Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Join me, please, in meditating on our journalism question of the day: When publications make an error of fact and correct it, should they (a) change it quickly and move on or (b) change it and run a correction notice? Some of you may want to add a qualifying clause that says something like, “It depends on how important the error is, yada yada.”
I get most of my foreign religion news from Reuters. They consistently report on stories of global interest with an eye toward religious details. But this story left me a bit cold. It promises a lot with the headline “In France, far right seizes on Muslim street prayers.” But I never quite understood what that meant, much less whether “far right” was an accurate description of who we were talking about. It begins by describing how streets and intersections in Paris are flooded with Muslim worshipers on Fridays. They don’t have room in buildings so they pray in the street, rain or shine. No big deal to the locals, we’re told:
intercede: To plea on someone else’s behalf; To act as a mediator in a dispute; to arbitrate or mediate
Last week we discussed the invention of a quote and related fraudulent framing of a story so that Pope Benedict XVI’s words on the importance of baptism became a treatise on celebrity baby naming trends. Some readers were surprised that journalists might stray so far from reality when composing their stories. Others pointed out that it happens often when the subject of the story is the Pope.
Al Jazeera was the only outlet heavily covering the growing protests in Tunisia over the last month. But the news that its president had fled the country on Friday night has been widely reported. If your knowledge of Tunisia doesn’t extend past something related to Carthage or Star Wars, there’s a lot of catching up.
It’s NFL playoffs time again and, of course, the hated Pittsburgh Steelers are once again poised to knock the Baltimore Ravens out of the playoffs. If this horrific reality comes to pass (again), there is a very good chance that the deed will be done by the Steelers’ mane man, superstar safety Troy Polamalu. Personally, I think Polamalu is the best player in professional football and, yes, that includes the quarterback up in New England.
Americans received a nice little history lesson this week, thanks to Sarah Palin’s video reaction to the shooting in Arizona. We were quickly informed by just about every national news outlet that the “blood libel” is generally used to historically mean the accusations that Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals.
It was a short story from the Glendale News-Press, a community paper of Los Angeles Times. About 300 words dedicated to a report on repeated petty theft at a Glendale Catholic church. And the amount of space devoted to this news was to be expected. The LAT has an ever-shrinking newshole, and even in fatter times murders have been briefed.
Some of the journalism being produced in the wake of the Tucson tragedy had been terrific. Much, of course, has been abysmal. I’m still trying to wrap my head about just what went wrong and why it continues. To that end, a few thoughts on how the media choose to frame different issues.
