Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
I watched Barack Obama’s speech on race and religion yesterday morning. But I imagine that I was one of relatively few people to actually watch the speech in its entirety (see it here) or read the whole transcript. That means that it’s been up to the media to summarize, translate and convey meaning about the speech to a larger audience.
I finally got around to reading Lauren Collins’ profile of Michelle Obama in the March 10 New Yorker. It’s sympathetic but no puff piece — packed full of information that isn’t necessarily flattering. Obama’s stump speech includes the idea that we’re a country that is “just downright mean,” we are “guided by fear,” we’re a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents, and so on.
There have been more than a few stories about Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s spiritual mentor and pastor. A survey of broadcast media left me a tad unimpressed with the journalistic treatment. It seems news outlets are either exploiting the political rhetoric of Wright without any context or soft-peddling it to the extreme.
For Christians who observe the liturgical calendar, the pre-Easter, 40-day penitential season of Lent is upon us. In Western Christianity, Lent began on Ash Wednesday — February 6 this year. In the East, Lent began yesterday.
More reporters should tag along with an interview subject. As someone who has gone on ride-a-longs with cops in New Orleans and followed politicians in Washington, I have found that being in a subject’s physical presence is essential, enabling me to see the world from their eyes and walk in their shoes.
One of my persistent criticisms of the MSM’s coverage of religion is that reporters fail to note the significance or larger implications of a story. A good example of this problem was Michelle Boorstein’s otherwise fascinating profile of the black metal scene in Northern Virginia.
Whenever your GetReligionistas get together — face to face, as opposed to cyberspace — one of the things we bemoan is that our readers — that would be you guys — really don’t seem to respond much whenever we go out of our way to praises stories in the mainstream press.
You may have heard of the Herald-Tribune, a New York Times Co. paper in Florida. The Herald-Tribune Media Group includes a daily newspaper with six daily zoned editions for various Florida communities. It also has a 24-hour cable news station, an internet site, three magazines and a direct-mail business.
