Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
A missionary center and a church were the scenes of fatal shootings yesterday in my native state of Colorado. It’s always hard to write good copy following chaotic events, and I noticed there were some inconsistencies in coverage such as fluctuating totals for those wounded and killed. This post will make a few random observations about the coverage.
Entertainment Weekly is an amazing magazine. I have been reading the magazine since day one and I remember thinking to myself back then, “It takes real talent and commitment to achieve such a consistently ironic, world-weary tone in your very first issue.”
Readers of GetReligion are familiar with that mainstream media holiday tradition of releasing news stories that are supposed to shake the foundations of Christianity. Easters over the last few years have featured stories that Jesus walked on an ice floe (not water), that he wasn’t crucified in the manner in which people think, that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier named Pantera, not Joseph, and that Jesus didn’t die on the cross so much as pass out after being doped up.
What accounts for Mike Huckabee’s surge in the polls? The Washington Post thinks it knows: he’s winning over evangelicals. This is, of course, what everyone is saying right now.
There is no way to read all of the coverage of today’s vote, by the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, based in Fresno in central California, to cut ties to the U.S. Episcopal Church.
Two of the most interesting stories that readers sent along this week didn’t come from mainstream newspapers. The first was reported by The Living Church News Service, which covers Anglican news:
A brief unscientific survey of Utah newspapers’ coverage of Mitt Romney’s speech on Thursday shows that reporters were quite aware that Romney hardly delved into his church’s teachings.
The day that Redskins safety Sean Taylor was declared dead, Leonard Shapiro of The Washington Post wrote a column exploring the reasons for Taylor’s murder. Shapiro wrote that he could not say ultimately why Taylor was killed.
It’s about the theology, of course, not the politics. There are plenty of Catholics, Orthodox, evangelicals and mainiline Protestants out there who plan to vote for Gov. Mitt Romney or who can contemplate that issue without getting into discussions of heaven and hell.
