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Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s speech on Father’s Day about the importance of fatherhood is drawing praise from some surprising quarters that the day-after stories struggled to pick-up on. The New York Times rightly focused on the impact the speech had on the African-American community, but this speech is having effects in other communities as well.
Of the many stories dealing with same-sex marriage in California, one San Francisco Chronicle story in particular deserves a look. Headlined “Bay Area churches opened door to same-sex vows,” the reporter skims the surface of the history of same-sex rites in Christian churches and managed to get the attention of more than a few GetReligion readers in the process:
Same sex marriages will be performed in California beginning on Tuesday. In fact, some will take place tonight. And the media are pretty giddy about it. What’s happening is very important and very historic, so the amount of coverage is proper. Less proper is the complete lack of balance in stories this past week.
Tim Russert, moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, died yesterday at the age of 58. The news shook the media establishment. Sunday morning’s Meet the Press is basically required viewing in Washington. Russert always had Washington’s most powerful guests and they routinely subjected themselves to his probing. I particularly liked that he would remind guests of past statements that contradicted their current positions. He helpfully displayed those statements on screen to force the guest to respond. Media figures are rarely loved by so many across the political establishment. Russert was generally regarded as fair and decent, two traits that are not typically the first to come to mind when describing the average newsman.
On Monday, I criticized a Los Angeles Times story for failing to provide essential details to readers. Today, I criticize a Washington Times column for … failing to provide essential details to readers.
Those who are not deep into the comments thread on the Rick Warren post will want to note this development.
We get our share of interesting comments here at this weblog and we also get lots of straw-man sermons that have nothing to do with religion-news coverage. And from time to time we hear from the reporters, editors and religious leaders involved in the actual coverage.
The other day, Mollie criticized The Washington Post for running a one-sided story about gay marriage in California. Today I say that there is more than one way to be one sided. Consider this Newsweek story from Lisa Miller:
