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, I see people or groups produce material that makes me think to myself: “Behold, that’s a GetReligion item.” Truth be told, I don’t quite know what to do when this happens. I mean, it’s hard to write a case study about a case study. That’s a bit too Zen for me.
One of the reasons some editors and reporters shy away from reporting about religious issues is because their ignorance on the topic can cause outrage among readers. You get a businessman’s name wrong and you run a correction. Get a detail wrong about Mennonites and you field angry calls from Pennsylvania for weeks. Connie Coyne, the reader advocate for the Salt Lake Tribune, deals with an example of this in her column this week:
Remember that soul-searching June 23, 2005, memo that New York Times editor Bill Keller wrote to his staff? This was the one called “Assuring Our Credibility” (PDF) that talked about the newspaper needing to do a better job of covering religion and being fair to people whose beliefs seem strange to people who work in the world’s most powerful newsroom.
Alessandra Rizzo of the Associated Press reported Friday that the Vatican excommunicated four bishops because two of them were ordained by the state-controlled church without consent from the Pope. The two bishops who ordained them were also excommunicated. Except they weren’t quite cut off from church fellowship.
Let me jump in here with a quick follow-up on the Divine Ms. M’s post on those fightin’ Episcopalians.
Every now and then, I read one story in Column A and that reminds me of another in Column B and they collide in my mind and they become a scary story in Column C. So, click here and then click here.
Last summer I attended a worship service at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. I went so that I could witness the congregation’s interfaith Eucharistic prayer. The sermon text was Mark 7 and the priest told us that it showed how Jesus was xenophobic, racist and sexist.
Many of you know World as a publication that strives to compete with other newsweeklies, but with an avowed evangelical Christian slant.
