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 wife, Tamie, and I lived together for 15 years and brought three precious babies into the world before we finally went to the county courthouse and got our marriage license in 2005.
So Juan Williams gave a lecture — on the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall — at the University of Maryland School of Law, where he received a standing ovation from a pack of lawyers from Baltimore. That, my friends, is not a Fox News crowd.
Well, NPR’s decision to fire Juan Williams is going over like a lead balloon. NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepherd calls it a “public relations nightmare.” Before we get into some of the news coverage of the firing, one huge thing needs clarification.
Apparently Archbishop Charles Chaput struck a nerve with Mark Silk, professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America.
Surely it’s a comment on the state of things in Washington, D.C., that the mainstream press considered it a big story that President Barack Obama decided to go to church. I mean, he went to church out in public, as opposed to attending a private service at Camp David.
In my 20-year reporting career, I’ve covered wildfires, floods and tornadoes. In 1995, I heard the explosion at the bombed federal building in Oklahoma City and raced that direction. Never, though, had I seen the kind of devastation that followed Hurricane Katrina five years ago.
A frequent and, in my opinion often logical, criticism of this website is that we tend to stretch logic while seeking out the religion “ghosts” that we believe are hidden between the lines in important stories in the mainstream press.
One of my personal — and professional — weaknesses is my short attention span. After reading about 57 stories on the same subject, be it a clergy sex abuse scandal or a fight over where to build a mosque, my eyes glaze over.
