People

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I love you, you love me

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Time‘s latest list of the world’s 100 most influential people is a frustrating exercise. I’ve praised this list before, but that was in a year (2007) when religion attracted 17 references. This year’s list makes me more sympathetic to the argument that Time‘s categories of influential people — Leaders & Revolutionaries, Builders & Titans, Artists & Entertainers, Heroes & Icons and Scientists & Thinkers — make it too easy to ignore spiritual leaders.


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Aiming for accuracy

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Earlier this week, Elizabeth opened a discussion about what standards religion journalism blogs should be held to. Some mainstream reporters insert quite a bit of personal opinion while others retain their journalistic distance. Some use the blogs as a means of unloading information that couldn’t make it into brief stories. Many use a slightly more personal tone.


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The return of Jewish prayer

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As the perceptive people at the blog Jewschool note, the article in Wednesday’s Washington Post on alternative prayer services was smartly done but it did not advance the story much beyond a New York Times article on the same subject in 2007. Here is the lead of the Post story:


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Down and dirty with Peter Priesthood

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Religious persecution tends to make for sensational stories. There’s a lot of human drama, and for better or worse, it’s easy to confirm the worst fears of certain segment of the population that is skeptical of the “organized religion” behemoth. It’s no wonder that journalists pounce on them when they find them.


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Truth is mighty, and it shall prevail (updated)

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Though we’ve looked at a bit of the coverage related to Notre Dame University’s conferral of an honorary degree and speaking slot for President Barack Obama, there’s a lot that we haven’t highlighted. Mostly that’s because the stories are fairly straightforward or just local repetitions of previous stories. The Washington Times reported that, as of Friday, 46 bishops had publicly castigated Notre Dame:


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Speak softly and carry a big recording device

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Back in December, Daniel Pulliam looked at the rather curious lack of coverage pertaining to undercover videos of Planned Parenthood employees providing advice that could violate Indiana criminal statutes. A University of California – Los Angeles student, posing as a 13-year-old impregnated by a 31-year-old boyfriend, had taped Planned Parenthood counselors at two Indiana clinics telling her how to avoid state laws about parental-consent on abortion and the reporting of child sex-abuse.


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