Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
So, are we getting close to increased mainstream media coverage of (a) the content of Florida Gator superstar Tim Tebow’s faith, (b) the impact of that faith on how people (including reporters) perceive him and (c) the impact of that perception on, oh, his chances to receive another Heisman Trophy?
You’ve heard of religion reporters becoming atheists. And you’ve heard of religion reporters becoming agnostic. But have you heard of religion reporters becoming pastors?
After Barack Obama moved into the White House he needed to find a dog and a church. The search for a dog ended in April with Bo, a Portuguese Water Dog. But whatever happened to the church search? And who would become the president’s pastor after he split with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright last spring?
When it comes to God, Oprah Winfrey and Dallas — the city that many consider the evangelical capital of America — I am sure of two things.
When late-term abortion doctor George Tiller was killed in May, the mainstream media covered the issue extensively. There were front-page stories for days and the major papers ran pieces discussing what the murder meant for the abortion rights movement, what types of pregnancies women end late, and whether the pro-life movement bore responsibility for the death.
I’m not sure GetReligion has ever highlighted a gap in religious coverage before. But I think I’ve find just the occasion. And my blind hope is that the reasoning behind this omission was a collective decision to ignore the problem — in this case, Jon Gosselin, the former co-star of “Jon & Kate Plus 8″ and a fallen hero for American evangelicals — and pray he will just go away.
When I first saw the painting here by Jon McNaughton, I thought it was one of the best distillations of civil religion I’d seen. While most American civil religion focuses on generic Jewish and Christian themes, I wondered if this painting didn’t reference some particularly Mormon doctrine.
Whenever I read in-depth coverage of disaster stories, I always remember something that the late Peter Jennings of ABC News once told me. For Jennings, disaster stories almost always served as perfect examples of how mainstream journalists fail to “get” the role that religion plays in ordinary life or ordinary people.
You remember Bishop Raymond Lahey don’t you, the Catholic bishop who was caught in a Canadian airport security line with very naughty materials on his laptop computer?
