Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Over at Time, reporter Jeff Israely has a piece up that asks a logical question — from the point of view of activists on left and right who are paying attention to (a) the pre- and post-election strategy wars inside the pro-life movement and (b) loud cries of distress from traditionalist religious leaders about President-elect Barack Obama’s vow to push for the Freedom of Choice Act.
The theological term is “theodicy,” and, as I have said before, this concept is woven into many religion-news stories for at least two good reasons.
For the second week in a row, the Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell has devoted her column to the problem of media bias. I always get a kick out of how the media treats problems in the media industry relative to problems in other industries. All of that investigative journalism, take-no-prisoners attitude and hard-hitting reporting suddenly disappears and we get limp and timid copy.
Long, long ago, in a discussion of mainstream media coverage of trends in Iran, Bill Moyers told me that most journalists are “tone deaf to the music of religion.” He has used that same image in other settings.
Earlier this month in the midst of election craziness, The Detroit News took what could have been a simple crime story about a rash of church robberies and interlaced the article with theological themes, historical trends and even sociological explanations.
Criticizing Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light™, for churning out glurge is now criminally easy, but Paul Cullum betrays an ignorance of flyover country in writing about Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage (direct to DVD this week). Working from a 16-point memo of Kinkade’s filmmaking tips, Cullum first tries to classify Kinkade as “a postmodern Norman Rockwell for the evangelist set.”
Remember the media narrative from the 2004 election? To explain how the country could have possibly elected George W. Bush for a second term, we were told that throngs of homophobic, Red America values-voters surged to the polls. Never mind that it wasn’t true. Bush got more evangelical voters than Republicans traditionally had, but he got more of all sorts of groups.
Remember August (yes, it seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it?) when the McCain campaign produced this Internet ad?
Love it or hate it, the Washington Post is a fine newspaper and it is very rare to see a story hit its front page with a large and glaring hole in it. But that’s what happened today, with the story that ran with the headline “Some Abortion Foes Shifting Focus From Ban to Reduction.”
