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 approached Newsweek‘s cover story on Mitt Romney with dread. Would this be still another media demand that Romney deliver a J.F.K. speech that promises to build an unscalable wall between his faith and his public service?
Did it seem like there were no religion news stories last week? Maybe it was because all the religion reporters and writers were partying at the Alamo at the Religion Newswriters Association’s annual convention. Gary Stern blogged about it last week and even posted a video blog upon his return. Unfortunately the report included no funny stories or gossip about other religion beat professionals.
Yet another high-publicity autobiography is out, and once again the media are giving short shrift to religious aspects in the author’s life.
Normally we look at mainstream media, but I came across an essay in my church body’s monthly newspaper that is worth sharing. In The Reporter, veteran foreign correspondent and former religion editor at UPI (and my friend and fellow Lutheran) Uwe Siemon-Netto looks at how the mainstream media treat Christians and, conversely, atheists. He notes Christopher Hitchens’ fawning reception by CNN’s Lou Dobbs, among other examples.
In the discussion of a previous post about coverage of the Kathy Griffin brouhaha, Religion News Service reporter Kevin Eckstrom says the following about his piece:
Few stories will change a journalist’s life. Even fewer stories change a journalist’s life for the better, but that’s exactly what happened to Seattle Times sports columnist Jerry Brewer since he started writing about Gloria Strauss, the 11-year-old daughter of a local high school basketball coach, who endured a four-year fight with cancer before passing away last week.
Eve Conant of Newsweek has written a curious article: In trying to describe Democrats learning to speak the patois of evangelicals, she writes in a style that is nearly tone deaf to evangelical culture.
What is it with my fellow GetReligionistas? It’s as if they’re completely disinterested in celebrity news. I just searched to see how we handled media coverage of the Kathy-Griffin-at-the-Emmys debacle (I was attending to other matters at the time) and see that we didn’t discuss it at all. For those who have more interesting lives, Griffin is a comedienne — and host of the 2007 gay porn awards! — who made scandalous remarks about Jesus when she accepted her Emmy for her Bravo reality series. There was so little substantive coverage of what she said that religion reporter Gary Stern hadn’t even heard about it last week:
