Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Dang it, that’s what I get for waiting an extra day or two before writing about that sprawling Los Angeles Times series, “The Vanishing Russians.” I was waiting until the last day to see if reporter Kim Murphy elected to dig into the religious questions raised all the way through this fascinating and depressing set of four articles.
The New York Times‘ public editor, Byron Calame, devoted his last column to the case of Linda Greenhouse. She’s the Supreme Court reporter who in a June speech at Harvard revealed her liberal opinions about various policy issues:
Imagine profiling a moderate Muslim in Copenhagen for the expressed purpose of understanding the life and outlook of a secular Muslim and failing to ask a question about religion. Well, Jeffrey Fleishman’s Los Angeles Times piece on Sunday comes close to accomplishing that feat. Issues of religion come up incidentally as if they were minor matters to be brushed aside in a quest to portray the subject as absolutely secular.
As you would expected, some major newspapers used their Sunday editors to dig deeper on issues linked to the Amish school massacre in Lancaster County, Pa. And, as you would expect, some newspapers did a good job of covering the spiritual issues and others used that old, dependable approach that resembles a National Geographic report on an alien culture.
Have you ever read a short Associated Press news report and then said to yourself, “Ah come on, there has to be more to this story than that.” That’s how I felt after reading the wire service story about the decision by 42-year-old Lori Rose Cannizzaro to take vows to become a “consecrated virgin.”
Clearly, there is ugly anti-Catholic prejudice left in American life, especially in terms of bias against the most devout and traditional forms of the faith. So what would happen if public educators floated a plan to have all students learn more about this important world religion by practicing this faith during their school days?
The New York Times‘ Laurie Goodstein continues her in-depth coverage of evangelicals. She picks up on an evangelical campaign warning that teenagers are abandoning Christianity.
Apparently GetReligion’s post on the Foley scandal was featured on the front page of Yahoo on Thursday morning, which drew responses from across the political spectrum. For those of you who are new to the blog, note that we are not here to debate faith but to discuss the media’s coverage of faith. Hence our name: GetReligion.
