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I watched Barack Obama’s speech on race and religion yesterday morning. But I imagine that I was one of relatively few people to actually watch the speech in its entirety (see it here) or read the whole transcript. That means that it’s been up to the media to summarize, translate and convey meaning about the speech to a larger audience.
I finally got around to reading Lauren Collins’ profile of Michelle Obama in the March 10 New Yorker. It’s sympathetic but no puff piece — packed full of information that isn’t necessarily flattering. Obama’s stump speech includes the idea that we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents, and so on.
Day after day, your GetReligionistas receive a steady stream of email from people who seem to pay little attention to what it is that we actually do at this weblog.
What a campaign season this has been. It’s amazing how much religion has played a part this year — from Huckabee’s surprising win in Iowa to Mitt Romney’s big religion in America speech. And now this, as reported by Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic:
There have been more than a few stories about Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor and pastor. A survey of broadcast media left me a tad unimpressed with the journalistic treatment. It seems news outlets are either exploiting the political rhetoric of Wright without any context or soft-peddling it to the extreme.
This week I’ve been on a bit of a tear about the shoddy coverage of the Vatican’s supposed reissue of the Seven Deadly Sins. But I absolutely can’t let pass another horrible example of media malfeasance. Reporter Richard Owen, who was responsible for much of the “deadly sin” silliness, filed the following report from Rome:
It’s one thing to rip a routine or bad story. It’s another to criticize an excellent story with one flaw. The exercise can seem, and perhaps often is, pedantic. So if the criticism is to be convincing, it better be valid.
More reporters should tag along with an interview subject. As someone who has gone on ride-a-longs with cops in New Orleans and followed politicians in Washington, I have found that being in a subject’s physical presence is essential, enabling me to see the world from their eyes and walk in their shoes.
Normally we don’t write about columns in mainstream papers. But far too often columns in mainstream papers are nothing more than ego-filled rants. But The Baltimore Sun had such a great column this week that I have to highlight it here.
