Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
OK, so Religion News Service has a provocative story on a provocative study that I’ve seen in a few papers. But the headlines that are running with the story are curious, to say the least.
If there is a list of GetReligion’s deadly journalism sins that affect religion coverage, one of the top items has to be this one: Don’t play the God card unless you intend to follow through and offer the reader some facts about the actual role that faith played in the story.
We had an interesting discussion the other day in the comments pages after my post about coverage of the decision by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to approve the ordination of noncelibate gays, lesbians and bisexuals (and potentially cohabitating straights, as well). The discussion focused on the old, old, old Godbeat term “mainline Protestantism.”
A few weeks ago we looked at a public relations campaign — and how it was covered — by the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Miami. Now, private confession and absolution is a serious thing among certain religious adherents. My Lutheran pastor offered extra hours for confession during Lent and even more during Holy Week so we could avail ourselves of the opportunity. This is a regular part of worship life for many of us but is widely ignored by many mainstream media.
An excellent Kansas City Star news story puts a new twist on the old saying that “if it bleeds, it leads.”
The Templeton Foundation gave its annual million-Euro prize this week, and The Guardian‘s science correspondent Ian Sample focused on the religion and science combo more than anything else, even though its recipient says “I’ve got no religious beliefs at all.”
The Wall Street Journal had a fascinating feature from Afghanistan last September headlined “A Chaplain and an Atheist Go to War.” The top of the story:
My family and I watch Jeopardy every night. This week we got to watch IBM computer Watson beat the pants off of two human competitors. It was great fun and a good way to learn more about advancements in computer science. One big limitation with computers is their inability to interact with human language. The engineers behind Watson aimed to improve just that.
Every now and then, GetReligion runs a post that allows readers to comment about their personal beliefs while also addressing core journalism issues. That doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes you can do both.
