Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
As a print journalist, I often wince when important news stories are driven by the radio and television. Accusations fly quickly and responses are hastily arranged. Even in the age of the Internet, stories driven by print reporters develop more slowly. Facts tend to be treated with greater care when they are handled by individuals independent of the situation than by accusers and the accused.
Here is the latest from Denver. This does not prove anything one way or the other, of course, it just adds evidence that the truth is somewhere in between the accuser’s pre-election media splash and the Rev. Ted Haggard’s initial denials. In other words, the lie-detector test backs the position already accepted by the leadership of New Life Church.
The pre-election story of the day, of course, is about the stunning allegations by a former gay male escort against the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Haggard has stepped down from both posts, pending investigations.
“Plunging necklines and navel-bearing tops” are not appropriate for Halloween, says Couric. In her “Katie Couric’s Notebook” segment Monday night, the CBS Evening News anchor lashed out against the “$5 billion Halloween industry” for marketing “sleazy” costumes to girls. What’s interesting is that this came from an “Only On the Web” videocast. As far as I know, this segment never made it on over-the-air television.
The cover copy for the November Wired invokes the giddy atheist triumphalism of John Lennon’s “Imagine”: “The New Atheism: No Heaven. No Hell. Just Science. Inside the Crusade Against Religion.”
Thank you, thank you, to all the readers who made sure that I knew about the Los Angeles Times news feature by William Lobdell and Stuart Pfeifer about Matthew Crouch and his Gener8Xion Entertainment, which is one of the most controversial players in the emerging Contemporary Christian Cinema industry.
How does a reporter write a balanced profile of a guy who thinks that anyone who believes in God is an idiot and “that religion is the root of all evil”?
It isn’t news when the officially edgy Style section of The Washington Post prints a lengthy feature story that opens like this:
