Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
For this week’s Crossroads, host Todd Wilken and I talked about media coverage of tragedy involving baseball star Josh Hamilton and about news reports on the impact of Illinois’ new civil-unions law on faith-based adoption and foster care services.
It was a simple little headline, dashed off for one of our “Got news?” posts, which is the catchphrase that we use when we see religion-beat stories that intrigue us, but have yet to make an appearance in the mainstream press (or have been downplayed, for some strange reason).
In most of our recent posts about coverage of the Womenpriests movement, such as this piece by the Divine Ms. MZ Hemingway, we have ended up discussing how journalists often struggle to grasp basic historical facts about the Roman Catholic priesthood. In particular, journalists just can’t seem to realize that the Church of Rome is a voluntary association and that to be a priest in this body one must, first and foremost, be in Communion with the pope of Rome and the bishops of that Communion.
It’s no secret that GOP leading candidate Mitt Romney is Mormon, and reporters appear so enamored with his faith that they forget to cover the other candidates’ religious affiliations.
In the latest Crossroads, I discuss with host Todd Wilken the media coverage of hypocrisy, the murder of a Pakistani journalist and virginity checks in Egypt.
For this week’s Crossroads podcast, we talked a bit about media coverage of the group claiming the rapture is looming, as well as that surprisingly sad story about former governor Jim McGreevey and the abominable coverage of a Mass intention for Osama bin Laden. Host Todd Wilken threw me by asking for my thoughts about Matt Drudge. I defended news aggregators but cautioned that news consumers must be more cautious and skeptical while reading links.
First of all, my apologies that this Crossroads podcast is arriving several days late. You see, some key members of your GetReligionista team have spend quite a bit of time on airplanes in the past week or so heading hither and yon (seeing snow on the ground as I went through the Denver airport really brought back some high-altitude memories for me).
Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! On Crossroads this week, we discussed media coverage of the burial of Osama bin Laden as well as coverage of the Royal Wedding. During the podcast, I noted that there had been much excellent journalism this week and that some errors are bound to creep in. What’s important, I think, is to get the story right as quickly as possible.
