Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to the dramatic art; for the object of journalism is to make events go as far as possible. Thus it is that all journalists are, in the very nature of their calling, alarmists; and this is their way of giving interest to what they write. Herein they are like little dogs; if anything stirs, they immediately set up a shrill bark.
We’ve been talking quite a bit about how the public outcry over religious freedom issues has been portrayed in the press. When the Obama administration created a new requirement that religious employers fully fund abortion drugs, contraception and sterilization, many religious employers and their supporters cried foul. The people who support the mandate argue that free contraception is a fundamental right that the government must force employers to provide. Further, failing to force employers to provide these things constitutes a war on women.
When the experts start talking about elite private universities — non-Atlantic Coast division — Vanderbilt is always near the top of the list. The school is so prominent, especially as a member of a major sports conference, that people often forget that it is, in fact, a private school.
As the Supreme Court hears arguments on the health care law this week, religious groups will be among those watching closely. Leading some of the response to the Health and Human Services ruling employers providing contraception, Timothy Dolan is likely to be among those particularly interested in the outcome. Last week, we looked at Newsweek‘s profile of the archbishop of New York, one that I thought did a nice job . After some less than ideal coverage of Dolan, it’s nice to see someone take a more thorough look from more sides, including historical and political. Read it again.
If you are going to read the latest New York Times piece on candidate Rick Santorum and the “Catholic vote,” your first task is to keep reading — past the headline, the one that simply says: “Santorum Fails to Capture Catholic Vote.”
It didn’t take me very long, after I arrived in Charlotte, N.C., to get a bit frustrated with the leaders of that city’s powerful African-American churches.
In the lead-up to Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to Mexico, news reports were oddly obsessed with a sort of popularity contest between the current and preceding pope. We kept joking about the secret “enthusiasm meters” reporters must be consulting to come up with stories such as this one from December:
The Guardian has a really interesting story (“Cross and bed found in Anglo-Saxon grave shed new light on ‘dark ages’“) about how Cambridge archaeologists are thrilled by their recent discovery of a 7th century grave with body of young woman on a bed with an ornate gold cross:
