Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Two weeks ago, the Sunday Boston Globe magazine ran an essay — not a news story, I admit — that I have been thinking about ever since. It was called “What I Believe” and it was written by Charles Pierce, a staff writer at the publication.
When cultural and religious conservatives talk about the whole Journolist media mini-storm, here is the kind of quotation from The Daily Caller coverage that has them hot and bothered. This particular burst of rhetoric comes from the DC story about members of the Journolist — or JournoList — sharing their feelings about the conservative feminist that they already loved to hate, only moments after she entered national politics — Sarah Palin.
Today is a big day in the ongoing story about the status of Beliefnet.com and what that says about the world of mainstream religion news and commentary.
Let’s face it. There are hot-button topics in the American public square that, in even in the context of our increasingly post-Christian culture, are going to raise religion flags.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why so many mainstream journalists do not want to write about the practical implications of the choices made by liberal religious believers and even those of skeptics. While coverage of religious conservatives (much of it inaccurate or simply simplistic) consumes oceans of ink, the fine details of the lives of liberal believers are rarely examined.
There is no question that the following story from Canada.com and the Calgary Herald is, when push comes to shove, a crime story. Yet the lede signals that something else is going on, something that readers have to wait a long, long time to find out when reading this report.
This isn’t exactly hard news, but I thought that GetReligion readers would want to know about (I mean, readers other than those who have sent us notes requesting a post on the topic).
Warning: The following post contains highly offensive language of a doctrinal nature, whether the journalists covering this event knew it or not. Proceed with care.
So, have you read any interesting stories about Mel Gibson lately? If so, has the word “traditionalist” made an appearance in these texts?
