Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Regular GetReligion readers know all about our M.O. on this blog. Our goal is to pick away at the errors that regularly mar mainstream coverage of religion news, while paying special attention to stories that are haunted by “ghosts,” which we define as major religious issues or themes in stories that journalists have missed or mangled (or both).
I was really hoping to avoid another Clinton-Mezvinsky-wedding story after Monday’s discussion of the poor coverage of the Jewish traditions included in the ceremony. Really hoping. It just feels a bit too paparazzo for me.
So when it comes to Bible Belt religiosity, is the unique glass that is the city of Asheville, N.C., half empty or half full?
You’d hope that with all the navel gazing (live blogging!?) that led up to Chelsea Clinton’s marriage to Marc Mezvinsky — with all the speculation about the role of religion in the wedding of the Methodist former first daughter to a Jew from a powerful stock — that someone would have cared to provide a little nuance to the different religious imagery that made appearances in their no-luxury-spared ceremony Saturday.
You can oppose something and still think it shouldn’t be opposed by the government. Many people seem to have trouble with this distinction and its corollaries. The media tend to have trouble with this distinction because many journalists consider the provoking of government action as a good metric of success for their rabblerousing or reporting. But it’s true — you can oppose things and still think they should be legal.
Standing in a gift shop line at the Memphis International Airport on Friday, I spotted a familiar face, one I hadn’t seen in a while. There he was right in front of me — the Rev. Al Sharpton. Not in person, mind you, but staring at me from the cover of Newsweek magazine.
This Time cover has led to much consternation on the internet. Most of the outrage isn’t over the image but, rather, the headline. Still, the image itself is shocking. It depicts Aisha, an 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by the Taliban to have her nose and ears cut off after she fled her abusive in-laws. Time managing editor Richard Stengel explained his decision to run the image:
As I have mentioned many times in GetReligion posts, the Baltimore Sun is the newspaper that lands in my front yard every morning (I get the Washington Post at work) and, as you would expect, the former copy desk man in me has learned a few things about my local newspaper.
