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A significant story is brewing in California as diverse groups of people with clashing social values conflict with the American promises of religious freedom and tolerance. The themes of the stories are filled with religious values and terminology, but some news articles are not quite as precise or as informative as they could be.
Jacqueline L. Salmon of The Washington Post wrote what I consider a very regrettable story about Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl. Salmon’s mini-profile of Wuerl, written in preparation for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit, was shallow and unfair, the sort of story that the Archbishop detests and rightly so.
Here we go again. I do not want to revisit this topic so soon, but I have no other choice. Reporters this year are still missing a big story: the marginal status of pro-lifers in the Democratic Party.
It must be very difficult to maintain any sense of journalistic objectivity while writing about a family’s religious beliefs when it is almost certain that those beliefs are linked to the death of a child.
It is my strong belief that one of the hardest jobs in all of journalism is writing an obituary that — in order to cover the basic facts in a person’s life — has to deal with some controversial issues.
Neela Banerjee of The New York Times wrote about pro-choice couples who, with the help of perinatal hospital programs, decide not to abort an unborn child with a likely fatal condition. Her story was like few others that I have read. (Hat tip to GR reader Jerry.)
Sometimes a news story should mention the absence of an issue if only to calm the passions of the readers so more important issues can become the focus of the response to the story. Over in my old stomping grounds dubbed the Quad Cities, the region’s two local newspapers have jumped on a fascinating legal story that has a man with an extensive and violent criminal record agreeing to attend church as part of a probation sentence.
Today is Good Friday, the day when Christians commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus. It appears we made it through Holy Week without any media debunking of Jesus’ miracles. Maybe they got it out of their system with the whole Seven Deadly Sins silliness.
Once upon a time, reporters investigated the abortion industry. In 1978, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a week’s worth of stories about unsafe conditions at local clinics. Two reporters and several representatives from the Better Government Association posed undercover. The result: two clinics closed down, a doctor’s medical license was revoked, and a governor’s task force about the clinics’ practices was appointed.
