Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
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.
No wonder millions of young, biblically conservative young people no longer want to be known as “evangelicals.” You have to keep asking the question that your GetReligionistas have been asking since the dawn of blogging: What in the world does “evangelical” mean, anyway?The Washington Post ran yet another piece this week that perfectly illustrates that “evangelical” is quickly becoming the new “fundamentalist.”
We have covered more than a few of the mainstream media stories declaring that female priests are being ordained in the Roman Catholic Church. Since the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t ordain females, we usually have a few nits to pick with the coverage.
As faithful GR readers may know, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. My perception of the local media was that it mostly ignored the region’s Catholics bishops, though not liberal theologians or dissidents. I read long features on the theology of Matthew Fox and top-of-the-fold stories about lay Catholics’ alleged opposition to Church teaching. But I can’t ever remember reading a quote-heavy, profile about the local ordinary.
While the news media has been focused on the sensational story of a breakaway Mormon fundamentalist denomination and its practice of polygamous marriage and allegations of child abuse, National Public Radio produced a solid two-part series this week on another significant religious tradition in the United States that allows for polygamy.
While we all watch the Divine Ms. MZ keep jumping into a war zone with her siege of posts defending the American model of the press, please allow me to post a crucial document linked to this debate.
Yesterday I criticized a Los Angeles Times story on same-sex marriage. While the post received tons of comments, very few — very few — managed to stay on topic to the purpose of this blog. Some posters used the comment thread as a forum to argue against same-sex marriage. Many others resorted to calling supporters of traditional marriage bigots.
Last week I criticized a Los Angeles Times story for spinning the results of a poll to make it seem like opposition to same-sex marriage wasn’t significant. Though supporters of traditional marriage had a 19-point margin of victory over those who want to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions, the Times referred to that margin as slim, narrow, “a bit” of a bare majority.
We’ve been jumping on the Los Angeles Times quite a bit in the past week or so, with no apology. Nevertheless, I decided to let another jab wait over the long Memorial Day weekend.
