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 Kabbalah Centre has spent more time on tabloid covers than in the daily newspaper. The reasoning is obvious, what with all those fancy celebrities who like to make a big deal about frequenting (or at least occasionally appearing at) the the centre’s worship facility on Robertson Boulevard.
If there is a list of GetReligion’s deadly journalism sins that affect religion coverage, one of the top items has to be this one: Don’t play the God card unless you intend to follow through and offer the reader some facts about the actual role that faith played in the story.
Item 1: A journalist sent me a link to the clip of the Good Morning America show embedded here. Right at the beginning of this scene from a recent episode, the host asserts “A lot of Christians believe today is judgment day.”
Sorry ’bout this, but it’s time for another picky post on religion-beat linguistics. But first, a question about one of the biggest and most important religion trends of the late 20th century.
Katy Perry’s religious background has piqued journalistic interest for a while. After all, most musicians don’t get their start in Christian music to go on to sing “I kissed a girl and I liked it.” Rolling Stone picked up such themes for its cover story last year, where Perry said she still considers herself a Christian.
Last week Saudi housewife Najla al-Hariri made news by defying the ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia. She drove around for four days in Jeddah “to defend her belief that Saudi women should be allowed to drive.”
Which is amazing if you stop and think about all of the important religious events and trends that made it into the headlines this week.
So it’s after 6 p.m. and as far as I can tell, most of us are still here. [Insert joke about how funny that is.]
For this week’s Crossroads podcast, we talked a bit about media coverage of the group claiming the rapture is looming, as well as that surprisingly sad story about former governor Jim McGreevey and the abominable coverage of a Mass intention for Osama bin Laden. Host Todd Wilken threw me by asking for my thoughts about Matt Drudge. I defended news aggregators but cautioned that news consumers must be more cautious and skeptical while reading links.
