Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
To my amazement, the Baltimore Sun continues to do something that must be really, really hard — offer virtually faith-free coverage of the Amish school massacre in Nickel Mines, Pa. The Sun did it the other day and now they’ve done it again.
Legislators must go crazy, whenever they enter the arena of church-state law, trying to write laws that protect the innocent without creating legal sanctuaries in which the demons of fraud and corruption have even more room to dance.
Attention everyone who cares about MSM coverage of debates in modern Catholicism: Please help us watch, in the next 48 hours or so, how major newspapers cover a big story that is breaking right now. In fact, this story may run through the weekend because the visuals should be interesting, which may even lead to television coverage.
The faith-and-football flick Facing the Giants continues to get quite a bit of press out there, especially since it has now been linked in many media minds with the post-Passion decision over at Fox to create a DVD and indie division called Fox Faith.
Dang it, that’s what I get for waiting an extra day or two before writing about that sprawling Los Angeles Times series, “The Vanishing Russians.” I was waiting until the last day to see if reporter Kim Murphy elected to dig into the religious questions raised all the way through this fascinating and depressing set of four articles.
As you would expected, some major newspapers used their Sunday editors to dig deeper on issues linked to the Amish school massacre in Lancaster County, Pa. And, as you would expect, some newspapers did a good job of covering the spiritual issues and others used that old, dependable approach that resembles a National Geographic report on an alien culture.
Have you ever read a short Associated Press news report and then said to yourself, “Ah come on, there has to be more to this story than that.” That’s how I felt after reading the wire service story about the decision by 42-year-old Lori Rose Cannizzaro to take vows to become a “consecrated virgin.”
Clearly, there is ugly anti-Catholic prejudice left in American life, especially in terms of bias against the most devout and traditional forms of the faith. So what would happen if public educators floated a plan to have all students learn more about this important world religion by practicing this faith during their school days?
