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Not all atheists are alike

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A few weeks ago there was quite a brouhaha over an atheist challenge to a street sign honoring 9/11 victims. The name of the street is Richards Street but underneath the sign at one intersection is another street sign saying “Seven In Heaven Way” to honor seven local firefighters who were killed on September 11. And so newspapers and media outlets ran with the story. Most news stories seemed fine. One, I recall included quite a few atheists objecting to the complaint on the grounds it was petty or hurtful.


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Crystal Cathedral confusion

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You might remember some reports earlier this month that the Crystal Cathedral megachurch in California had ousted the Rev. Robert H. Schuller from its board and before the reports seemed to backtrack. We have a new report today from the Associated Press that the Crystal Cathedral has restored the voting rights of its founder on the church’s governing board. Unfortunately, the early report tells us very little about the decision, offering us about this much:


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What he said (about Norway)

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At this point, I think most journalists have reached the point that they know that Anders Behring Breivik (a) has self-identified as a “Christian,” (b) yet he also made it clear that he is not a Christian believer, in terms of beliefs and practice and (c) that it is bizarre to call him a “fundamentalist,” in any historic sense of the word.


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To tweet or not to tweet

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Yesterday morning Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten asked readers an ethical question based on a true story — should a reporter ever smoke pot with a source? The question had a few details for readers to consider. The reporter didn’t smoke pot currently but had in his past, he was having trouble connecting with the source who was offering the pot and the sharing of the drug would help build up that trust. And, importantly, the Post has a policy that reporters should never do anything illegal while on the job.


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Daring to cover the Womenpriests camp

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Please grant me a moment to help readers flash back to a few recent GetReligion posts focusing on mainstream news media coverage of the Womenpriests movement. It focused on an event in Baltimore, a public rite in which four women were hailed as Roman Catholic priests.


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In praise of journalistic restraint

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Back in May, a Hasidic newspaper in Brooklyn airbrushed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Counterterrorism Director Audrey Tomason out of that photo of a group of White House insiders watching the Osama bin Laden raid. And people freaked out about it. It caused quite the kerfuffle for the paper, Di Tzitung.


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