Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
We like our readers to know that we pay attention to their emails and tips. So allow me to jump in here for a moment with a quick, laugh-to-keep-from-crying update on that strange New York Times story the other day about the sex shop next door to the Orthodox Jewish synagogue on the Venice Beach boardwalk out in greater Los Angeles. Click here to read the original post on that fascinating free speech conflict.
Needless to say, I received some interesting emails in the hours after the New York Times and the rest of the world’s mainstream media started running the following story. The words changed a bit, but here is the key info from the Times:
Many readers submitted a piece from the Boston Globe this weekend about the ordination of women claiming to be Roman Catholic priests. Some said the story was horrific. Others said it was fantastic. Turns out there were two stories. The first is not so good.
The big news about the recent Newsweek “Finding His Faith” cover story about Sen. Barack Obama is that it was not written by Jon Meacham, the news magazine’s theologian in chief.
A few days ago, Daniel wrote a post about media coverage of Josh Hamilton — the Texas Ranger who speaks openly and frequently about his faith. Some of the comments to that post wondered why we look at the intersection of sports and religion at all. An interesting discussion ensued.
The rescue of 14 hostages in the Colombian jungle last week could not have been more dramatic. Military intelligence agents infiltrated the leftist rebel organization and tricked them into handing over kidnapped presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors without a shot being fired. My absolute favorite detail in the story was that the Colombian operatives duped the bad guys in part by wearing Che Guevara shirts. If only this could end the scourge of Che Guevara shirts forever!
Tony Snow, journalist and aide to two presidents, died on Saturday at the age of 53. As with the death last month of beloved journalist Tim Russert, friends and fans are grieving the loss. Like Russert, Snow was a devoted family man with a strong Christian faith. I thought most obituaries of Russert did a good job of including religion in their tributes. Let’s look at some of the accounts of Snow’s death.
Earlier in the week I lamented the poor coverage of that Florida college student’s Communion protest. In the comments, reader Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz noted that the story was continuing in Minnesota:
Sadly, this is the kind of story that Washington Post readers see on a fairly regular basis — a long, detailed daily report on a funeral that symbolizes a crisis in an urban or, increasingly, suburban community hit by violent crime.I read this story yesterday as I rode back to Baltimore on the commuter train. I thought that it was going to be yet another example of a story that was set in a church, built around the words of the preacher, yet never really allowed the readers to go to church, if you catch my meaning.
