Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
The Religion News Service offered another story on the Rev. Rick Warren’s Sunday sermon after the Saddleback forum shindig. And, like the Los Angeles Times, the basic facts about the sermon didn’t really make it into the story about the sermon, even in a report from the excellent wire service that focuses on religion.
One of the things that annoys me about journalists’ lack of institutional memory is the way religious activism in politics is constantly being rediscovered. Over and over. Year after year.
Tucked away in The Washington Post‘s metro section Saturday was a quiet story about a pastor and his mission that “lasted 50 years.” In reading this story, imagine what the article would look like if it were about a successful businessman who grew a local Washington, D.C.-area company from 27 employees “to more than 3,300.” Would key terms go undefined and controversial issues be left unexplored?
The czar of all things Beliefnet, one Steve Waldman, has donned his reporter hat once again in order to pound out a timeline describing who did what in the negotiations that produced the Democratic Party’s proposed platform statement on abortion.
Considering its ubiquity, death has to be one of the most under-reported aspects of the religion beat. Dying, death and funerals are major topics in the life of every pastor — but usually they only get covered when they happen to someone famous.
In her spiritual profile of filmmaker and actor Woody Allen, Newsweek reporter Jennie Yabroff begins her story this way:
In news lingo, there is this thing called a “follow” story and it is something that modern, shrinking, distressed newsrooms rarely have the time or resources to do.
You may have read read that the California State Supreme Court ruled that religious doctors cannot refuse to inseminate lesbian women artificially on religious grounds. The decision came down yesterday and has generated quite a bit of buzz.
Between the lines of the coverage of Rick Warren’s forum with the two major presidential candidates was a rather significant development: A pastor, not a member of the media, was asking the questions and controlling the agenda of the first major presidential contest in 2008.
