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Washington Post vs. Bob McDonnell

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So the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia wrote a master’s thesis about family-friendly government policies. Make that traditional family-friendly policies. Written in the 1980s, it suggested that the government should craft policies that encourage traditional families (as opposed to “cohabitors, homosexuals or fornicators”). The Washington Post‘s coverage of Bob McDonnell thesis is at DEFCON 1 — just a couple days into it we’re now up to two-front page stories, three inside stories, two columns, one house editorial and one cartoon (as of yesterday, that is).


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Sanford's mission from God

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When elected officials promote BS about politics or world affairs or the state of the economy, it’s a reporters responsibility to let readers know. (Not saying it happens often enough, but that is the expectation.) But what about when a pol says something religious that doesn’t pass the smell rest?


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Falwell-fearing vampires and a football philanthropist

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I read The New York Times religiously every morning, in the ink-on-paper version (!), and am thankful that in our increasingly post-print age this institution survives and continues to give me a daily window on the world with plenty of style and personality. Two recent articles stand out for their authors’ willingness to seek out some of the deeper layers of story beneath the surface news.


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Kennedy debates continue -- in Boston

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I realize that many GetReligion readers are very, very, very tired of reading posts about the mainstream press coverage of the internal Catholic disputes about the doctrinal and liturgical content of the funeral rites for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy.


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Back it up, please

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The other day a reader sent in a story submission with the note, “The story does a good job of laying out the canon law of the bishops’ retirement and why this is curious.” It included a link to a very brief Associated Press report about Pope Benedict XVI accepting the early retirement of an outspoken bishop in Pennsylvania. At the time, it didn’t seem terribly noteworthy, but it was just a straightforward and concise summary of canon law.


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His children fatherless ...

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Since starting to write for GetReligion last year, I’ve become increasingly aware that there are outposts in American religious life that rarely get much, if any attention from the mainstream media. One of these (can you say Eckhart Tolle, anyone?) is New Age spirituality — and beliefs that syncretize New Age beliefs with Christian or Jewish practices.


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