Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
It seems that if reporters don’t know much else about Roman Catholics, they should know something of what they believe about the Eucharist. Catholic belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist has various supporting dogmas, including Transubstantiation and the Permanence of Presence and the Adorableness of the Eucharist.
Several days ago, two MSM reporters described Barack Obama as a centrist on the abortion issue, or at least wrote that his position differed from that of liberal pro-choice activists. Their news hook was an interview that Obama gave to a magazine aimed at young evangelicals.
In the many news articles on the death of former North Carolina Republican Senator Jesse Helms, little is said outright of the social conservative politician’s religious faith. There are certainly hints of it, but even in the Baptist senator‘s home state newspapers, most reporters failed to mention anything of note regarding religion.
Religion is one of the specialty beats in the modern newsroom where knowledge and experience can really pay off. There are times when it really helps to have seen the same kinds of stories develop over and over again, which allows you a chance to look further down the road and anticipate what might happen.
Somehow I missed the odd reference to some guy named “Bill Graham” in The New York Times article on Obama’s desire to expand the role of religious groups in combating the nation’s social problems. Thankfully, the blog Between Two Worlds picked up the reference:
Man, I missed Stephanie Simon. She’s the superhuman religion reporter who left the Los Angeles Times in April for the Wall Street Journal. These last few months of California-heavy coverage without her ace reporting have been difficult to endure. I missed her so much that I just randomly Googled her name . . . and found a fantastic story that ran last week in the Journal. I have no idea how I missed this huge Page One story with tons of graphics. (If that link does not work, try this reprint from the Denver Post.) It’s vintage Simon — she reports the heck out of her pieces, gives them a compelling angle, and writes beautifully.
In his famous essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell criticized modern writers for all manners of sins, not the least of which were a lack of detail and specificity. He cited a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes: “I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong …” Then he translated it in modern English: “Objective consideration of temporary phenomena compels the conclusion …”
To the surprise of few, presumed 2008 Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama announced that he plans to out-do Bush in integrating faith-based programs on the federal level. What surprised some, at least initially, was an inaccurate report from the Associated Press that said that Obama’s plan would support religious organizations’ ability to hire and fire based on faith.
One of the most important decisions made in a newsroom is story selection. The editors of the New York Times Sunday Magazine made a very interesting decision in choosing to run a lengthy story about the demographic collapse of Europe. Reporter Russell Shorto, whose work we’ve looked at before, examines various explanations for the low birth rates in Europe in his piece titled “No Babies?”
