2014-01-20T07:35:08-05:00

Last updated on: January 20, 2014 at 7:35 am   By

News travels fast. Sometimes. In 1999, The Associated Press reported on Bible Belt states battling the highest divorce rates in the nation. As religion editor of The Oklahoman in 2002, I wrote a series of stories on Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating’s effort to reduce my home state’s No. 2-in-the-nation divorce rate. Nearly a decade later, CNN became the latest to report that — surprise, surprise — D-I-V-O-R-C-E is a problem in the red states. Just last week, I referenced Oklahoma’s high divorce rate again in... Read more

2014-01-20T15:50:11-05:00

Last updated on: January 20, 2014 at 3:50 pm   By

So let’s try this again. The other day I wrote about a news report that ran in The Los Angeles Times that used a very interesting and, in the context of Israel and the Middle East, very loaded term. Here is the lede on that piece, once again: WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday condemned as “offensive” the reported comment of Israel’s defense minister that Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s campaign for Mideast peace grows from his “messianism.”... Read more

2014-01-18T11:45:56-05:00

Last updated on: January 18, 2014 at 11:45 am   By

Where is Jahi McMath, and what is the latest installment of her story? I’m glad you asked! Host Todd Wilken and I talked some about this and other subjects during this week’s installment of Crossroads. (This is my third podcast, and I like to think I’m not embarrassing myself as badly with experience. This being interviewed business is tough when there’s not a delete key between you and your thoughts.) As you’ll remember from my post last week, McMath is... Read more

2014-01-17T13:54:52-05:00

Last updated on: January 17, 2014 at 1:54 pm   By

Week after week, month after month, year after year, I write GetReligion posts in which I fault mainstream sportswriters for looking the other way when they encounter religious facts and themes related to the lives of amateur and professional athletes. Some reporters ignore or radically downplay the religious elements in the lives of important athletes and coaches (hello, Ravens-beat editors at The Baltimore Sun). Then there are journalists who allow athletes to flash the God-card in the language of a... Read more

2014-01-17T15:05:41-05:00

Last updated on: January 17, 2014 at 3:05 pm   By

A positive news story about a political newcomer isn’t unusual. Newspapers and television outlets do these sorts of things regularly, and for all sorts of reasons. So on one level, it’s not all that surprising that the Los Angeles Times offered a rather complimentary — some might even say “fawning” — profile of New Age authoress and teacher Marianne Williamson, who is challenging longtime area Congressman Henry J. Waxman in the 2014 elections. Here is a sample of the prose:... Read more

2014-01-16T10:22:00-05:00

Last updated on: January 16, 2014 at 10:22 am   By

Sometimes, in this tricky world of media criticism, it’s hard to pay attention to what someone said without focusing too much on which person, from what group, did the alleged media criticism. So in this case, let’s read some of the words in a specific op-ed essay before we get to the issue of who wrote them. This is a short piece, so we can actually parse most of the actual contents. Let’s begin at the beginning: Not a day... Read more

2014-01-17T00:52:21-05:00

Last updated on: January 17, 2014 at 12:52 am   By

The financial difficulties facing the Washington National Cathedral were the subject of a local news item in the Washington Post this week. The basic story line is valid: “cathedral short of cash seeks creative ways to generate income.” But as  GetReligion editor tmatt observed in an an impromptu story conference, this piece had journalistic “holes you can drive a ’60s VW Microbus through… .” The few errors in Anglican polity found in the story would likely distress only the perpetually... Read more

2014-01-15T16:05:35-05:00

Last updated on: January 15, 2014 at 4:05 pm   By

Congrats to @RNS contributor @LillyAFowler, succeeding @townsendreport as #religion writer at @STLtoday. Starts Jan. 20. #journalism — GetReligion (@GetReligion) January 11, 2014 @GetReligion Thanks much! Big @townsendreport shoes to fill. Will do my best. — Lilly A. Fowler (@LillyAFowler) January 10, 2014 @LillyAFowler Congratulations, Lilly. You'll be great. Can't wait to read your stories. @GetReligion @mattfranck @stltoday @RNS — Tim Townsend (@townsendreport) January 13, 2014 In case you missed our tweet — you do follow GetReligion on Twitter and Facebook, right?... Read more

2014-01-15T12:08:10-05:00

Last updated on: January 15, 2014 at 12:08 pm   By

Holy dictionary! Talk about leaving a crucial term in a story undefined, unexplained, unattributed or all of the above. I almost spit my Diet Dr Pepper all over my iPad this morning (which is easier to clean than a computer keyboard, just sayin’) when I read the top of this Los Angeles Times report about Secretary of State John Kerry’s ongoing, some would say “relentless,” campaign to make headlines in the Middle East. Spot the land-mine term in this opening:... Read more

2014-01-15T09:29:05-05:00

Last updated on: January 15, 2014 at 9:29 am   By

My home state of Oklahoma made big news Tuesday when a federal judge struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. The New York Times noted that the ruling occurred in the “heart of the Bible Belt,” while The Associated Press characterized Oklahoma as “the buckle of the Bible Belt.” (Religion angle, anyone?) For the Tulsa World — whose banner headline today proclaimed “Gay marriage wins” — the ruling hit especially close to home, and not just because a Tulsa-based judge made... Read more

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