Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Can a dog be a good Catholic? Must a dog be baptized before it receives Holy Communion? For that matter, can a dog be saved? Will all dogs go to heaven, or does Laika’s 1957 launch mark the apogee of canine celestial progress?
A friend in Turkey alerted me to a weird situation of two media outlets telling different versions of the same story. First, from Hurriyet:
This morning, a Sikh gurdwara was the scene of a horrible shooting. Police have confirmed that seven people, including a gunman, have died.
Sports reporters write stories very quickly, feeding editors literally on deadline. My sports reporter husband jokes that political reporters stress out maybe once a year during election nights when nearly every weekend has at least two election-like nights for sports. In many ways, they have been doing what Twitter users are now figuring out, how to report reactions professionally as you experience them before writing the big picture piece later.
Finding the line between sensation and responsible reporting can be a difficult task. There are times when the subject of a news story will say something outrageous that causes a reporter to lay down his pen and ask, “Did you really mean that?” Over the top quotes can make a story pop — providing better placement in a newspaper and a brief “buzz” for the story. It can also distort the narrative, changing the story from the issues under discussion to comments about the issues.
You may have heard, already, that the Rev. Billy Graham joined millions of other Americans by eating a symbolic Chick-fil-A sandwich on Wednesday.
Let’s do another quick recap on media coverage of the Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. Yesterday we discussed the decision of Mark Krzos, a Fort Myers News-Press reporter, to publicly disparage the people he was covering for his local paper. We already updated the post to show that his editor responded to the controversy but you can also see his public statement denouncing the reporter’s comments at Romenesko.
One of the most notorious criminal cases in modern European history has returned to the public eye, dominating the front pages and leaders of Belgium’s newspapers. A judge has agreed to release Michelle Martin from prison on the condition she enter the Convent of the Les Soeurs Clarisses de Malonne (Poor Clares) and remain under police supervision.
