The last few days have been filled with the sad story of the removal of over 400 children along with their mothers from a polygamous community in Texas.
A "compound" problem?
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B16: Cue the theme from "Jaws" (update)
Tense religion writers all across this land are sitting at their desks, waiting for the dreaded moment when an editor walks over and says the words no one wants to hear just before a papal visit: “A friend of mine heard that people are buying those pope-soap-on-a-rope things somewhere in town. Why don’t you look into that and see that other kinds of pope junk are out there?”
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Religious queries can yield political insight
One of our standard criticisms at Get Religion is that reporters focus on politics to the exclusion of religion. I wonder if the press grasps the flip side of this notion. By overlooking or underplaying religion, reporters fail to illuminate politics sufficiently.
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Meet the new caricature
I can’t remember when, exactly, the mainstream media decided that it would stop with the unilateral caricature of evangelicals as the Christian Right, but I’m not sure the new caricature is much improved.
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Drawing on religious tolerance
A recurring problem with stories about lawsuits is that only one side of the story is presented. Due to understandable hesitations, the party that is being sued is unlikely to comment on the lawsuit until they are able to formally respond to the lawsuit. You generally don’t win lawsuits on the news pages.
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Getting outside the "conflict" frame
Several readers have written in to let us know about a new feature over at Poynter.org entitled “New Frames Needed for Religion Reporting,” written by Bill Kirtz of Northeastern University. This is a short summary of a recent forum on the subject at Northeastern and it offers some timely advice from veterans on the beat and some very good links to information.
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Pulitzers announced
The 2008 Pulitzers have been announced and the Washington Post won every category. Okay, not quite. But they did win the Public Service, Breaking News, National Reporting, International Reporting, Feature Writing and Commentary prizes.
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Failing to tell a story in black and white
This is a strange moment for Black America. A major black celebrity frets about its values, while black Christian ministers worry about structural problems. Bill Cosby scolds black men for not being responsible fathers, while civil-rights era preachers encourage their flock to attend job training classes.
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"If you seek the Lord, you will find Him"
Charlton Heston raised the tablets containing the Ten Commandments high over his head decades before he did the same thing with a flintlock rifle and, to their credit, most of the journalists who wrote his obituaries managed to cover both of those symbolic gestures.
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