Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
In a recent post looking at how the media cover the debate surrounding same-sex marriage, commenter Michael had some intriguing thoughts about why the mainstream media struggle to cover opposition to same-sex marriage. he said that the press needs to do a better job of explaining opponents’ view that society would suffer if same-sex marriage were to be sanctioned.
Some stories don’t get religion because they lack necessary details. Of course, few stories can get at the whole truth. But too many stories about religion are bland and unedifying.
I took a couple of weeks off from writing about the mainstream media’s overt advocacy for same-sex marriage in California. I was hoping that we’d see a bit more balance in the coverage. Alas, no. I don’t think journalists are even trying. Take, for instance, this Washington Post story from Ashley Surdin. Here’s her angle:
When Texas judge issued an order Monday allowing the parents in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to begin picking up their children, I noticed that the CNN headline was:
So I’m reading Washington Post reporter Rob Stein’s article on the latest frightening report to come from the Centers for Disease Control and Research. The latest report is that efforts to get teenagers to delay sex and use condoms is “faltering.” But by frightening and faltering, they mean that the data suggest we’ve hit something of a plateau after years of improvements.
There’s been something of a trend among a certain subsection of evolutionary anthropologists to explain religion as the product of a gene. Not that there is any evidence of a religion gene, mind you. Heck, not that there’s any evidence that such a gene is possible! But if there was, you see, it could explain Methodists.
Back in March, we criticized some of the stories that came from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that one in four teenage girls had a sexually transmitted disease. Many of the stories were thinly veiled advocacy pieces. They argued that this sad statistic was the result of a national policy of abstinence education.
From time to time, I have been known to use a strange adjective in my posts about conflicts inside the wide, wide world of Roman Catholicism.
One of the biggest problems that your GetReligionistas face week after week can be stated this way: We know that many problems on the religion beat would vanish if reporters had more time to write and were given longer story lengths.
