Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
This week we’ve seen two major stories on “gendercide.” That’s the phenomenon of some 100 million plus females having been aborted through sex selective abortion. One appears in the Christian Science Monitor and the other in The Economist.
I don’t mean to shock you, but I’m about to accuse the Los Angeles Times of giving some soft news coverage — almost cheerleading — to an evangelical anti-abortion activist.
Maybe you’ve had a bad week. You hate the melting snow, you’re recovering from a cold, maybe you hate your job. You’re ready to take it out on someone, but it would probably take more than a bad week for you to get the motivation to conspire to kill an artist in Sweden over a cartoon.
Sometimes, it’s amazing to see how far people will go to downplay the obvious role that religion plays in many parts of the world, for better and for worse.
The Washington Post‘s coverage of the recent change in marriage law here has been, unsurprisingly, of the partisan cheerleading variety. I’ve read a few reports and pondered if they would have been written terribly differently if they’d been issued as press releases from the communications shops of organizations advocating for same-sex marriage. “Gay marriages to boost sagging economy!” “Mexico City shows that gay marriage is awesome!” You get the idea.
Back in my Denver days, I covered a remarkable meeting about intermarriage between Jews and Christians, in this case Catholics. In the summary remarks, one of the rabbis made a comment that has always stuck with me.
Say what you will about the Church of Scientology, but its members are tenacious. I have some friends who left the church 30 years ago and they are still occasionally contacted by members who encourage them to be careful with what they say. And what’s interesting about that is that my friends actually have many positive things to say about the church and what they got out of it.
Admittedly, this story might seem a bit stale. The news passed last month when the plight of little Ela Reyes was reported over and over on network news and the morning talk shows. Dahlia Lithwick, in a Slate article about whether a family law judge can forbid a father from taking his daughter to church, summarizes the background well for those who missed it:
