Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Sometimes journalists should just step back and report the events, emotions and words of the event they are covering. Monday night’s NCAA Tournament was that kind of situation, and unfortunately for sports fans, it seems that the only person to notice a significant spiritual angle of one of the more impressive shots (and comebacks) in basketball history was a Sports Illustrated blogger.
I realize that this is still a religion-news blog and that we have not, officially, turned into a religion and sports weblog. But, say hey, do we have any baseball fans out there? Tell me that you saw this amazing moment the other day in the baseball cathedral called Fenway Park and did not get a lump in your throat and/or a tear in your eye. No way.
The cover of Time this week features a large image of Pope Benedict XVI with an American flag in the background. As I will try to show later, this is ironic, but for now it’s worth noting that the cover story is “Why the Pope Loves America.”
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.
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?”
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.
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.
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.
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.
