Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Remember that truly bizarre passage in the Washington Post story about the massacre in Mumbai, the one that pondered the deep mystery of why the terrorists targeted Orthodox Jews and, well, other people who identified with the wrong world religions?
Remember that strange story a few years back about all of those Brits who wanted to write “Jedi knight” or something like that in the official census form slot for “religion”?
This past week saw two excellent examples of the American media’s efforts at finding and portraying in the most positive light possible Muslims that make claims of being moderate. These two examples, one in The Los Angeles Times and the other in The New York Times, both portray Islamic preachers. Both reach their audiences primarily via the television. And both articles keep the basic beliefs of both preachers fairly obscure.
Charles Blow fills a niche so precise that The New York Times is one of the few daily papers that could maintain it in these lean times. He is the Times‘ “visual Op-Ed columnist,” which means that Blow, drawing on his long experience as graphics editor and then graphics director for the Times, supplements his concise remarks with graphics.
I am happy, but not surprised, to find that GetReligion has readers in moderate Muslim circles, especially when it comes to issues of women’s rights and the actual practice of that faith.
My great Aunt-Jennie was Jewish.As a child, I recall my parents teasing her, when a Jew became the focus of media attention: Aunt Jennie, is this good for the Jews?
GetReligion has offered few sympathetic words for Sally Quinn or for On Faith, the religion blog that she founded with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham. As many readers will remember, Quinn identified herself as an atheist until Meacham challenged her assertion.
Singer Alexandra Burke recently won top honors on Britain’s X Factor TV talent competition, and she drove Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” to the top of the pop charts. Ruth Gledhill of The Times asked her colleague Alan Franks to reflect on Cohen’s spiritual life.
