Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Every now and then you see a news feature story that makes you slap yourself on the forehead and say, “Shoot, that story is so obvious, but I have never seen that story before. Why didn’t I think of digging into that one?”
So U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was coming out of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and a Boston Herald reporter shouted out the kind of question that you expect reporters to shout at churchgoing conservatives who sit on the world’s highest court.
I have a friend, and former editor, who used to watch televangelists with a drinking buddy. They would come home from a night on the town and keep drinking while watching CBN or some other preacher network. It was all fun and games until one night they accidentally donated $50 to Pat Robertson. The good news is that they realized they needed to cut back on their drinking.
You know you’re in trouble when you’re a conservative Christian and an unabashedly conservative Christian magazine goes after you for being linked to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. You know you’re in even deeper muck when the Washington Post points this out in an article headlined “From a Conservative, a Lack Of Compassion for Ralph Reed.”
The current immigration debate in Washington, D.C., is chock full of religion issues that are floating just under the above-the-fold stories on the legislative processes and debates. The religious angle in immigration cuts across political boundaries and shoots directly at the center of the teaching of Jesus Christ.
Abdul Rahman, the Christian man who was in danger of being executed under Afghan’s Islamic laws, was released and flown to Italy. The cabinet of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi granted his asylum plea in an expedited process. And just in the nick of time, as the BBC reports:
I was thinking Tuesday that it would be interesting to do a long, drawn out series on death and dying. This of course has already been done many times by reporters far more gifted and in much more prominent publications than I could hope to attain, but it would be an education and an experience that I would appreciate. In college, a course was taught on the sociology of death and dying and I regret to this day not enrolling.
At first glance, it seemed like the story of ex-stripper Heather Veitch and her friends in the JC’s Girls Girls Girls ministry to women in the sex industry was destined for exclusive coverage on Geraldo at Large and other television shows that need punchy one-liners and lively images.
Vatican’s foreign minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo created a bit of a stir this past weekend when he said that the “time is ripe” for the Pope and China to establish diplomatic relations, according to this Associated Press account of Lajolo’s interview with the Hong Kong station I-Cable TV, which the Vatican made available to the press.
