Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Call me a dinosaur. While I don’t blink an eye anymore at sanctuary screens and televisions in the parish house, I’m still not convinced that cell phones and computers in the sanctuary aren’t a huge distraction, another manifestation of our ADHD society gone techno-nuts.
When I was criticizing that awful Washington Post piece about how morally confounding Mark Sanford’s love life is, it just seemed odd to me that no media outlet has really explained the Christian view of love. For being a country that is majority Christian, it’s shocking how little we read about some of the basic tenets of the theology.
If you run a Google News search for “Michael Jackson” and “idol,” you’ll get tens of thousands of hits. If you watched any news coverage of the death of MJ, “icon” was the go-to word for describing the King of Pop. Here’s Agence France-Presse, for instance:
The Michael Jackson funeral story continues to loom in the background of the current coverage about his death, while an even more bizarre angle about the future of the superstar’s body has emerged over in Germany.
It will take time for mainstream reporters to find the thread that connects the young Michael Jackson, going door to door as a Jehovah’s Witness missionary, to the otherwordly middle-aged man who, after two decades of personal crisis, allegedly converted to Islam, like his brother Jermaine.
Time.com has published a short, brilliant report on Iran’s tensions by an anonymous writer whom it identifies both as “a Time reporter in Tehran” and “a resident of the capital.” The basic facts of the story are simple. In an effort to keep Iranians at home, rather than marching in the streets, the besieged theocracy has turned to a 21st-century version of bread and circuses: Broadcast plenty of movies.
Reader’s Digest announced in November 2008 that it will work with evangelical pastor Rick Warren to produce a new magazine and a “Facebook for Christians” platform. In a report heavy with ideology, Stephanie Clifford of The New York Times treats the Warren deal, and a staff meeting at the corporate headquarters, as evidence that the company is turning more conservative:
When Lenny Kravitz says he has been celibate for a time, whether it’s four months or (now) four years, a measured skepticism may be in order. Reporter Chris Heath brings that skepticism, however briefly, to a 5,500-word profile of Kravitz for the Telegraph.
Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi had a solid story about a new PBS ban on religious programming. Basically the board decided to forbid member stations from airing new religious programs but permitted those that already carry “sectarian” shows to continue to do so. It was a compromise from a proposed ban on all religious programming such as local church services or religious lectures.
