Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Analyzing media coverage of sexual abuse is tricky. Any appeals to fairness in how the topic is covered can be interpreted as a defense of the indefensible. Watching media coverage unfold, it’s a bit easier for me to understand how hysteria built around the supposed Some aspects of the recent media coverage of the supposed epidemic of Satanic sexual abuse in day care centers in the 1980s.
Let me take you back to the morning after the election last fall when Maine voters overturned that state’s same-sex marriage law. You’re a veteran newspaper reporter named Larry Grard. You’re a Christian. You work for the Morning Sentinel, part of a chain of papers owned by MaineToday Media. Your company editorialized in support of same-sex marriage, but you disagree.
If you read a daily newspaper somewhere in the United States, other than New York City, and you care deeply about the latest wave of clergy sex abuse cases in the Catholic Church, then you may have spotted the following Associated Press report about the case of Father Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul of India.
I’m extremely nervous about how the media covers the religious life of presidents. Sometimes I wonder how one of my congregation’s services would be written about in the Washington Post if we had a president worship with us. I suspect it would be difficult for a random reporter to understand the liturgy, the sermon and the context in which they are received.
Last year, Mollie looked at stories about baseball opening games on Good Friday. This year, we have the sacred and secular traditions colliding again as the Red Sox prepare to take on the Yankees on Easter Sunday. As opening day nears, reporters are profiling athletes–some new, some old.
Usually, I keep my compulsion for ’80s pop hits — the music of my youth — under control. This week, though, I’m in Philadelphia on a work-related trip, and my rental car — unlike my family’s minivan — has satellite radio. Satellite radio with an all-’80s station!
One of the biggest holes in religion news coverage is treatment of weekly worship. Regular worship is one of the most common expressions of religious activity. Much more important in the life of the church than, say, politics. But it doesn’t seem to interest reporters terribly much. So I was pleased to see the angle that Washington Post religion reporter William Wan took with his latest: “As Easter nears, priests struggle with how, whether to address church scandals.”
Just when you thought that the relationship between the Vatican and the mainstream press couldn’t get any worse, the powers that be at MSNBC had to grit their teeth and issue a public apology for the fact that a headline — somehow — reached the network’s live website that read, “Pope Describes Touching Boys: I Went Too Far.”
