Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
With Brigham Young University still alive in March Madness, the news ripples continue to expand from the earlier coverage of the suspension of hoops star Brandon Davies for violating the school’s moral code. It isn’t surprising, in other words, that editors still have Mormon moral dilemmas on their minds.
The Westboro Baptist Church saga has always intrigued and appalled me, in large part because of my background in church-state studies and First Amendment rights. I am also intrigued with people who are so radical that they defy easy description. As the old saying goes, sometimes people go so far to the right that they end up on the left (and vice versa).
The Catholic Cuomos of New York are constantly in the news, which means that journalists are continuously having to wrestle with adjectives.
I have heard one question over and over in the past three or four days: “What do you think of the Washington Post Magazine story about the whole uproar in the Orthodox Church in America about Metropolitan JONAH?” Or words to that effect.
What you think of the following Calgary Herald story will largely depend on how you answer the following two questions.
So what we have here is a mysterious CNN report that raises way more questions than it answers and, frankly, the kinds of questions that readers are able to raise about this story are making me frustrated.
Raise your hand — or click “comment” — if you have read a news report claiming that Christians in this supposedly God-fearing nation get divorced at the same rate as everybody else? Raise you other hand if you have heard this statement made in a pulpit. Yes, raising both hands makes it hard to type.
When dealing with bloody events that take place in the Islamic world — such as the beheading of reporter Daniel Pearl — mainstream reporters often argue that these events are essentially political and, thus, have little or nothing to do with religion.
I apologize, gentle readers, for having to go over this issue again so soon. Still, I have to admit that when a reader sent the following URL to your GetReligionistas, I thought for a second that it was a prank.
