Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Back in the summer of 1983, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was allowed to leave South Africa to attend the World Council of Churches assembly in Vancouver, British Columbia. This was a major event, in large part because no one knew if the apartheid government would let him back into his homeland.
As I stressed in my recent “Who is Dan Brown?” piece for the Da Vinci Dialogue site, the author of Da Book that is being turned into Da Movie isn’t terribly fond of facing tough questions about his work or his beliefs.
The Washington Post headline said it all: “Some Parents Who Shy From Religion Want Their Children to Taste Its Psychological and Spiritual Comforts.” (As a former copy editor, I ask, “What was that? A double decker six- or eight-column headline in 36-point type?)
Here is the New York Times today, adding a few kind words about the late A.M. “Abe” Rosenthal, an elite journalist who in the 1990s became a hero to those of us who are deeply committed to those familiar freedoms of the First Amendment. He was passionate about freedom of the press and freedom of religion, even for unpopular religious minorities.
At the papers I’ve worked for, the way to get a correction was to reach either the Ombudsperson or the reporter’s editor. Speaking very pragmatically, the reporter has little reason to take the time to get in a correction over his/her fact error, especially since most publications track the number of corrections each reporter has caused; conversely, an editor is in position of pursuing the point and running the correction if it’s warranted. Don’t bother the writer; contact his/her editor.Posted by mark at 9:33 pm on May 11, 2006
It was 10 years ago — next week, in fact — that I wrote a column for the Scripps Howard News Service that began like this:
Here is another one of those situations in which I’ve read something in column A and that connected with something in column B and then that produced questions about some hard-to-define issue over in column C.
I will never forget reading the very first issue of Entertainment Weekly. It was back in 1990, wasn’t it? I looked through it and I thought to myself, “This is amazing. The Time empire has managed to assemble a team of writers and editors who have achieved a state of world-weariness and cynicism in its very first issue! What an achievement!”
Every now and then, I see people or groups produce material that makes me think to myself: “Behold, that’s a GetReligion item.” Truth be told, I don’t quite know what to do when this happens. I mean, it’s hard to write a case study about a case study. That’s a bit too Zen for me.
