Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
GetReligion is well into its sixth year and, every now and then, I am reminded how much the writing that I do here has changed me in my work as a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, a task that I’ve been at for about 23 years.
Piercings are a sore subject for me. I had to work (keep my room clean for several months) to get permission to get my ears pierced at 13. It was clearly a sign of privilege (and a tool for my parents to hold me under their thumbs). I reminded my father of this recently and he said, “I did not realize we made you keep your room clean. I guess we should have had you write a research paper on ear piercing.”
Time for a dip into my GetReligion folder of guilt, that file into which I put stories that I really want to write about when I finally get a few minutes, somehow, to read them carefully and then write a post.
The news coverage, so far, about the alleged threat of violence against Pope Benedict XVI has been cautious to the max — as it should be.
If you’ve read GetReligion for any amount of time, you know that context means everything. Circumstances matter, too. And, of course, geography.
I have always thought that papal trips — especially to lands that stage regular media circuses — are the Olympics of religion news. The big problem, of course, is that the pope is WAY too important to be covered by mere religion-beat professionals. You have to break out the media superstars and political/cultural reporters and that’s where the real fun begins.
So here is your assignment. Read the top of the following story in the Los Angeles Times and try to spot the religion ghost.
Everyone from Barack Obama to Glenn Beck to Sarah Palin to Franklin Graham has denounced a Florida pastor’s Quran-burning plans.
We live in the age in which print and video forms of journalism are merging into something new and, at this point, uncertain.
