The Christian Science Monitor has been tripped up by the African press and the internet, reporting as breaking news an item almost two years old. The gist of the story entitled “Churches feel vulnerable after Mugabe reelected in Zimbabwe” printed on 10 August 2013 is correct — church leaders are worried what Robert Mugabe will do following his reelection as president — but the background information used to pad out the article is incorrect. I sympathize with the reporter on... Read more
The Washington Post had a religion news blog item last week headlined, horrifyingly, “‘Some girls have been married 60 times by the time they turn 18′.” The story somewhat conflates marriage of young women with the epidemic of children sold into marriage. I also worried about the veracity of the statistics and the context in which some claims were made about pregnancy health. But let’s go on into the religion angle: But some girls who grow up in Egypt’s poor... Read more
Having grown up in a large Catholic family that volunteered at her church, a former tech executive leaves her job at a large philanthropic foundation to take a job at a small charity founded by a Jesuit priest and named after a Biblical character. Do you think there might be some faith-related angle to this story? NPR doesn’t seem to think so. In their profile of Patty Stonesifer, CEO of Martha’s Table, NPR overlooks any hints that religion might be... Read more
Man, that Tim Tebow is way more popular than he should be, in light of his third-string quarterback status. Why is that? And that Tebow guy does so much charity work and keeps going so far out of his way to identify with people and to make that one-on-one connection that is so rare in the world of mega-celebrities. What’s that all about? You can tell that the Yankees up at The Boston Globe are trying to figure out what... Read more
In the 1990s, before I became a religion writer, I covered education for The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City’s daily newspaper. I wrote numerous stories on the school choice movement, from vouchers to magnet schools to charter schools. In 1999, I won a two-month travel fellowship from the Education Writers Association to investigate school choice in Oklahoma City and other cities nationally. I teamed with The Oklahoman’s database editor Griff Palmer, now with The New York Times, on that project, which won a... Read more
I would like to draw your attention to a 28 July 2013 piece in the New York Times entitled “Putin in Ukraine to Celebrate a Christian Anniversary”. The article reports on the interplay of religion, politics and culture in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Yet the mention of religion in a story does not necessarily mean the reporter “gets religion.” The article opens by focusing on what the Times sees as the political significance of the event, and... Read more
I’m a sucker for a good follow-up story and the Associated Press hit this one out of the park. It’s a follow-up to the horrible shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin last year. Religious perspectives are woven throughout the piece, including in this lede: OAK CREEK, Wis. (AP) — Sikh temples generally have four doors, one on each side of the building, as a symbolic invitation to travelers in every direction. But after a lone gunman walked into a... Read more
“Both Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant media have for years been drawing public attention to the persecution of Christians in many countries,” says the renowned sociologist of religion, Peter Berger. “Secular media have been less attentive; some have ascribed this to an anti-Christian bias; I rather doubt this—more likely it comes from the fact that many otherwise well-informed journalists are less informed on religious matters.” Berger is probably right — which is cause for optimism. The condition of being “less... Read more
Not that there’s anything wrong with that … A front-page Los Angeles Times headline this week reminded me of that old “Seinfeld” catchphrase. Here’s the headline that the Times ran with a Column One feature: Argentina’s ‘slum priests’ focus on helping over converting The subhead: They hear confessions from drug dealers and hit men and spend more time on problems practical than spiritual. The movement shunned by the church decades ago now gets support from Pope Francis. So immediately, the... Read more
Yesterday I found out about protest against the media’s coverage of abortion. It’s called March On The Media and the band of protesters will go to ABC News studios in Washington, D.C. to demand better news coverage. Was it a commenter here who suggested that the massive throngs of annual pro-life marchers should re-route through the Washington Post newsroom if they wanted to get noticed? Not a bad idea, actually. Lila Rose, the human rights activist and undercover sting journalist... Read more
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