Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Don’t you just love it when Congress holds hearings on a complex topic — think the state of family farming — and the powers that be call a famous actress as a witness because, in a movie, she played a woman whose farm is in trouble?
We had a lively discussion the other day (click here to go to the comments) about the post in which I offered my take on the annual Religion Newswriters Association poll that names the top religion news stories — note, “stories” — of the previous year.
GetReligion was launched around the idea of ghosts — religious aspects to stories that went unexplained or ignored. Sometimes those ghosts are very straightforward. Sometimes they’re more about subtext and nuance. In this week’s Crossroads podcast, we discuss some of the lingering ghosts surrounding that provocative New York Times celebration of a marriage built on the failure of two previous marriages.
My sense is that reporters often look to religion when covering people who are against abortion. It might seem obvious, since people do often cite their underlying religious beliefs as their reason for opposition. Though when reporters explore why people do provide abortions, religion suddenly disappears from consideration.
So is everyone tired of reading GetReligion posts about those tired labels that journalists keep using in their coverage of the Catholic Church?
Last week I highlighted some of the coverage of the jury that deliberated the death penalty for convicted murderer Steven Hayes. Many media reports did a good job quoting the jurors and affected family members even when those quotes included religious language.
As you would expect, there was a wave — totally justified — of press coverage of the major speech that was delivered by President Barack Obama during his return to Jakarta, Indonesia, a city that he called home as a child. To read the speech text, click here.
