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The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America is having it’s biennial convention this week and we’re seeing coverage about the most politically exciting topic that will be debated — homosexuality.
Some days, posting for GetReligion requires a great deal of work to explain some theological nuance that a reporter failed to understand. Other days, the work is downright easy. As is the case with pointing out the bias and problems in this hacktastic Associated Press piece on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
When a story’s headline is as ambitious as “Why Newt Gingrich Converted to Catholicism,” a reader might hope for a meaty report that addresses the question with insights from friends rather than with speculation. Amy Sullivan’s report for Time mostly does not deliver, except for a few good quotations from the convert himself and from his third wife, Callista.
I continue to be amazed at the degree to which the debates about health-care reform keep cycling back to issues of money and, let’s face it, religion.
About a year ago, a coalition of pro-life groups began a global effort to lower the percentage of unborn children who are aborted because they have been diagnosed as having Down syndrome. That statistic is believed to be about 90 percent, in large part because of parental fear the burden of raising a flawed or imperfect child.
Earlier today we looked at some of the mainstream media reports of the American Psychological Association’s resolution on treatment for those dealing with same-sex attraction. The Wall Street Journal took a completely different approach than almost every other report out there. Religion reporter Stephanie Simon writes on a new therapy for people whose faith and sexual identity are in conflict and how the APA changed its treatment guidelines to allow counselors to help clients reject their same-sex attraction. It was certainly different than the headlines over most of the AP reports. Here’s how she began:
Josh Levin, senior editor of Slate, wrote an epic series this week on the theme “The End of America.” The series begins here, and rolls on in eight segments and about 23,000 words. That’s not counting Slate’s embedded notes and thousands more words in The Fray. Slate also offered discussions on Facebook and Twitter, so the most obsessive readers easily could have devoted an entire week to debating Levin’s reporting.
We’ve been critical of some of the coverage of health care legislation in recent weeks. But here’s a straightforward Associated Press piece that does a solid job of laying out the issues. From the beginning of the article:
I meant to highlight this good example of skepticism last week by USA Today‘s Cathy Grossman. It all comes out of an interesting study showing that states with more Catholics tend to favor expanded rights for homosexuals. Grossman highlights the finding and discusses a bit of it in context:
