It’s a question that I always know I will hear after a lecture on the American model of the press and its emphasis on balance, fairness and the need to cover both sides of controversial stories — which requires journalists to find solid, articulate representatives of the arguments on both sides. Some student will always ask a question that sounds something like this: “OK, but why couldn’t you just interview really dumb, unsympathetic people on one side of the debate... Read more
Two minor media incidents yesterday made me wonder if some of the problems we see with how religion news is covered relates simply to language differences. The first came about in a panel discussion about whether Hurricane Sandy had any political implications. (By the way, see if you can find any ghosts in this New York Times video “Lights Out In Rockaway” about the rough situation those in Queens continue to face a week after the storm hit. The folks... Read more
A reader sent along this story in the Washington Post headlined “Parents accept daughter’s rare illness as’‘God’s will’” with a note: Strange that the Post doesn’t ridicule this family for believing that their plight is God’s will. The piece ran in the Post but it was wisely picked up by Religion News Service and was written originally for The Tennessean. I have been meaning to highlight it for weeks and am thankful to have the opportunity to revisit it. In... Read more
For years, journalists took one of two different approaches when labeling the two sides in America’s legal wars over abortion. On one side, there where the people who — in keeping with the long-standing tradition that movements are allowed to name themselves — called the people who opposed abortion the “pro-life” camp and those in favor of legalized abortion the “pro-choice” camp. The quotation marks, in this case, meant that these were labels used by the activists themselves. Meanwhile, most... Read more
On some levels, the legal drama unfolding in Poland these days could be called the Son of Pussy Riot media storm. Alas, the media coverage of the case of heavy-metal man Adam Darski and his ripped of Bible will, in my opinion, rise or fall depending on whether journalists ask the same kinds of questions in Poland that they needed to ask in Russia. But, for starters, let me note that I oppose blasphemy laws — period. I’m one of... Read more
Before I left on a mission trip south of the U.S. border this past spring, a Facebook friend was so kind as to post a State Department warning for all of us “crazy enough to travel to Mexico.” That same day, I read a wire service report where one source suggested that mission groups going to Mexico “bring a body bag along.” Still, I chose to trust in God and go on the trip. But I prayed hard when a convoy of trucks filled... Read more
The Washington Post ran a piece from Religion News Service with the headline: Catholic bishops make last-minute pitch for Romney Considering that the bishops didn’t even name Vice President Joe Biden when they corrected a false claim he made about the HHS mandate during the debate a few weeks ago, I thought it major news that they’d be making an overt pitch for Romney. Then I read the top of the story: A number of Roman Catholic bishops are making... Read more
Did you know the atonement was a form of divine child abuse? Spend some time in the more recherche corners of academic theology and you will come across this theory. The 1989 essay “For God So Loved the World?” by feminist liberation theologians Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker popularized the phrase that has since filtered down to the popular press. An article on the news portal for the News Corp. chain of newspapers in Australia last week took up... Read more
A week or so ago, I wrote a Scripps Howard News Service column about the survey research indicating that secular and self-proclaimed liberal Americans are much more likely to be prejudiced against Mormon political candidates than are evangelical Protestants, the very folks that everyone has been worried about during the Mitt Romney campaign. That column opened like this: With the White House race nearing an end, it’s time for America’s political pundits to face that fact that millions of voters... Read more
It was three years ago that I read a really interesting story in the Christian Science Monitor about why the Vatican’s “famously staid semi-official mouthpiece” was suddenly doing movie reviews. The reporter explained that Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the paper to discuss cultural issues. The big error in how the media covers this Vatican newspaper is by giving the impression that it’s the official mouthpiece of the Vatican. So we see stories with headlines such as this one from... Read more
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