Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Last September, as New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera established himself as baseball’s all-time leader in career saves, a New York Daily News writer lamented that the media ignored a key part of what drove Rivera to greatness â his faith in God.
Back in the days when I was a full-time religion reporter (soon after the cooling of the earth’s crust), the annual event that pulled the most religion writers into the same zip code was the annual slugfest between the left and right wings of the Southern Baptist Convention. This was especially true in the years before the conservatives firmly took control, back when one hold-up-your-red-cards vote to name a convention president could literally determine who appointed the trustees that ran the whole shooting match.
You know it’s election season when reporters start to take note of evangelicals a bit more than usual.
Let’s face it, gentle readers, if I am going to be corrected — something that happens to all of us from time to time — it really helps to be corrected by one of the best in the business. I am referring to Pamela Constable of the foreign desk at The Washington Post.
Anyone who has been following the news in recent days has almost certainly read numerous stories about the remarkable blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng and his dark-of-night escape from house arrest.
NPR has launched a series of stories on losing faith, and Godbeat pro Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s piece on an atheist pastor gripped me from the beginning:
You would think major media outlets might have someone focused on philanthropy, a reporter who can read 990s and spot new trends. Instead, The New York Times eliminated the philanthropy beat, one of the last daily newspapers to employ a full-time reporter to cover national nonprofits, according to a piece in the Chronicle of Philanthrophy.
I have been waiting for someone to write a story about George Zimmerman and his family and it’s religious background ever since I saw a passing reference to him being a former altar boy.
The question over employee-provided contraception has offered reporters many possible religion and health care angles, offering at least the concept that the two issues can sometimes collide.
