One of the great things about reporting is that you never quite know where a story is going. You interview a disgruntled employee and you’re totally convinced he’s got the goods on his evil employer. And then you do more research and realize the story is a tad more complicated — he’s trying to cover up his own incompetence or corruption. Or he’s merely trying to gain more power by throwing someone else under the bus.
Report on prayer amendment: fair or biased?
The lead story on the front page of today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch â right there beside coverage of the Olympics â is an in-depth examination of a proposed Missouri state amendment related to prayer.
Catholic marriage chief Cordileone sent to San Francisco
On Friday, the Vatican announced that Oakland Bishop Salvatore Cordileone would become the archbishop of San Francisco, succeeding Archbishop George Niederauer who hit retirement age last year.
Catholics, Commies, and Gays -- Oh my!
The story of Archbishop Róbert Bezák is ready made for the Da Vinci Code treatment. Yet the press has bungled a Catholic story — the Associated Press piece that ran in most U.S. newspapers devoted more space to a rehash of the clergy pedophile scandal than the church conflict in the Slovak Republic.
With canonization near, where is media focus?
A few days ago, a thoughtful and committed reader sent in a link to this story with a note that said:
A quiet highway, Rosary beads and a tragic accident
First things first: The Indianapolis Star team deserves quite a bit of credit for the quick news feature it produced the other day about the death of Andrew Moore, a Thomas Aquinas College student who was killed while walking from coast to coast during a prayer marathon in opposition to abortion.
Media canonizes Roman Catholic Bishop of Rochester
A reader sent in this story from the (Rochester, New York) Democrat and Chronicle with the note, “Is it possible to be any less subtle in presenting one’s subject as a saint? Or, conversely, anyone who disagrees as possibly evil?”
BBC bias from Cuba
In my experience, the BBC does not “get religion”. I am not speaking of the reporters assigned to cover religion stories — they are a professional crew and are always worth reading. I find the problem with the BBC’s coverage arises when a religion angle appears in a non-religion story. More often than not the BBC is at sea when it comes to the faith. You can see this confusion in the BBC’s coverage of the death of Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya.
Mourning in Aurora, with a generic Catholic bishop
As always, the tragedy in Aurora led to quite a bit of writing — whether reporters knew it or not — focusing on issues linked to “theodicy,” a theological term that has frequently been discussed here at GetReligion. At the heart of all discussions of “theodicy,” by definition, are questions about the nature and origins of evil, seen in light of the existence of a good and loving God.