Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
David Kirkpatrick of The New York Times has one of the better articles out there dealing with the religious right’s reaction to the Foley scandal. While Kirkpatrick follows the style of the Washington Post‘s Alan Cooperman by talking to people he finds to be average evangelical voters, he comes to a completely different conclusion: the Foley Scandal will not affect the evangelical turnout come November.
Some newspapers win Pulitzers through tenacious reporting, excellent prose and productive teamwork. The New York Times, which truly is one of my favorite papers, sometimes wins its Pulitzers by wielding its institutional clout, pulverizing readers with story after story about some expansive issue — seemingly dictated by editorial fiat rather than reader interest.
A few weeks ago, I stumbled across this post at Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire that cited a CNN interview in which President Bush said that history would judge the Iraq war as “just a comma.” He subsequently repeated the statement elsewhere and the good folks at Political Wire suggested that it was code meant for the religious right:
The New York Times‘ public editor, Byron Calame, devoted his last column to the case of Linda Greenhouse. She’s the Supreme Court reporter who in a June speech at Harvard revealed her liberal opinions about various policy issues:
Imagine profiling a moderate Muslim in Copenhagen for the expressed purpose of understanding the life and outlook of a secular Muslim and failing to ask a question about religion. Well, Jeffrey Fleishman’s Los Angeles Times piece on Sunday comes close to accomplishing that feat. Issues of religion come up incidentally as if they were minor matters to be brushed aside in a quest to portray the subject as absolutely secular.
As you would expected, some major newspapers used their Sunday editors to dig deeper on issues linked to the Amish school massacre in Lancaster County, Pa. And, as you would expect, some newspapers did a good job of covering the spiritual issues and others used that old, dependable approach that resembles a National Geographic report on an alien culture.
Apparently GetReligion’s post on the Foley scandal was featured on the front page of Yahoo on Thursday morning, which drew responses from across the political spectrum. For those of you who are new to the blog, note that we are not here to debate faith but to discuss the media’s coverage of faith. Hence our name: GetReligion.
The reporting of ABC News’ Brian Ross has done to conservative Christians what the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal failed to do. He has divided them, and the rest of the mainstream media is having a joyous time covering the aftermath.
