OK, I have some questions after reading the mainstream news coverage of the funeral rites for Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Goose-stepping Solzhenitsyn rites?
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Quantifying religion news
We never run out of stories to analyze here, but election years seem produce even more media coverage of religion than normal. Considering mainstream media’s trouble with getting religion, I am confident the religion beat would be doomed if not for the media’s great love of politics and the prominent role that religion plays in political fortunes.
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Not getting Casey Democrats
John M. Broder of The New York Times wrote that Barack Obama’s campaign is likely to give a speaking slot at the Democratic convention later this month to Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, Jr., whose late father was famously denied the privilege:
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Bush's worship plans in China
The media is starting to cover the ironies and excitement of President Bush’s visit to China for the 2008 Olympics. The New York Times has already appropriately played up the fact that Bush attempted to go to worship at a house church but was denied by the Chinese government.
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A Cardinal in full -- well, almost
As I wrote a few months ago, I appreciate any serious newspaper profile of the local Catholic bishop or cardinal. Not to bash my hometown press unnecessarily, but I don’t remember the Bay Area media in the 1980s or ’90s ever doing so. And this in a region where not too long ago, the San Francisco bishop could name the city’s police chief or captain of the fire department.
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Mixed Karadzic messages, again
As you would expect, I am still following the coverage of the Radovan Karadzic case, still looking to see if anyone is going to provide on-the-record information to back up all of those charges that the world’s most infamous war criminal had, at some point, been hiding in Orthodox churches or monasteries.
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Journalists ignore life's beginnings
Two major newspapers published front-page stories yesterday about a proposed Bush Administration rule that would seek to protect health-care workers to not provide abortions, or contraceptive devices they regard as tantamount to abortion. The proposal would deny federal funding to any hospital, clinic, health plan, or other entity that does not give employees a right to refuse to participate on conscience grounds.
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Define "evangelical" (again and again)
Most of this week, I am swamped with classroom work for the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life, which is holding a seminar in Washington, D.C.. So I have had very little time for reading newspapers and blogging.
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Texas high court tosses exorcism lawsuit
The newspaper coverage of the Texas Supreme Court’s ruling that tossed out a lawsuit against a Pentecostal church over an incident that resulted in a 17-year-old girl being held down on the floor of the church has been more than solid. The two articles from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram have been a model in careful use of religious language and balance.
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