Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
In the two weeks leading to the Super Bowl, armies of world-weary journalists pour out oceans of ink in utterly predictable stories about the two teams that are playing in The Big Game.
For more than a week now, the mainstream press has been wrestling with the events in Egypt. It’s safe to say that this is the biggest news story, period, on planet Earth right now. I mean, other than Super Bowl XLV.
Before the 2008 election, there was a lot of ink spilled on the Democratic outreach to religious voters, but this time, the cycle seems more focused on the tea party. Part of the shift is probably due to the state of the economy and current horse race coverage on potential Republican candidates, but maybe the media cycle just needs to jump to the next exciting group to fuel election content.
The drama in Egypt is rolling on and on, which means that journalists in local newsrooms across America are doing that thing that we do — we search for local angles on the stories.
Homeboy Industries is a pretty cool gang intervention organization here in Los Angeles. It’s sort of like a guns for jobs program, and it’s been an anti-gang leader in Southern California. The nonprofit’s founder and leader, Father Greg Boyle, is a Jesuit priest who started the Jobs For a Future program while still serving as the pastor of the Dolores Mission parish in Boyle Heights.
The journalism world is abuzz over the launch of Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily, the first publication “built from scratch” for the iPad. The Poynter Institute’s Damon Kiesow suggests that it’s “too early to pass any judgment on the content.”
I don’t know about you, but the following paragraph from an Atlantic Monthly blog post by White House correspondent Marc Ambinder left me amazed, confused and then ticked off:
In a new video, a Planned Parenthood manager is seen assisting someone who claims he is a pimp involved with the sex trafficking of children as young as 14. She rather cheerfully and eagerly finds way to assist him with information about abortion and medical exams and contraception. When he asks about abortions for underage girls, she gives him the name of another clinic with lower protocols than hers. She warns him off of a nurse who cares more about the rules than she does (calling her an unprintable and horribly misogynistic name). You can watch the released excerpt or the full, unedited video here. It is absolutely horrifying — particularly about midway through — and includes crass language and distasteful subject matter.
On Sunday I complained about how all but the rarest coverage of XXXChurch — and there has been a lot of coverage of its National Porn Sunday, from NPR to TMZ — has failed to take Craig Gross’ anti-porn Christian organization as much more than a novelty.
