Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
First things first: The Indianapolis Star team deserves quite a bit of credit for the quick news feature it produced the other day about the death of Andrew Moore, a Thomas Aquinas College student who was killed while walking from coast to coast during a prayer marathon in opposition to abortion.
I was reading this Bloomberg analysis by Josh Barro of the most recent movement against Chick-fil-A, which I’ll share before I get to what I really want to talk about:
Think of this post, if you will, as a sequel to that “define meditation” piece that I wrote here the other day.
Last week I saw Chick-fil-A trending on Google and thought there must be some delicious promotion, some sort of free sandwich you get for dressing up like a cow. Eager to get a freebie, I clicked through to find out why people were searching.
A reader sent in this story from the (Rochester, New York) Democrat and Chronicle with the note, “Is it possible to be any less subtle in presenting one’s subject as a saint? Or, conversely, anyone who disagrees as possibly evil?”
In my experience, the BBC does not “get religion”. I am not speaking of the reporters assigned to cover religion stories — they are a professional crew and are always worth reading. I find the problem with the BBC’s coverage arises when a religion angle appears in a non-religion story. More often than not the BBC is at sea when it comes to the faith. You can see this confusion in the BBC’s coverage of the death of Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya.
As always, the tragedy in Aurora led to quite a bit of writing — whether reporters knew it or not — focusing on issues linked to “theodicy,” a theological term that has frequently been discussed here at GetReligion. At the heart of all discussions of “theodicy,” by definition, are questions about the nature and origins of evil, seen in light of the existence of a good and loving God.
One of the most important things for reporters to do when covering a new study is to read the study and the supporting documents. There was a particularly good recent example of what happens when reporters don’t do that.
How do you spot a fake news trend? You start asking questions. You find out what key figures are behind something, how much money goes into it, who knows about it.
