Having been a reader and fan of GetReligion, I’m thrilled and honored to be joining as a contributor. Although I’ve been reading this site since its inception in 2004, my interest in the intersection of religion and journalism extends back a long, long time — maybe even back to the dark era before Terry Mattingly had a syndicated column. As a high school student in the late 1980s, I applied for an internship at my hometown paper, The Clarksville Times.... Read more
Seeking “redemption” after Petraeus scandal, Paula Broadwell looks to faith cbsn.ws/130ApsB — CBS News (@CBSNews) May 1, 2013 Former GetReligionista Sarah Pulliam Bailey noticed something weird about today’s stories about Paula Broadwell. They all refer to her faith but they don’t tell us what her faith is. Above you see the example from CBS News, headlined: Seeking “redemption” after Petraeus scandal, Paula Broadwell looks to faith Reuters: Paula Broadwell looks to faith to rebuild after Petraeus affair And here’s CNN:... Read more
Time for a quick trip into tmatt’s infamous GetReligion file of guilt. You just know that plenty of GetReligion readers are going to send us emails about an essay — in this case, from The Week — that runs with the following headline: Why newspapers need to hire more Christians For starters, it would help rebut conservative concerns about media bias This essay by Matt K. Lewis opened with a reference to the recent death of one of the most... Read more
Context matters. Take the brouhaha that has brewed over comments ESPN NBA reporter Chris Broussard made concerning basketball player Jason Collins publicly coming out as gay. From USA Today to the Los Angeles Times, major media latched on to Broussard’s comments concerning his personal Christian beliefs on homosexuality. Chris Broussard usually offers expertise on fast breaks and zone defense, but on Monday he drove right into America’s culture wars by calling homosexuality “an open rebellion to God” and implying that gay people... Read more
Sometimes other people do such fine GetReligion-esque media criticism that we just like to point at it and then walk away. So that’s precisely what I’m going to do with Melinda Henneberger’s piece “Are there more abortion doctors like Kermit Gosnell? And do we want to know?” that ran online at the Washington Post. What I like about her criticism is that she puts the best construction on what her journalistic colleagues are doing while also asking hard questions —... Read more
At this point, it seems that mainstream journalists have decided that the Womenpriests movement deserves a slow-rolling wave of coverage in which (a) it will clear that the women are operating outside the official borders of the Roman Catholic Church, but (b) the viewpoints of movement leaders will be quoted as gospel truth when it comes time to discuss why the nasty male church leaders believe what they believe. For most reporters, appears that this is now a story in... Read more
Does journalism matter? Not as much as it once did – if audience numbers or circulation rates are any guide. The influence and authority of the nightly network news and the morning metropolitan daily is on the ebb. They like the sea of faith were once, too, at the full, round earth’s shore and lay like the folds of the bright girdle furled. But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating, to the breath of the night... Read more
Suffice it to say that your GetReligionistas frequently receive emails that sound something like this: In the Sunday, April 28, 2013 Seattle Times there is an interesting story on the potential impact of Catholic hospitals taking over public hospitals. … Overall the article is interesting and informative; however, as a former reporter I found it perplexing how the author … slips into what is essentially an advocacy role in the story. Paragraph four reads: “But over the years, these citizens... Read more
Last week we noticed some embarrassing corrections related to how newspapers described the Epistle to the Ephesians. In the comments, Godbeat veteran Ann Rodgers wrote: My paper today carried a Washington Post story about the memorial service for explosion victims in West, Texas, that said President Obama alluded to the “Books of Psalms.” Could that be true? The Books of Psalms? Is Biblical illiteracy this bad? Literary knowledge at an all time low? Let’s check out the passage: It was... Read more
Here we go again. The following has become a GetReligion mantra, when it comes to mainstream media coverage of sports and religion. If journalists are going to play the God card, especially in the ledes of major stories, it really helps if they are willing to devote some part of these stories to detailing the role that faith plays in the lives of the athletes who are being profiled. In this case, we are talking about a piece of scripture... Read more
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