Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
The holidays seem to give reporters an incentive to look for heart-warming stories, ones the show someone overcoming struggle for eventual triumph. The Atlantic‘s food section features an inspiring story of an ex-con who is reforming his life through his job at DC Central Kitchen.
Yes, ’tis the season to hear people arguing about Christmas, inspired by everything from the numbing effect of waves of holiday ads to the “Christmas Wars” coverage on cable TV news shows. At the same time, this is when small bands of traditional Christians in the West begin their brave attempts to honor the quiet, reflective season called Advent (or Nativity Lent in the East).
Last week Politico broke the news that $140 million of $787+ billion stimulus last year went to faith-based organizations. Reporters Ben Smith and Byron Tau’s piece “Obama’s stimulus pours millions into faith-based groups,” begins:
Pew Research Center published the results of a recent Global Attitudes Project survey of Muslims. Folks were asked questions about Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, democracy, the role of Islam in government, and other related topics. You can read the whole report here.
Long ago, in my Rocky Mountain News days, the Denver Broncos made a couple of trips to the Super Bowl. As you would imagine, newsrooms in Denver rolled out the heavy artillery to cover these events.
Each day brings forth new revelations from the WikiLeaks dump of diplomatic cables. As I’m writing this, I can read about tension between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Or about how Al-Jazeera, it turns out, isn’t independent from Qatar‘s government. And everyone is weighing in on whether WikiLeaks is the greatest thing to ever happen to transparent governance, or the worst. Even Umberto Eco.
If you care about sports at all, you probably know that there was a rather interesting NBA game the other night in Cleveland, when the Miami Heat came to town.
My sense is that reporters often look to religion when covering people who are against abortion. It might seem obvious, since people do often cite their underlying religious beliefs as their reason for opposition. Though when reporters explore why people do provide abortions, religion suddenly disappears from consideration.
