Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
I’m not sure what to think of a front-page New York Times story Monday that tried to connect the deaths of three children with a self-published book by Tennessee preacher Michael Pearl and his wife, Debi.
This has certainly been an interesting year for quarterbacks in the National Football League. Trust me, I know that journalists always pay close attention to quarterbacks (I worked in Denver during most of the John Elway era), but it seems to me that news people have been dissecting these guys to an unusual degree, as of late.
The Salt Lake Tribune ran a story yesterday about an interesting seminar exploring gay Mormon issues. But the write-up of at least one speech had some rather serious problems with accuracy. Here are the first five paragraphs of the story:
Located just below the logo at the top of this page is the quote “the press … just doesn’t get religion.” This is the mantra of GetReligion, a website dedicated to critiquing religion reporting in the secular media. (Independent and denominational religion publications such as my own Church of England Newspaper fall outside our remit.)
Anyone who knows anything about mainstream American religion knows that the Southern Baptist Convention is our land’s largest non-Catholic flock. Despite the word “Southern” in the name — and SBC leaders are thinking about changing that — this is an increasingly national church and one with significant ethnic presence, as well.
It’s not every week your own congregation gets a write up in the New York Times. This happened last week to members of Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn with a piece entitled “A Congregation in Skinny Jeans.”
Last week, the great George Conger reflected on the cover of the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo, which featured a cartoon image of Mohammad. He used that incident to discuss two press related issues — the inaccurate claim that Islam prohibits representations of Mohammed and the moral cowardice displayed by many press outlets that respond to terrorist threats with censorship or calls for censorship. He added:
Better yet, say something nutty. And it would be particularly helpful if the nutty thing you said fed into all kinds of stereotypes about intolerant, uneducated hicks who live in the sticks.
The other day, Sarah Pulliam Bailey walked GetReligion readers through an essential piece for all who are interested in the immediate future of The New York Times. I am referring to the New Yorker profile of Jill Abramson, the new editor of the great Gray Lady.
