Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
One of the most important things for reporters to do when covering a new study is to read the study and the supporting documents. There was a particularly good recent example of what happens when reporters don’t do that.
I realize that, at this point, the word “meditation” has evolved into a term that is used to describe cool things that cool people do instead of doing uncool things that journalists might think of as prayer. Perhaps we need an entry in the Associated Press Stylebook that states this clearly.
It’s been almost a month since a reader sent in a discussion of the use of scare quotes in the San Diego Jewish World by Dan Bloom. He says that his correspondents call them other things, such as “sneer quotes,” “horror quotes,” “air quotes” and “quote-unquote quotes.” And Jon Stewart calls them something that is not family friendly at all.
Back in December, I highlighted a story about how scientists really don’t like the terminology of “God particle” to describe a theoretical subatomic particle called the Higgs boson. But the battle seems to be lost and reporters know that “God particle” is so much sexier than Higgs boson. Last week physicists in Switzerland said they would soon prove the particleâs existence and we saw another round of stories using the terminology.
It would be hard to find a subject that would be rank much higher than natural family planning on the religion-news beat’s “high degree of difficulty” list. As if that were not enough, I would assume that editors at The Denver Post assigned the following story because of the current tsunami of coverage about You. Know. What.
The question over employee-provided contraception has offered reporters many possible religion and health care angles, offering at least the concept that the two issues can sometimes collide.
The New York Post usually wins the award for best worst headline amongst the New York metropolitan papers. “Headless body in topless bar” remains my favorite.
