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Analyzing media coverage of sexual abuse is tricky. Any appeals to fairness in how the topic is covered can be interpreted as a defense of the indefensible. Watching media coverage unfold, it’s a bit easier for me to understand how hysteria built around the supposed Some aspects of the recent media coverage of the supposed epidemic of Satanic sexual abuse in day care centers in the 1980s.
Let me take you back to the morning after the election last fall when Maine voters overturned that state’s same-sex marriage law. You’re a veteran newspaper reporter named Larry Grard. You’re a Christian. You work for the Morning Sentinel, part of a chain of papers owned by MaineToday Media. Your company editorialized in support of same-sex marriage, but you disagree.
With March Madness behind us, reporters have moved on to other bracket-like stories, including the next Supreme Court nominee. As Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens openly discusses his upcoming retirement, reporters play guessing games about candidates in the running.
For Catholics and non-Catholics alike, it’s difficult to read the stories attempting to link Pope Benedict XVI to abuse of children. For our purposes here at GetReligion, I hope that it’s possible to simultaneously condemn the abuse of children that has taken place, to criticize the Vatican’s handling of the problem over the years, and to hope that the media work to cover this story more responsibly than we’ve been seeing.
So after a two-year uptick in 2006 and 2007, the teen birth rate fell in 2008. You might recall that when the teen birth rate went up, many mainstream stories attempted to link the increase to abstinence education.
In the nation’s smallest state, a big controversy is brewing over the keynote speaker for the inauguration ceremony of the new University of Rhode Island president. The reason for the furor: President David M. Dooley has asked a Christian minister to deliver the keynote address at Thursday’s ceremony. The Providence Journal reports that the decision “has triggered a campus-wide discussion about the separation of church and state, tolerance and free speech.”
It could not have been easy for Peggy Noonan to write her Good Friday column on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal.
Just when you thought that the relationship between the Vatican and the mainstream press couldn’t get any worse, the powers that be at MSNBC had to grit their teeth and issue a public apology for the fact that a headline — somehow — reached the network’s live website that read, “Pope Describes Touching Boys: I Went Too Far.”
Holy Week is the most sacred part of the liturgical calendar for Christians. This year, Holy Week has coincided with some tough coverage of the Vatican’s handling of sex abuse problems from decades ago.
