Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Dr. Francis Collins finds himself in the middle of an ethics-, science-, politics-, money- and religion-filled debate instead of in the chemistry lab lately. Despite Christopher Hitchens’s recent shout-out, you have to wonder if the embryonic stem-cell research debate has left him fairly friendless.
I hadn’t really been following the news about the congregation in Florida that plans to burn a Quran. Gen. David Petraeus weighed in against the plan and it’s receiving a lot of coverage in countries with predominately Muslim populations. This picture is of a protest in Kabul. In fact, it’s downright surprising how much coverage this story has received considering that this is a tiny congregation. Of course, in the day and age of Westoboro-media-paloozas, I shouldn’t be surprised …
Every now and then, news coverage of a topic or an idea gets into the digital bloodstream and simply, as the popular saying puts it, “goes viral.” It really helps if the story is given a punch headline that causes lots of people to click “comment” or to post notes on Facebook. You know the game.
Thousands of people demonstrated outside California’s state Capitol this past weekend. I assume — and, yes, I know how fraught with potential disaster that course of action can be — that The Associated Press didn’t consider the rally any big deal.
We live in the age in which print and video forms of journalism are merging into something new and, at this point, uncertain.
Frequently when we’re talking about violence against religious minorities, it’s a foreign issue. But it happens stateside as well, sadly. Recently there have been a few attacks that have received media attention. When Michael Enright stabbed his New York City cab driver Ahmed H. Sharif, for being a Muslim, it was major news. When a fire broke out at a construction site of a Tennessee mosque, it was major news. This weekend word came that the ATF has ruled that fire arson, it was also major news.
Is there something about non-Roman Catholic churches ordaining women that makes all journalism skills fly out the window? I’m pretty sure there is some ridiculously high correlation between ordinations of women who are not Roman Catholic and poorly written stories about said ordinations. Here’s yet another example, this one from the Arizona Republic: “Catholic church ordains woman as priest.”
Forgive me if I seem a bit prejudiced, but I’m a strong believer in the position that an editor should never send a general assignment reporter to do a religion reporter’s job.
Back at the beginning of the crisis in the mineshaft 700 meters below the surface of Chile’s Atacama Desert, Sarah Pulliam Bailey quickly noted that spiritual issues were sure to arise in this story. Would journalists recognize this?
