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I’ve basically lived in every corner or Southern California not within the 789 square miles that constitute Orange County. (Though for a time in college I had developed enough of a social web around Newport Beach that my roommates joked that I had attended Newport Harbor High School with them.) But even I find this New York Times headline to be a bit off:
If you haven’t heard yet, President Obama will make a speech from the Oval Office to announce the end of combat operations in Iraq. To evaluate the quality of conditions in Iraq, reporters often look at factors like violence, education, elections, and social services.
One of the hardest things to explain to people who have never worked in a real newsroom is why some events are news at one moment in time and in one location, but a similar story is not news at some other time in some other location.
I’ve mumbled to myself how interesting it is that New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, not known for his strong defense of property rights, has been so good on the issue when it comes to the proposed Cordoba mosque project. This Wall Street Journal story attempts to show a similar discrepancy on Bloomberg’s religious views. I think it fails because it confuses personal religious views with civic duty. Here’s how it begins:
There was an interesting Associated Press story out of London the other day about end-of-life issues that has really been making the rounds — for perfectly valid reasons.
Tmatt already looked at some early coverage of the “Restoring Honor” rally held in Washington this weekend. I went down to the Lincoln Memorial to catch part of it but couldn’t even come close to hearing, much less seeing, what was going on. But I did meet a ton of people. It was a completely different event than the tea parties I’ve seen. Last September, there was a huge gathering in D.C. of people upset at the size and scope of the federal governemnt. This was even before health care legislation was signed into law. The protesters carried thousands upon thousands of creative and witty signs and it was really something to see. I was pretty sure I’d never seen a protest with so many employed people, or so many people who had children. And grandchildren.
In my 20-year reporting career, I’ve covered wildfires, floods and tornadoes. In 1995, I heard the explosion at the bombed federal building in Oklahoma City and raced that direction. Never, though, had I seen the kind of devastation that followed Hurricane Katrina five years ago.
Once upon a time, I had one of the best seats at the famous “Stand in the Gap” rally held on the National Mall in 1997 by the Promise Keepers organization, since I served as a kind of religion-news color commentator for MSNBC — the only network that covered that massive event from dawn to dusk.
I always find it curious how the media cover the Episcopal Church so differently than other denominations in America. Remember all of the stories in recent years about dioceses and parishes leaving, the property disputes and realignments? Well, another church group is facing something similar, and for related reasons. Last year the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to roster gay clergy who are in committed sexual relationships. Not just the vote but the reasoning behind it — which more traditional Lutherans viewed as an unacceptable rejection of Scripture as the source and norm of doctrine — led a similar exodus of parishioners and congregations. At least I think it was similar, but the coverage is making me wonder if it was wildly different.
