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For those who are interested in all things Roman, one of the major stories of the day is Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to move Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput out of the free-swinging West and into the oh-so clerical Northeast.
Let’s say that some journalists hear about cases of Marines who are being abused, tormented and bullied. We’re talking crude stuff — sticking a soldier’s head in a toilet and hitting the flush lever over and over — as well as brutal beatings.
Now here is a totally fascinating New York Times story about charter schools. I am not sure whether or not it has a hidden religion angle in it and, as always, this is my point.
This may sound like a rather religious or even doctrinal question, yet it is a question that I want to ask for totally journalistic purposes.
First things first: I want to stress that I feel nothing but sincere pity for the world weary and stressed news editors who recently had to sit around conference tables and, perhaps in the presence of oracles who read focus-group tea leaves, discuss one of the big questions of this news cycle.
One of the most important lessons that journalists learn as they gain experience is that accuracy is not a matter of knowing more and more things about more and more subjects. The first thing that reporters must know how much they don’t know. Humility then leads to the kinds of questions that produce accurate, insightful stories.
It’s amazing how much religion works its way into funeral services, especially into rites performed in churches that have ties that bind them to the language and the symbols of the early church. It’s really hard to edit the Godtalk out of these events.
For almost a quarter of a century, I have written the weekly “On Religion” column for the Scripps Howard News Service.
As your GetReligionistas have said many times, this whole post-denominational age in which we now live continues to present some major challenges for mainstream reporters and editors.
