Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
There are times when the BBC is beyond parody. It is so relentlessly awful, biased and reflexively p.c. that many viewers become inured to its excesses. Yet Orla Guerin’s report from Pakistan is quite extraordinary — even for the BBC.
I have been unbelievable swamped all day, working on final grades for the fall term at the Washington Journalism Center. That’s doesn’t matter to GetReligion readers, of course, but it does mean that I have not been plugged into the World Wide Web all day.
We all knew it was coming but somehow that didn’t make the news any easier to bear. Christopher Hitchens, the mighty literary provocateur, died yesterday. This is a profound loss to his wife and family, who loved him so much it hurts to think about. And it’s a loss for the Republic of Letters and all those he touched, including the townfolk of Washington, D.C.
The first word that a journalist needs to think of when writing about former Sen. Rick Santorum is “conservative” and the second is “Catholic.”
Well this is exciting news. The Epistle to the Hebrews, long a highly regarded part of the Christian canon, has also long been shrouded in mystery.
The Life Style section of the Washington Post has an interesting and well crafted story entitled “Rethinking the ink: Laser Tattoo removal gains popularity,” that reports on the flourishing tattoo removal industry. It discusses the current rage for tattoos among the American middle classes. What sets this story apart are the vignettes from those undergoing the painful and expensive procedure to have their body art removed.
Many GetReligion readers will recall that I grew up in Texas as the son of a Southern Baptist pastor. I spent my teen years in Port Arthur, which was and is a rather hellish refinery town on Lake Sabine, on the Texas-Louisiana border. It’s best known as the hometown of Janis Joplin and, trust me, I have always understood where she caught the blues.
It’s no secret that David and Nancy French have been supporters of Mitt Romney and want other evangelicals to join with them. They even built a website in 2006 around the idea. Time magazine just discovered the couple, though, and they want you to know about it.
Yesterday there was big news related to the Higgs boson. That’s the theoretical particle that some scientists believe plays a role in the fabric of the universe. But the story really caught my attention because almost every article referred to it as the “God particle.” So, for instance, here’s the Washington Post:
