I mentioned the story of Shaima Al Awadhi the other day. (Previous coverage here, here and here.) I became mildly obsessed with her after news of her unbelievably brutal killing broke in March. Al Awadhi was only 32 years old when she died and was a mother of five. She was attacked in her home, succumbing to her injuries a few days later. Within days there were thousands of stories about her death, focused on the family’s claim that she... Read more
Two decades ago, while I was serving as the religion writer for The Charlotte News (the afternoon newspaper that later merged with The Charlotte Observer) I heard about a fascinating event in a major local parish. It seems that at the end of a confirmation class, one of the teen-agers told the youth minister that he simply did not believe some of the doctrines included in the vows that he would be asked to recite as part of the sacramental... Read more
On the latest Issues, Etc. podcast, host Todd Wilken and I discuss my recent post on a Washington Post story that featured a red-state American in her natural habitat. I explain why I liked that story better than some other post-election autopsies of Republican-leaning states, such as this New York Times story. While the Post story devoted 1,800 words to attempting to understand a religiously motivated voter, the Times report allowed two paragraphs: The Rev. Brady Cooper, the pastor of New Vision Baptist Church in... Read more
Today’s digest from the Religion News Service (sign up for this very helpful service, if you have not already done so) points readers toward a very important story in the wake of this year’s White House race. Come to think of it, this story has been highly relevant in every single national election year since, oh, 1973. Here is the short RNS blurb for this story: Church-state and atheist groups have long complained about churches endorsing candidates; now they’re going... Read more
Back in March I wrote in “How To Cover A Hate Crime” about my obsession about the horrific beating death of Shaima Al Awadhi, a 32-year-old mother of five: Apparently other people have been obsessed, too, as there are literally thousands of stories out there about the crime — virtually all of them centered around it being an alleged hate crime. In April I wrote in “Reporting The Hate In Hate Crimes“: When we looked at stories last week, we... Read more
Grab your air-sickness bag and let’s dive right into this New York Times sports feature. The italicized phrases below are courtesy of me, not the Times: LYNCHBURG, Va. — Football is not just a sport at Liberty University, the Christian institution founded by Jerry Falwell, it is a mission. At Liberty, once a tiny Bible college but now a budding giant, the plan is for college football — big-time, always-on-television college football — to do for evangelical Christians in the 21st... Read more
Man oh man do I feel conflicted writing this post. Let me state, right up front, that I would be the first news-media critic to argue that mainstream press folks are too quick to take a single statement by a single, often obscure, conservative preacher and then turn it into a national story about how all Fundamentalist or even evangelical Christians think about a given topic. In fact, I once went so far as to argue, at Poynter.org, that it... Read more
A journalism fellowship program I’m involved with recently heard from one Sam Feist, CNN’s Washington, D.C., bureau chief. He told us that many moons ago, he’d written some copy for the on-air talent to read for that night’s show. The line was something like “Clinton believes that the tax bill will pass.” The guy who was supposed to read the line — he happened to be an old-school journalist of some renown — excoriated him. He told Feist that a... Read more
Altogether now, let’s chant: World Ends Tomorrow: Women and Minorities Hit Hardest! Mort Sahl is usually credited with coining this “fake but accurate” New York Times headline. Though offered as sarcasm, Sahl’s joke has survived for 25 years because it encapsulates the world view many critics see in the Gray Lady’s reporting. The Time‘s intellectual outlook, its weltanschauung, is of an insular urban American establishment. Though this viewpoint is often expressed in the espousal of liberal politics — that is but... Read more
OK, let’s deal with some basic questions about Catholic bishops and politics. In terms of basic journalism language, when the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops released pastoral documents about, oh, nuclear weapons, were these statements doctrinal or merely political? When the bishops speak out on America’s actions abroad, let’s say in Iraq or the Middle East in general, are there statements doctrinal or merely political? When the bishops release pastoral letters on issues of economic justice, are these statements merely... Read more
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