Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
The Huffington Post’s Jon Ward is a thoughtful reporter and one who uncovers ghosts on his political beat with regularity. Earlier this week he wrote about the tension between evangelical morality and politics as it relates to changing marriage law to include same-sex couples.
Let me be honest here and say what I truly want to say about the following New York Times stories: It’s about freaking time. Now, I say that both as a journalist and as one of those old-school supporters of human rights who still likes to quote, every now and then, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from that right-wing think tank, the United Nations.
Yesterday morning there was quite a bit of activity in and near the Supreme Court of the United States. You may have heard about that.
My corner of Florida has been over run by college students on Spring break. While Daytona Beach, Miami and Fort Lauderdale have lost market share over the past 40-years to Texas, Mexico and points South, there are still enough kids in town this week to make the merchants smile and locals complain about “those kids” and their sex, drugs and rock and roll.
No one on the national religion-news scenes writes with more vigor and enthusiasm about America’s sharp turn away from religious doctrine and traditional religious institutions than veteran scribe Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today. Her journalistic glee is completely justified, in my opinion, because this is one of the most important religion-beat stories of our age, especially on the religious left.
After years of pointing out how unbelievably unprofessional the journalism of same-sex marriage coverage was, something weird happened last week. Instead of the typical media suppression and derision, we started seeing stories about the people and arguments in favor of retaining marriage as a heterosexual institution.
Trust me when I say that I am very, very aware, after nearly a decade in this niche in cyberspace, that GetReligion readers are stunningly uninterested in sports news. However, I am a sports fan and I have noticed, as a religion-beat reporter through the years, that religion and sports often get shoved into the same blender in the American marketplace.
If you think general religion coverage is bad, try mixing it with media coverage of science. Then try to find a reporter who handles it well. It’s almost impossible. Back when I started at GetReligion, I could have posted daily on the errors in coverage of what used to be an extremely hot-button topic — stem cell research that destroys embryos.
