Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Sometimes the biggest news stories are sitting right out there in the open where everyone can see them. But that’s the problem. There are trends that are so big that we can’t see them. This makes the big story hard to write because it is hard to pick one piece of it and get it into a newspaper.
Like the Divine Ms. MZ, I spent much of the week mulling over that Media Matters report titled “Left Behind: The Skewed Representation of Religion in Major News Media.” I received quite a bit of email suggesting that GetReligion was ignoring the report, which would be really strange since this blog has, ever since opening its cyberdoors, been arguing for more coverage of the activities and the beliefs of the Religious Left.
Hmmmmmm … A friend sent me a notice to this Faith & Law event here on Capitol Hill next Monday. I wonder if the organizers would let me attend, not to mention the Divine Ms. MZ and young master Daniel. The Rt. Rev. Doug LeBlanc is a bit out of range, but could come on Amtrak.
One of the rare subjects on which conservative and liberal Catholics agree is this one — the work of John L. Allen Jr. of the National Catholic Reporter is must reading about 99 percent of the time. This is especially true, in my opinion, when he tackles complex subjects that require blending an inside-the-Vatican perspective with some understanding of Catholicism in the swinging United States.
I hope that, somewhere in the newfangled Billy Graham Library (or museum) in Charlotte, that there is a picture or even a statue of a turtle atop a tall fence post.
Clearly, the Anglican vs. Episcopal warfare is just getting started at the local level here in the United States, which means that more and more religion reporters are going to have to wade into this journalistic swamp in the weeks, months and years ahead.
This one comes to you from deep inside tmatt’s GetReligion guilt file, so please hang in there with me for a moment.
If you do a search in Google Images for Frank “Bible Belt Blogger” Lockwood you will find nothing that is useful. Zippo.
And then there was the funeral, with flowers, politicos, hymns, memories, televangelists and that final ironic detail — a potential whiff of napalm as a Liberty University student prepared a few makeshift bombs to drive away the right, right, right fundamentalists who planned to protest the work of that infamous liberal and sell-out Jerry Fallwell.
