Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
I have heard one question over and over in the past three or four days: “What do you think of the Washington Post Magazine story about the whole uproar in the Orthodox Church in America about Metropolitan JONAH?” Or words to that effect.
In this week’s Crossroads podcast we discuss media coverage of Newt Gingrich’s comments on the importance of forgiveness to him. We also discussed the ethics of James O’Keefe’s NPR sting.
I’m in Jerusalem at the moment, on an Act for Israel media fellowship. Sunday was our first day of activity and it was utterly exhausting. We began with a visit to Yad Vashem, the site for Holocaust remembrance.
Journalists often agonize over a lead/lede, looking for something snappy and attention-grabbing to get people into the story. Sometimes, though, bloggers/aggregators get a bit too cute trying to add a little quip to the intro of a story. Take this example from Slatest’s summary of the Dalai Lama’s recent announcement:
When Mitt Romney ran for president in 2008, his Mormon faith and the extent of its cultural and political acceptance generated quite a lot of ink. So now that former Utah Gov. and Chinese Ambassador Jon Huntsman is also considering throwing his hat in the ring, the possibility of two credible Mormon presidential candidates could create a veritable LDSapalooza.
If you are a regular reader of the Washington Post, you have grown used to seeing carbon copies of the same column day after day on the op-ed page. This column starts like this, care of Eugene Robinson:
David Brody over at Christian Broadcasting Network News interviewed Newt Gingrich and got him to open up a bit about his faith. It’s an interesting interview, as Brody interviews tend to be, and you can read the excerpts or watch the video here.
One of the GetReligion posts I’ve had in my guilt file for weeks is a look at the ethics of undercover journalism. Following the stings of various Planned Parenthood offices, where undercover journalists exposed employees willing to break rules and laws in order to help an underage sex ring, a lively debate broke out among pro-lifers. Some defended the morality of the undercover journalism while others said that lying can’t be defended, even if it does expose wrongdoing.
A reader pointed us to this piece in the Canton Repository by Charita Goshay headlined “Clergy debate over Planned Parenthood shows no signs of abating.” OK, a journalistic debate sounds promising. Until you read it and see that the reporter managed to locate clergy on only one side of the story. And that side, you will be stunned to know, is the side that sees no problems with Planned Parenthood or the services it provides, including abortion.
