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Read the following Los Angeles Times report and tell me if the phrase “culture of death” does not pop into your mind every few paragraphs. As graphic as this Greg Braxton story is, I think it actually avoids several issues that would have made it even worse.
When Mother Teresa comes to town for an ecumenical prayer service, all kinds of people are going to show up. That’s what happened in Denver back in 1989, when the tiny nun came to town to pray for peace and for the poor in that city.
This New York Times story does everything possible to fit the facts into the mold of a “Democrats try to get religion in order to appeal to religious people” story. I find this an an example of how many in the Democratic Party and many mainstream reporters do not get religion or religious people.
Back in early December, I pointed out the media silence over a curriculum battle in California. Even though reporters were all over stories about curriculum battles in Kansas and Pennsylvania, no one was paying attention to California, where Hindu nationalists were succeeding in making major changes to sixth-grade textbooks about Hinduism.
I waited a few days to comment on this story for two reasons. First of all, I was on the road and had limited access. Then I wanted to wait a day or two to see if any other media chased what I thought was a very significant story.
A family member who knows a thing or two about culture in Waco, Texas, sent me this interesting ecumenical news story and you have to admit that Fox News put a snazzy lead on it. It’s about the decision of a local Catholic priest to do the official rites of blessing for the new and, in a Southern Baptist mecca, controversial Hooters franchise. And that lead?
The second item in the ombudsman column Monday by the Public Broadcasting System’s Michael Getler deals with complaints from viewers who believe the publicly funded PBS carries too many Christian-oriented programs.
For those of you who are still maintaining the Pat Robertson watch, here is the latest from the omnipresent Julia Duin of the Washington Times (who, it seems, has been able to cover a dozen stories in the past week or so). It seems that the leaders of the National Religious Broadcasters have had second thoughts about Robertson’s upcoming address:
While I was out on the road, our friends at Poynter.org ran the latest of my columns in the “Journalism With a Difference” series on ethics and diversity. This one is entitled “Religion in (or Out) of the News” and focuses on the religion ghosts hidden — or dancing right out in the open — in the Associated Press list of the top 10 stories of 2005. The column flashes back to an interview with the late George Cornell, who, for many decades, was the AP’s only Godbeat specialist for planet earth.
