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If you’ve not followed the decades-long theological debate between apologists for evangelical Protestantism and apologists for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, brace yourself. You’re probably in for an extended mass media discourse on those differences, at least until the primaries settle who will be the Republican nominee for president.
This is the rare day in which a very important national story in The Washington Post and The Washington Times features the very same opening paragraph. It’s even a story that took place right here in the greater D.C.-Baltimore area and has national political implications.
The opening sentence in Time‘s guide to the conflict in Pakistan is quite appropriate: “The turmoil in the streets of Pakistan stems from a mercurial mix of history, religion and politics — with explosive results.”
For various reasons, journalists have rarely done even an adequate job covering the decline and fall of the African-American family. The share of black babies born out of wedlock in the last four decades has soared to around 70 percent from 25 percent.
As regular GetReligion readers will know, I have a thing about that vague word that mainstream journalists keep using to describe the Muslims that America likes, or that the journalists like, or that the Taliban dislikes, or something. That word, of course, is “moderate.”
I’m not sure if it’s GetReligion policy or anything, but we try our best to avoid giving hatemongering Westboro Baptist Church any more publicity than that which its members so desperately crave and receive. But this month’s $10.9 million judgment against the group makes it a bit hard to ignore. The Baltimore Sun‘s Matthew Dolan went to Topeka, Kan., to see how Westboro has affected its hometown:
For several days now, I have been watching for “dark ages” updates at the Baltimore Sun, in the wake of the disciplinary actions taken against Father Ray Martin by new Baltimore Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, he of the military ministry background. Click here for the earlier post on this story.
The troubles in the family of Philadelphia Eagles head coach Andy Reid is a difficult story for reporters to cover. In many ways, one would wish for the story to just go away. Coach Reid’s family life is in public disarray. A judge has publicly castigated him about his abilities as a parent and his two oldest sons are in prison because of their long-standing drug addictions.
For days, one of the top stories on CNN.com was “Romney’s faith pitch recorded behind closed doors.” The story, by Peter Hamby, was about how CNN had obtained a secret recording of Romney discussing his faith with alumni of Bob Jones University. The recording was made by a disgruntled alumnus. What earth-shattering things did he say behind closed doors that we haven’t heard in the mainstream media? Let’s see:
