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Want to start your day with a real tearjerker (the good kind)? Take a few minutes to read this story by the Washington Post about a Maryland pastor whose family was stranded in Haiti after the earthquake. Yes, it’s five pages long, but hit the “print” button so you can read the whole thing lest I be accused of plagiarism for posting too much of it here.
Spring training is still six weeks away, but, with pro football winding down and pro basketball dragging on, attention is already being turned to America’s past time.
When journalists who care about religion news make a case for improved coverage on this beat, we usually talk about the ways in which religious faith — in almost all cultures — helps shape the pivotal events in the lives of the overwhelming majority of people in this world. A wise, highly secular editor once told me that he recognized that, for most readers, it’s hard to talk about Life’s defining moments (births, baptisms, marriages, tragedies, illnesses, deaths, funerals) without talking about religion.
When I first heard that the U.S. military’s report into the Fort Hood shootings made no mention of the role religion played, I didn’t have high hopes for the media coverage. Perhaps this is unfair to both groups but I expect the media to be more politically correct than the military.
In my last post I wrote about how people read a film like “Avatar,” seeing what they want to see (or what they most fear). Now, a new research paper seeks to prove that the same thing happens in other areas of life.
I am always amazed by the amount of information that we receive day after day, week after week, from faithful, and even faithless, GetReligion readers. We would be dead in the water if not for the many interesting URLs that people send us for “haunted” stories in their local media.
Not when it comes to how people view movies. The bigger the movie, and the more people who see it, the more interpretations that arise. At least that’s what Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times describes in: “You Saw What in ‘Avatar’? Pass Those Glasses!”
For those of you whose spouse didn’t force them to watch MSNBC all night last night, the big news is that somehow the unthinkable happened: Republican Scott Brown (pictured, right) won the Senate seat held, until his recent death, by Democratic Ted Kennedy. Until a couple of days ago, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley was considered a shoo-in. It’s not that Republicans haven’t won state-wide office in Massachusetts, it’s just that they haven’t had a Republican senator in many moons.
I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to report on the relief and recovery efforts in Haiti, much less manage or participate in them. I keep reading the news and feeling sicker and sicker. One of the things that struck me about personal emails or messages out of Haiti is how they all emphasize the religious lives of the survivors. And it’s nice to see that much of the mainstream media coverage is touching on that as well.
