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Only yesterday I was happily writing about how great it is when media coverage of a given topic improves over time. But then you read a story like this one from the San Diego Union-Tribune and you wonder if things are actually going downhill.
Last year, I wrote a news story for Christianity Today titled “Modern-Day Lepers,” on the effort by churches to balance grace and accountability toward sex offenders:
This Time cover has led to much consternation on the internet. Most of the outrage isn’t over the image but, rather, the headline. Still, the image itself is shocking. It depicts Aisha, an 18-year-old Afghan woman who was sentenced by the Taliban to have her nose and ears cut off after she fled her abusive in-laws. Time managing editor Richard Stengel explained his decision to run the image:
Analyzing the media coverage of the Roman Catholic sex abuse crisis has been difficult simply because of the disgusting nature of the topic. But perhaps one of the most difficult articles to read was this April Newsweek story putting the abuse by priests in context of the larger problem:
Last year, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to change its doctrine to allow gay clergy in committed sexual relationships. The Associated Press ran a story about one of the consequences of that vote:
There’s this New York Times feature called “Room for Debate.” The name alone, and its presence on the opinion pages, led me to believe that maybe there would be, I don’t know, a debate between the featured participants. The topic yesterday was “same-sex families,” the hook a new movie about a lesbian couple and their children. But there was no debate that I saw. Featured opinions ranged from those of Dan Savage to those of an Evergreen College professor. It was just a given that society should have no qualms about same-sex parenting. The end. The ruling class marches on.
It’s difficult to understand why only FOX News Radio and World Net Daily thought this was news. I gave it a few days to incubate. To no avail.
Whenever I come across a particularly puffy story, I might say it reads like a press release. But a reader sent in a story that really was just a slightly modified press release.
