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Now here is an interesting media-relations question. What does it mean when a group of Democrats gets together to announce a package of legislation and the press conference merits a wave of coverage from the Christian Communication Network, the Conservative Voice and LifeNews.com, but the event receives no coverage at all — zero, zip, nada — in the MSM?
I know this may sound too crazy to be true, ladies and gentlemen, but some university professors had their doubts about the cultural revolution of the 1960s. Try to wrap your head around this: Some adult Roman Catholics who had earned degrees and were paid to teach young people held on to the quaint notions that moral and theological truth flow from a transcendent source; that sex outside of marriage is a moral wrong and will harm people spiritually and, often, physically; that shouting down your professor is boorish and anti-democratic; and that, while the church favors democracy in secular governments, the church’s dogmas are not subject to a popular vote.
The latest issue of The New Republic has E.J. Dionne’s dispatch from Rome on the election of Benedict XVI. Like most TNR dispatches, the piece becomes an argument. In this case, the point is that Catholicism shouldn’t shut itself off from the modern world.
Diane Knippers was a friend of this blog, in that I worked with her (and other conservative Episcopalians) during the Lambeth Conference of 1998 and the Episcopal Church’s General Conventions of 1994, 1997 and 2003. I was not so close to Diane as to be overwhelmed by grief as she is buried today, but I feel keen sorrow for her husband, Ed.
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The job of the GetReligion crew is to judge media coverage, for good or for ill. The smaller the story, the easier that is to accomplish. But then you have these massive media events and what do you do with those? Here’s my idea. (And I’m speaking for myself here, not the non-Borg.) I think we could hand out awards for best and worst coverage of big religion media events and invite readers to chirp in with their own nominations. For instance, in the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I would start with the following awards:
The noted American Catholic theologian Maureen Dowd has already served up the official talking points for the first wave of coverage of Pope Benedict XVI. This pretty much covers the terrain, which the MSM is covering with various degrees of depth and balance. Ready?
Terry wrote yesterday about “the dreaded passive-voice paraphrase quote.” Today I turn to another vexing problem in journalism: the dreaded one-sentence summary of a complex history.
