It has been a very busy week for me as we ended the spring term at the Washington Journalism Center. I have been away from my keyboard quite a bit.
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5Q+1 e-visits with Russell Chandler
Everyone needs heroes. Back in 1980 or so, when I was trying to break into religion reporting, I decided that one of my journalistic heroes was going to be Russell Chandler of the Los Angeles Times.
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My strange new respect for Nikki Giovanni
During Virginia Tech’s convocation to mourn 32 murder victims last week, Nikki Giovanni did more with just 258 words than anyone else achieved in the thousands of other words preceding hers (MSNBC video; MP3). It was an electric moment. Her speech came alive for me with the second paragraph: “We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.”
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Wiccan pentacles make my head spin
A fair share of you loyal readers noticed the fair share of mistakes I made in my previous post on the Veterans Affairs Department’s decision to include the Wiccan pentacle on a list of approved religious symbols for gravestones. For those mistakes I apologize, particularly to New York Times reporter Neela Banerjee. I’ll use this as an opportunity to revisit the subject briefly, because we had many thoughtful comments that I thought I would highlight.
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Return of the Know-Nothings?
Sometimes readers wonder why we look at mainstream media coverage of abortion. A few have suggested it’s not a religious issue. Yet many religion reporters routinely cover both the pro-life and pro-choice movements and cover abortion regularly. Well, the losing side of the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act has been noticing religion. Readers have sent along various anti-Roman Catholic opinion pieces — most notably The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s cartoon and Rosie O’Donnell’s screed on The View. But we don’t care whether editorial writers or pundits have opinions on religious issues. That’s just what makes for an exciting editorial page. Although even Rosie O’Donnell’s crazy conspiracy theories don’t salvage The View, do they?
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Mere candlestick holders in Moscow?
As an Orthodox Christian, I have to admit that my heart lurched a bit when I read the early wire stories about the funeral of Boris N. Yeltsin.
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An abortion by any other name
We set a record at GetReligion last week for the post that received the most comments — 112 at this point. We looked at some of the coverage of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. For such a divisive issue, and with comments coming at it from all sides, almost all of the perspectives offered in the comment thread about how to improve media treatment of the issue were fantastic and informative.
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Pagan symbol battle gets political
News coverage of the Veterans Affairs Department’s decision to include the Wiccan pentacle on a list of approved religious symbols that can be engraved on the headstones of veterans has been high on the politics and low on the religion. The story comes down to a classic case of religious freedom. Unfortunately, the story has been swept up by politics when it is not clear that it was directly related to politics.
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Cheating is in the air
Every now and then, you read a feature story in a major newspaper and, as you read and read, you think to yourself: “OK, at some point, the reporter just has to raise a moral or religious question about all of this. Don’t they?”
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