Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
If you wanted to know who John McCandlish Phillips was, as a New York Times journalist, all you really needed to do was listen to the words of other journalists. Here are two of my favorite quotes along those lines, drawn from a classic profile in The New Yorker (which is now behind a firewall, unfortunately).
Last week, the people who produce the Associated Press Stylebook issued a few revisions. One of them was for the term “Islamist.” It used to read:
One of the most awkward and painful truths in American higher education is that it is perfectly legal for private colleges and universities — on the left and right — to discriminate against people who refuse to follow, or at least respect, the teachings at the core of these voluntary associations. However, and this is the tricky part for many journalists, these institutions must use a truth-in-advertising approach when dealing with potential students, faculty and the public.
This whole GetReligion operation, as regular readers know, exists to look at the good and the bad in the mainstream media’s attempts to cover religion news, events and trends.
I would love to critique the coverage of the trial of Kermit Gosnell, the abortion doctor whose mass murder trial is going on right now in Philadelphia.
The New York Times article “Power Struggle Is Gripping Iran Ahead of June Election” offers a detailed examination of the Iranian political scene as the country prepares to elect a successor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Well written and intelligently crafted, the article, as the lede notes, discusses the:
Of the many sad stories this weekend, one was the news that Rick Warren’s son Matthew killed himself. Suicides are difficult to cover and there’s some (though probably not enough) debate about when and how to cover them. In this case, the news was announced in emails to the congregation and staff of Saddleback Church, the megachurch founded by Warren. It’s reasonable to cover this death, I think.
A reader sent in a story from Louisiana focusing on a Catholic-education topic that will — trust me — be in the news more and more in the years ahead.
