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The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee is trying to find a successor to Bishop Bertram Herlong, and its 14-ballot roller coaster of an election, still unresolved, shows the profound divisions within the diocese.
The Washington Post carried an interesting religion story Friday on an issue that directly effects my life as a member of a church that meets in the congested heart of the nation’s capital. Gentrification, parking and religious discrimination are all factors in this story and I found it interesting how the article handled each.
So, unless I have missed something somewhere, it does not appear that a bishop — or perhaps even a priest — showed up to help lead the memorial services for the butcher of Belgrade.
The FDA announced this week that another two women who had undergone abortions using pills had died. It is important for reporters to be very specific about what is and is not known about life and death issues such as these, and many reporters did a fine job. But there was one component that was sorely lacking. Let’s look at this sample coverage from Andrew Bridges with Associated Press:
As you can imagine, I froze when I read the following passage in the Los Angeles Times story from Belgrade about the tensions caused by memorial rites for former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Reporter Alissa J. Rubin described this scene:
I am sorry to sound like a broken record and, believe me, I realize that I could make the following comments about dozens of other MSM reports from Iraq day after day after day. But the Operation Swarmer story is one of today’s top stories in newspapers and broadcast media.
Apparently Dan Brown’s use of “historical conjecture” in his wildly popular Da Vinci Code has landed him in the British legal system on a charge of plagiarism. The media are fascinated by the revelations on how Brown wrote his book, his wife’s involvement in forming the more controversial themes of the book and how strange it is to see the laid-back Brown among a bunch of powdered wigs in a British courtroom.
The corned-beef Catholic crisis has been quietly building momentum for a week or two and now, with St. Patrick’s Day upon us, has finally made the leap into major media. Believe it or not, there is a real story hidden back there somewhere in the giddy headlines, like the latest offering in the Washington Post: “As Luck Would Have It, Bishops Allow Meat on St. Patrick’s Day”
Last year the Supreme Court issued a wildly unpopular decision that enabled governments to seize property for no other reason than economic development. A recent New York Times article says that almost every state legislature in the country is advancing bills or constitutional amendments to limit the spread of this ruling. Despite the tenuous legal state that the ruling (Kelo v. New London) is in, a Long Beach, Calif., government is using it to replace a church with an apartment complex. Sigh.
