Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
As you would imagine, I have — since my return from Bangalore and New Delhi — been especially sensitive to news reports with India datelines. At the same time, I am always interested in coverage of human rights issues, especially those linked to religious freedom and the rights of minority groups. Call me an old-fashioned liberal.
The Associated Press report is very, very, very short and raises many more questions than it answers. Here is a typical version (or click here for a longer version in the Los Angeles Times):
I was stunned the other day by the total lack of interest in the religion elements of the big story here in Washington, D.C., as in the tragedy on our Metro subway system. The coverage has been major league, as you would expect, and the story on which I focused was one out of many worthy of discussion.
Here’s a question that we have asked here at GetReligion — more than once, in fact — and, now, it’s being asked at the Wall Street Journal.
One of concepts that causes my journalism students the most grief is finding the line between making statements of personal opinion and making statements that draw logical conclusions from facts that have been stated on the record or verified in a document. It’s the line between editorial writing and news, when you get right down to it.
The Michael Jackson funeral story continues to loom in the background of the current coverage about his death, while an even more bizarre angle about the future of the superstar’s body has emerged over in Germany.
It will take time for mainstream reporters to find the thread that connects the young Michael Jackson, going door to door as a Jehovah’s Witness missionary, to the otherwordly middle-aged man who, after two decades of personal crisis, allegedly converted to Islam, like his brother Jermaine.
Regular readers of this weblog know that that your GetReligionistas are fans of verbatim question-and-answer interviews, especially when they focus on religious (and political) leaders whose views have previously been crunched down into soundbites and factoids.
