Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Johann Hari, who made news earlier this month with his interview of Tony Blair, has written a 5,000-word profile of Andrew Sullivan for Intelligent Life, a magazine published by The Economist. The story is filled with glowing praise and unquestioning assertions of Sullivan’s crucial importance:
Can you believe it was seven years ago that Attorney General John Ashcroft was outed for covering up the statues of the naked ladies in the Department of Justice building? He apparently didn’t like being photographed in front of the statues (representing “The Spirit of Justice”) when he gave speeches and press conferences. It was major news and, as a result, fodder for weeks of late night talk show jokes.
This is Holy Week in the ancient Orthodox churches of the East, which means that today is Good Friday and, just before midnight on Saturday, we will begin the lengthy and glorious rites of Pascha, which is called Easter in the West. This is our feast of feasts and follows and lengthy march through 40 or so unique services of preparation.
An interesting questions that my students keep asking about Internet journalism is whether information that is printed in online publications — as opposed to ink-on-paper text — is “real.”
When the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that marriage should be redefined to include same-sex couples, many media reports quoted people saying Iowa seemed an unlikely candidate for such a radical change to marriage law. Certainly Iowans never would have voted in support of such a change to their laws. But even though the decision is weeks old, media outlets have been strikingly incurious as to how gay rights activists managed this tremendous coup. One might imagine that if social conservatives had managed to, say, outlaw abortion on demand, the media might have been a tad more interested in how that political battle had been won.
Yesterday I noted a Detroit Free Press story that referred to a Good Friday Mass at a Catholic church. No Mass is celebrated on Good Friday but the service is called the Mass of the Presanctified. So I sort of gave the reporter a pass, even though it violates Associated Press style guidelines.
Journalism can cause some strange pairings simply because two things happen on the same day. World Series games and natural disasters, for example. Often that means that two disparate events end up in the same newspaper, but that doesn’t mean they should be in the same story.
So often I read a story about some newsmaker and am disappointed when there’s no information about the individual’s religious life. I’ve come to expect that any detail about where, say, heroic pilot Chesley Sullenberger goes to church or doesn’t go to church will be difficult to find — much less any in-depth discussion about what religious or philosophical values may or may not motivate the person.
