Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
My Google News religion search included an interesting headline for a Los Angeles Times story: “Obama, family spend Christmas at vacation home, forgo church services.” But when I linked on the story, the actual headline was “Obama visits Hawaiian base.”
For one angle in the brouhaha surrounding Rick Warren’s slated Inauguration prayer, blogs did most of the heavy lifting. Thanks to Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News & World Report, Christina Hoag of The Associated Press and Alex Koppelman of Salon for mentioning, in varying levels of detail, that Warren and rock singer Melissa Etheridge met each other at an event sponsored by the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
The most important thing to remember about the late Paul M. Weyrich is that he was a moral and cultural conservative, first, and a Republican, way, way second. In fact, there were plenty of people who decided that he wasn’t — when push came to shove — a Republican loyalist at all.
GetReligion has offered few sympathetic words for Sally Quinn or for On Faith, the religion blog that she founded with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham. As many readers will remember, Quinn identified herself as an atheist until Meacham challenged her assertion.
News of a second video showing a Planned Parenthood of Indiana counselor providing advice that could violate state criminal statutes was enough to prompt The Indianapolis Star to provide front-page coverage Wednesday. The second video, released Tuesday, shows an individual posing as a 13-year-old telling Planned Parenthood staffers that she was pregnant by her 31-year-old boyfriend.
The Washington Post covered a new Bush administration rule that protects the conscience rights of health care workers. Or, as the Washington Post scare quotes it, “right of conscience.”
Believe it or not, I don’t have a whole lot to say about the mini-media flap about President-elect Barack Obama’s decision to ask his best evangelical buddy, that would be the Rev. Rick Warren, to offer the invocation on Jan. 20. Just imagine what the coverage will be like if Warren utters the J-word or prays that American will work for justice for all, born and unborn or something like that.
So much for any significant coverage of the country’s first Muslim member of Congress and one of the more significant acts he’ll perform relating to his religion. Granted, Congressman Keith Ellison’s trip to Mecca for this year’s Hajj is not a public act in the sense that he traveled on his own dime and it relates to his personal spiritual life. But the act is public in the sense that it is a, well, public act of traveling.
