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Here in Beltway land, people are still buzzing a bit about the whole Tea Bag and Talk Radio festival — to use the most common mainstream media images — that drew tens of thousands (police no longer give specific estimates in this cautious age) of protesters to the National Mall.
Few issues in newspaper style have created as much controversy as the question of what to call the two sides in the culture wars over abortion. As I understand the style that has evolved, newspapers that seek balanced, fair coverage of the two sides have two solid options.
It’s an opinion piece, not a news article, but some of you might be interested in something I wrote for the Wall Street Journal‘s Houses of Worship column yesterday. I took a look at how President Barack Obama’s faith-based initiative office compares with Bush’s. After reminiscing about some of the warnings that Bush’s office was leading the country to a theocratic form of government, I wrote:
I am sorry to be returning to this topic — the missing voices of the pro-life left — so quickly. However, there’s no way around it at the moment.
David Brooks’ Sept. 8 New York Times column hailed the arrival of National Affairs, a new quarterly magazine that seeks to occupy the same area of the public square vacated by The Public Interest (which closed in 2005): “the bloody crossroads where social science and public policy meet matters of morality, culture and virtue.”
At this point, I think it’s safe to say that the Republicans (“You lie!“) are pretty much irrelevant when it comes to debates about health-care reform.
As my colleague Mollie recently commented, journalists often write stories that analyze happenings in a particular context: winning and losing. Who is climbing up the greasy pole and who is sliding down? Because some find this aspect of a writer’s art fascinating (the closer they live to D.C. or state capitols or New York City, the stronger the temptation to obsess) they sometimes ignore theologicals or doctrinal perspectives in favor of the current catfight.
I feel a bit like a sandbagger when I critique religion stories reported by network and cable news. Fish in a barrel. It’s just one step above criticizing the editorial strength of a college newspaper — and a rung below the college paper I worked for.
I completely understand why many mainstream journalists get frustrated when they try to write — in a fair and accurate manner — about the political force that is usually called the Religious Right.
