Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Anniversaries are anniversaries and several tumultuous events of 1968 have already been rehashed (see here) by reporters this year. You can bet that more (such as this one) stories of this kind are on the way. What angles should reporters look for?
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama gave journalists throughout the United States a challenge in his press conference Monday, where he “forcefully” broke with his ex-pastor the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In his short 5-minute opening remarks, Obama said that Wright does not represent the black church in America. Is this true?
I am completely confused by the media coverage of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. I feel as if the media went from providing a bit too much context for his incendiary remarks to completely abandoning the man. Is there any substantial difference between what he said this week at the National Press Club and what we saw in televised snippets from his sermons? Has he said anything different about his famous parishioner Barack Obama than he did in his old interviews with the New York Times or Rolling Stone?
As Mark noted earlier, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., came right out and made a statement — a statement about religion — that reporters should be able to investigate and challenge. In a way, Wright focused on the very angle that GetReligion has been trying to focus on from the start of this media firestorm.
For their story about the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s comments yesterday, Shailagh Murray and Peter Slevin of The Washington Post focused on the politics of his appearance and speech. Their emphasis is understandable for obvious reasons. Yet the reporters underplayed the religion angle in their story — and thus also weakened their political angle.
In a story for CNN, reporter Eliott McLaughlin dove head first into a discussion of the religious views of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The hook for the piece is the group’s decision to open up and permit some public scrutiny of its lifestyle. They’ve started a Web site and a handful of polygamous wives have been doing a ton of interviews.
I know this will come as a surprise to some readers, but New York Cardinal Edward Egan is not amused that a Catholic who openly opposes the church’s teachings on the highest of high-profile issues dared to take Holy Communion in the highest of high-profile settings.
When I saw the cover of the New York Times Sunday Magazine this week, I groaned. Beaming out from the pages in ridiculously campy, 1950s-style photos reminiscent of June and Ward Cleaver were two perfectly domestic gay men.
I confess that even my magazines stacked up during the papal visit. Thus, I was a week late getting to the epic Newsweek “Splitsville” cover story by David J. Jefferson on Baby Boomers and divorce in the symbolic Grant High School in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles.
