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There’s no such thing as bad publicity — at least that’s how the saying goes. I beg to differ when it comes to the late Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptist Church and promoting your business.
From my home state today comes this front-page story in The Oklahoman. Take a moment to read it so we’re all on the same billboard, er … page.
Now then, let’s talk about what constitutes newsworthiness and how that differs from creating news.
Hobby Lobby gets its hearing before the Supreme Court this morning. WASHINGTON — A challenge to part of President Obama’s healthcare law that hits the Supreme Court on Tuesday could lead to one of the most significant religious freedom rulings in the high court’s history.
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s health care law gets a return engagement at the Supreme Court (this week) in a case full of hot-button issues: religious freedom, corporate rights, federal regulation, abortion and contraception.
Put another way, it’s a case about God, money, power, sex — and Obamacare.
Hobby Lobby gets its hearing before the Supreme Court this morning. WASHINGTON — A challenge to part of President Obama’s healthcare law that hits the Supreme Court on Tuesday could lead to one of the most significant religious freedom rulings in the high court’s history.
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s health care law gets a return engagement at the Supreme Court (this week) in a case full of hot-button issues: religious freedom, corporate rights, federal regulation, abortion and contraception.
Put another way, it’s a case about God, money, power, sex — and Obamacare.
In a 2006 column about my grandparents, I reflected on my rural upbringing: I close my eyes and I am back in Hayward, a speck on the map in southeastern Missouri’s Bootheel where my Papa and Grandma Ross lived.
I see my grandparents’ wood-paneled station wagon parked outside the two-story house that Papa built himself. Nearby, there’s a boat and fishing poles still dripping wet from a day on the Mississippi River.
I hear the crush of dirt under my feet as my brother, sister, cousins and I play hide-and-seek amid rows and rows of taller-than-us corn stalks. I smell the monster-truck-sized hogs that a neighbor raised in a cesspool of mud and slop.
Before my teenage daughter left on our church’s annual spring break mission trip last week, we made one of our regular visits to Hobby Lobby. Kendall loves to knit and wanted to make sure she had plenty of yarn for the all-day van ride to the U.S.-Mexico border. As regular customers of the arts and crafts retailer — which is based in Oklahoma City, where we live — my family has followed the national chain’s legal fight over Obamacare’s contraception mandate.
Much of the media coverage is, of course, filled with complicated legalese and robotic talking heads on the right and left.
Enter Religion News Service senior national correspondent Cathy Lynn Grossman with a refreshing profile of Hobby Lobby President Steve Green, whose stores are closed on Sundays to “allow employees time for family and worship”:
In Arizona, a religious freedom bill has riled gay rights supporters, as The Associated Press puts it. Or, as a Los Angeles Times headline describes it, gay rights activists are in an uproar over the “religious freedom” (scare quotes courtesy of the Times) measure headed to Gov. Jan Brewer. In Phoenix, readers of The Arizona Republic woke up to this banner front-page headline this morning:
The Republic’s big type certainly plays the story down the middle, avoiding the seeming bias of some national media reports.
But what about the local newspaper’s story itself?
Proposed religious liberty exemptions for wedding vendors — such as bakers, florists and photographers — opposed to same-sex marriage keep making headlines. Here at GetReligion, we’ve highlighted recent media coverage of a ballot initiative in Oregon and legislation in Kansas (where the Senate, for now, has killed a controversial measure). The Tennessean reported this week on a similar bill failing in Tennessee.
Meanwhile, LifeWay Research released results of a national survey today. LifeWay’s Bob Smietana has the story:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Americans have always had mixed feelings about religious liberty. Most say it’s important, but they don’t always agree how much liberty is enough or too much.
Ever since the Washington Post dumped its massive On Faith blog, there’s been more chatter about where the religion beat is headed these days. True, On Faith has found a new — and more attractively designed — home, but has anyone else noticed the Post spinning off other specialty blogs to new homes? In late 2004, when I did an assessment for Poynter.org — “Help Wanted on the Religion Beat” — I mourned how major papers were increasingly hiring inexperienced journalists to cover religion news.
A decade later, it’s a big deal if anyone — experienced or not — is hired to a full-time job covering religion.
Journalism has seen a sea change in the past decade-plus due to the Internet taking over how news is produced, distributed and funded. Every beat is feeling the pain, as reporters in all specialties — and above a certain age — are losing their jobs. Whole newspapers have gone online only, or cut back to only a few days a week. Not only have religion beat reporters been shed like autumn leaves, all sections of the typical newsroom have been hit with layoffs and buyouts, including one Chicago newspaper that ditched its entire photo staff in one swoop.
In two recent posts — here and here — I critiqued media coverage of proposed religious exemptions for florists, bakers, photographers and others opposed to same-sex marriage. Last month, I examined news reports on a federal judge striking down the ban on same-sex marriage in my home state of Oklahoma.
In Sunday’s Tulsa World, those subject areas came together in a front-page story:
Oklahoma may soon join a growing number of states where same-sex marriage laws and religious liberty concerns are on a collision course.
