Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Plans to end property tax exemptions for the Catholic Church are one of the top stories in the Italian press this morning. On 15 Feb 2012 Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti released a statement saying he will introduce legislation requiring the Catholic Church to pay taxes on all its commercial properties.
In light of his upcoming elevation into the red-hat crowd, I thought it would be good to dip into my GetReligion folder of guilt and take a look at that recent New York Times mini-profile of New York Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan.
I’ve mentioned before that I once had to get a special dispensation to work at a newspaper because my degree was not in journalism but, rather, in economics. Have you ever been in a newsroom with a bunch of journalism grads who don’t know how to calculate anything meaningful about, say, the most recently released budget document because, well, their degrees are in journalism? I have. It’s not pretty. If you think some reporters have trouble getting religion, let me assure you that many reporters also have trouble getting statistics.
The frame game continues, with a coalition of conservative religious groups — the traditionalist wings of most major religious groups — insisting that their battle with the Obama White House is not essentially about birth control, but about religious liberty and the separation of church and state. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, of course, says the battle is about birth control and quality health care.
Ben Smith reports that Democratic Senators were furious at MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” over how it covered the Obama Administration’s mandate affecting religious people and their organizations:
For several years now (click here for an early post) I have been asking a rather basic journalistic question: “What is Newsweek?”
Tmatt did a rather comprehensive look at how framing will play a big part in media coverage of the Obama Administration’s mandating of what religious institutions should and should not offer in their employee benefits.
Rick Santorum is not a Protestant. He has not called for public schools to teach creationism. Notwithstanding claims made by the Telegraph that the former Senator from Pennsylvania is an evangelical and a creationist — Mr. Santorum remains not guilty of these charges.
