The last night at the Republican convention was one that included a ton of religion. While some of the networks didn’t cover all of the speeches, there were multiple testimonies from people who talked about Mitt Romney’s life as a Mormon. They gave truly interesting testimonies about how Romney had interacted with them in their lives. One liberal Mormon I follow on Twitter joked, saying, “Y’all just went to Mormon church.” But in a world of limited resources, networks have... Read more
Call it the OTHER church-state controversy that is making waves in Russia right now. A month or so ago, The Washington Times ran an interesting article about the ongoing debates in Russia about whether or not to bury the embalmed body of Soviet patriarch Vladimir Lenin. When I started reading this interesting story, I immediately thought two things. (1) I bet that the story misses the main ghost in this topic, which is why it is so important — in... Read more
A Los Angeles Times story this week on a Muslim youth camp starts out as one of those lazy summer features that most reporters could write in their sleep: It’s a hot summer morning and the campers trundle through the gates of a Pasadena grade school, then fall in with their age groups: the Seeds, the Dates, the Coconuts and the Trees. A day of typical camp activities awaits: scavenger hunts, a “pirates and princesses” dress-up play and water-balloon tosses.... Read more
I realize that this is strange, but I continue to read press reports (wink, wink) containing evidence that Mitt Romney is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that this could cause him trouble with evangelical Protestant Christians. Am I alone in reading about this? I am not sure precisely why this Mormon element of his history is so problematic, even to these strange evangelicals folks, since the mainstream media coverage rarely, if ever, publish... Read more
Normally I criticize the media for its single-minded obsession and focus on politics. A journalist friend on the political beat recently suggested that most media has become a trade press for the political class and I think there’s a lot of truth in that. But even I get very excited about political conventions. Since I was a child — and yes, I was a weird child — I absolutely loved listening to political speeches at conventions. I can still quote... Read more
Anyone who knows anything about the history of religion-news coverage in the journalism marketplace knows that there used to be an age in which America’s major newspapers — the top 10 to 20 markets, mainly — all had “religion editors” whose primary duty was to produce materials for the weekly “religion pages” that were buried somewhere back inside the Saturday newspapers. These reporters occasionally wrote stories for the front page, perhaps when the city’s most powerful high-steeple church got a... Read more
About that high-profile claim that a political and cultural progressivism “literally bleeds through the fabric” of The New York Times: Anybody catch the story on Tyler Clementi’s parents leaving their evil, gay-bashing evangelical church? The parental guilt and grief that drip from nearly every paragraph of this story will grip you. A big chunk of the top of the report: RIDGEWOOD, N.J. — When Tyler Clementi told his parents he was gay, two days before he left for Rutgers University in the fall... Read more
Earlier this week, the Associated Press had a nice long story on a Taliban fighter’s religious liberty. “American Taliban fighter Lindh: Prison ban on daily group prayer violates religious freedom” begins by telling us that a federal prison rule barring John Walker Lindh from group prayer is “absurd” and is “causing him to sin against his religion by prohibiting such gatherings in the name of security.” By the fourth paragraph, we learn that he is allowed pray in a group... Read more
How far should the press go to acculturate their overseas news stories — to make them palatable to an American audience while also being true to the underlying facts? NPR Morning Edition reporter Lauren Frayer had a great story last week that “gets religion”, but also brought this issue to mind. Her report broadcast on Pakistan’s Aamir Liaquat was an example of solid reporting. Her story entitled “Pakistani Televangelist Is Back On Air, Raising Fears” meets the Orwell test for journalism... Read more
One of the best strategies journalists can use when dealing with religious people — especially those with intense and even unusual, beliefs — is to give these folks some time and space in which to explain what they do believe (and often what they do NOT believe). I have been waiting for a major news publication to attempt this approach with supporters of Todd Akin’s stunningly strange beliefs on conception and rape, if such people can be found and accurately... Read more
GetReligion
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In