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 Big Ideas of this blog is that it is almost impossible to talk about the news business in terms of a pure “left” vs. “right” content, at least if you are going to use the old-fashioned definitions of words such as “conservative” and “liberal.” Most of our political conflicts today — other than issues of war and peace — are rooted in social, moral, cultural and even religious issues, not issues of economics.
Just a personal note here tonight, after a day of watching Hurricane Rita coverage on various cable channels.
Here is a Wall Street Journal piece that I wanted to comment on when it came out, but the link was only up for subscribers. Now it seems to be there for free.
It belongs to Father Roderick Vonhögen, a Roman Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Utrecht, The Netherlands, and his Catholic Insider website. He is best known for doing a series of podcasts — seemingly stalled at the moment — titled “The Secrets of Harry Potter.” You may have seen that up on the screen behind Steve Jobs during the Potter plugs at the most recent Apple keynoter (click here to view the liturgy).
I have a question about the following story in The New York Times. Is there a ghost in this journalistic visit to a Queens parking lot? A snapshot:
The Wall Street Journal ran a book review today that raised way more questions than it answered, including a possble hard-news hook to the ongoing tensions among the chaplains who serve the various branches of the U.S. military. Click here for a flashback on those stories.
It’s a challenge, in the print context of GetReligion, to do much reporting about the content of broadcast media. We can, of course, look forward to the day of expanded websites in which networks offer interactive print versions of the features that they broadcast in audio and video forms. We are seeing this happen more and more.
It seems obvious that two of the most controversial subjects in American government (and thus in journalism) are sex and salvation. The question is whether we now have to add a third “s” word to the list — science. Once you have asked that question, you then can ask whether the reason science is so controversial is that, when it evolves into philosophy and theology, it is shaping what journalists, politicos, academics, artists and others think about sex and salvation. So maybe we do not need the third “s” word after all.
OK, I tried hard on my latest Pat Robertson post to keep things short, so I had better jump in here online (I am still in Chicago during some lectures) and address one or two concerns of readers who could see some of the holes created by my brevity.
