interesting parts, such as noting how often “we’re stuck in a false dichotomy of ‘every Muslim is a potential terrorist’ to ‘there is no radical Islam.’” His last line, though, made me think of another news story:
Ever since Muslim extremists commandeered passenger aircraft and crashed them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon — with another plane missing its target only because its passengers fought back — Americans have been very interested in Muslim extremism. Each terror attack committed by Muslim extremists since then has only fueled the curiosity and thirst for knowledge more.
Via the indispensible Deacon’s Bench blog at Beliefnet, I learned that Archbishop Timothy Dolan’s latest criticisms of the New York Times are getting some media coverage. Not in The Times, but the local CBS affiliate has noticed.
Pop singer Katy Perry and comedian Russell Brand married this weekend in India. Katy Perry began her career as a singer in the Contemporary Christian Music market so I was a bit surprised to read that it was a traditional Hindu ceremony. Maybe. I read that in the Washington Post, the Boston Herald, Entertainment Weekly, ABC News, Telegraph, Daily Mail, New York Daily News, MTV, and so on and so forth (this is a story of international importance). Here’s a snippet from a typical news report:
Can’t get enough commentary on Juan Williams’ firing from NPR? Love to talk about tea party Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell? Want to hear a GetReligionista commend the New York Times? Then check out our latest podcast here. Guided by the soothing voice and insightful questions of Todd Wilken, we discuss all these and more on Crossroads.
