Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
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.
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.
Anyone who has been near a news rack knows that one of the major stories in the world today is the birth of South Sudan as a nation, rising out of an ocean of bloodshed and oppression over the past few decades.
One of the problems with journalism in the Internet age is that once a major publication makes a mistake on a major story, that mistake tends to be repeated in the work of other newsrooms — until someone corrects the error.
Once upon a time, it appeared that most mainstream journalists had rallied around the use of the word “Islamist” to describe the brand of Islam that has been linked to violence and terror around the world.
Trust me when I say this: Your GetReligionistas know that there is no way that we can see even a quarter of the mainstream news coverage that we need to see. That’s why it is so, so important that readers help us and, through emails or comments, point us toward additional information, URLS and stories that we need to know about.
I freely confess that I am, as a rule, not a big Wikipedia fan. However, I must reluctantly tip my hat to the brave souls who attempted the all-but-impossible task of writing a brief summary of the history and contents of the “New Age” movement.
Anyone who knows anything about the decades of bloody conflict in Sudan knows that it is impossible to take religion out of the mix — especially the conflicts between Muslims in the north and the Christians and animists of South Sudan.
