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This weekend, President Obama gave a First Amendment defense of the proposed mosque near Ground Zero. The next day he made a point of noting that he wasn’t addressing the “wisdom” of building a mosque at the site. One of those two statements probably angered most people but I appreciate his comments and that distinction — noting that there are two discussions going on right now.
GetReligion reader Duane Shank, a Mennonite who grew up in Lancaster County, Pa., passed along a link to a front-page Philadelphia Inquirer story on the Mennonite tradition of service.
Few would disagree that the debate over same-sex marriage is more charged than usual. Charges of bad faith and bigotry abound. Honest reporting can help cooler heads prevail. Many of the arguments in this debate have been badly mangled, and that’s why I was so pleased to see this Religion News Service piece by Daniel Burke on “Why Prop 8 ruling scares religious conservatives.”
Readers here at GetReligion aren’t surprised to hear about the troubles that some religious groups have when attempting to build new or expanded worship sites. In recent years, we’ve seen stories about attempts to thwart construction or religious practice for Hindus, Orthodox Jews, Pagans, Mormons, Muslims and even charismatic Anglicans.
We could probably spend weeks looking at the media coverage of the mosque proposed to be built near Ground Zero. One of the things I find so interesting about this story is how so much of the reporting on the mosque and its backers is being done by non-traditional media. And many of the mainstream reports seem less interested in that aspect of the story than looking at the opposition to the mosque. It creates a weird media climate where the best news and analysis comes from blogs and pundits and, well, the worst treatment and analysis comes from blogs and pundits.
Well, the battle over same-sex marriage is right where everyone expected it to be at this point. As the New York Times analysis noted, it’s pretty clear that Judge Vaughn R. Walker’s opinion was written to an audience of one.
In a move surprising precisely no one who followed his handling of the case, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker overturned California’s Proposition 8. Something tells me we’ll be looking at media coverage of this story for a while. I’m reading the 138-page ruling now but it will take me a while to get through. Imagine being a reporter on deadline who needs to get a story up as quickly as possible. I may have never said this before when it comes to coverage of Proposition 8 but the Los Angeles Times actually got a lot done in a short period of time, I think. That may be because they had to keep the analysis to a minimum and just get a quick take on the facts out:
