Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
My hometown newspaper, The Indianapolis Star, did just about everything wrong in a recent article on the local FBI office’s decision to bring in an author to talk to its anti-terrorism task force.
By now, it should be pretty clear that the word “evangelical” is so vague that it is almost meaningless — unless a careful reporter places it in context and gives the reader some clue as to its application in a particular story.
Like many other apartment renters in the world, I spend a great deal of time coveting other people’s houses. Or homeownership in general. So this local religion story out of Detroit caught my eye. Reporter Doug Guthrie of The Detroit News wrote about a $3.65 million parsonage bought for a pastor, Ben Gibert, by his church.
While working at the Rocky Mountain News, I was able to visit a private facility on the western side of Colorado that specializes in counseling pastors and their spouses whose marriages have hit the rocks. I had a chance to profile the counselors and to talk with some of the people who were there for counseling. A few alumni of the program went on the record.
David Segal’s nice feature in Thursday’s Washington Post on edgy Christian morning radio shows falls into the same trap that a lot of journalists trip into. A feature story can be as well reported as a Bob Woodward book, but if the writer fails to vigorously challenge the thesis that his subject is putting forth, what you have is a bunch of fluff.
An expose of a Kansas City megachurch ran on the front page of The Kansas City Star‘s Sunday edition and a few readers passed it along then. I apologize for the delay in posting about it, but it’s taken me days to get through the whole package.
Some of you have written to me to express your dismay about the mainstream media’s coverage of the new theological document released by that complex, bookish fellow named Pope Benedict XVI. In particular, I realize that you are upset about the focus taken in the first few paragraphs in the story published by the only newspaper that really matters, The New York Times.
If anyone is hoping that the loud relationship between politics and personal faith is merely a freakish and temporal effect of George W. Bush’s presidency, simply observing the candidates and reporters warm up this year should dispense with that fanciful wish.
What in the world was the Apostle Paul thinking in 1 Corinthians 1:10-17 when he told Christians to eliminate all divisions and “be perfectly united in mind and thought”?
