Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Journalists tend to love survey research since it often confirms or rejects their suspicions about trends they more casually observe. But reading through data and spotting the significant trends can get tedious, or–worse–journalists can misunderstand the data.
Regular GetReligion readers may have picked up, through the years, that I spent my teen years in the polluted Texas refinery town to end all polluted Texas refinery towns — Port Arthur. I went to high school with the younger brother of Janis Joplin and, trust me, I have always understood the roots of her anger about her hometown. Click here, folks.
The other day, while cruising around online, I noticed that the newspaper that lands in my front yard had once again been scooped on a major religion story in its own backyard.
A few weeks ago we had an earthquake here in Virginia. I just found out on Sunday that our bell tower at our church in Alexandria experienced significant structural damage from the quake (my husband thought it would have been cool if the bell itself had cracked — it didn’t).
Time Magazine’s website has reprinted a story from the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) that reports on the travails of the Roman Catholic Church in Austria. With an estimated 1.1 million readers the Munich-based daily has the largest circulation of any German language newspaper.
A couple of years ago there was a scandal involving the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Somehow, a decade’s worth of emails between scientists there were leaked to the world. The whole “hide the decline” scandal. Some of these emails suggested that scientists were going to take extreme measures to limit participation by anthropogenic global warming skeptics in academic discourse. Phil Jones, a climatologist there, sent an email that said, in part:
Here’s a little secret known only to faithful religious believers and, perhaps, to journalists who are willing to pay close attention to their lives: People who pray a lot know more about doubt than people who dedicate little or no time to serious prayer.
Imagine how frustrating it must be for journalists when a leading presidential candidate â say Texas Gov. Rick Perry â holds a private retreat with 200 potential supporters sworn to secrecy. (As a believer in freedom of information and open government, I share their pain.)
We’re still recovering a little bit from Bill Keller’s startling column last week, where he framed religious belief next to alien belief.
