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Maybe it’s the fact that I was raised as a Southern Baptist preacher’s son, but I have never been very comfortable with the “F word.” No, not “Fundamentalist.” The other one.
While this may seem out of place on a God-beat blog, let me call attention to a new study released by the human-rights think tank Freedom House. It’s called “Freedom of the Press 2004: A Global Survey of Media Independence” and was released to mark the upcoming World Press Freedom Day on May 3.
It is always interesting to see what newpapers do with the counter protestors at abortion-related marches. The rule of thumb at pro-abortion-rights marches is that reporters lock in on the strangest anti-abortion activists they can find. The standard picture is of a row of screaming men in hard hats or, perhaps, a silent line of appropriately dressed priests and pastors.
One of the most interesting news angles in the coverage leading up to yesterday’s pro-abortion-rights march in Washington, D.C., concerned the Rev. Ignacio Castuera, the United Methodist pastor who is now the official chaplain to Planned Parenthood. In a Q&A interview with the Dallas Morning News, Castuera stated openly what many oldline Protestant leaders say behind the scenes. They believe they can make a spiritual case for the “choice” options in the sexual revolution. Why is that?
A friend of this blog, columnist Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News, has quietly raised an important issue over at the paper’s editorial page blog.
Anyone who writes in the New York Times editorial pages with the label “conservative” stamped on his forhead is going to take his lumps, even if he is the culturally progressive kind of conservative (pro-abortion rights, pro-gay rights) who would be welcomed in such a heady locale. So it’s no surprise that lots of folks are taking closer looks at David Brooks these days. This tends to happen when one betrays his class, even to a tiny degree.
Kelly McBride has a thought-provoking essay up in the Ethics Journal at www.Poynter.org dissecting the case of the lesbian journalists at the San Francisco Chronicle who were removed from major roles in coverage of the ongoing same-sex marriage story after they got married.
