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The pope is abroad. This means, of course, that it is time to look at the papal texts — Vatican site here — and play a mainstream media game that can accurately be called “spot the political sound bite.”
Coverage in The Guardian, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory and the editorial board of The New York Times were the targets of my wit on last week’s GetReligion podcast. Crossroads host Todd Wilkens and I discussed the media coverage of the Vatican’s announcement that those who followed Pope Francis’ tweets from the World Youth Day celebrations in Brazil would be granted an indulgence.
Every now and then, the editors who run major newspapers get this urge to run a story that simply jumps out at readers and proclaims, “This Is A Religion Story!”
You may have read stories about the Vatican announcing that Roman Catholics may earn time off purgatory by following Pope Francis on social media during World Youth Day. Many of the stories had serious problems. The main problem was getting the theology all wrong.
On one level, the recent Reuters “special report” on the financial issues haunting the 10,600-acre Summit Bechtel Family National Reserve in West Virginia breaks quite a bit of new and important ground about the current challenges faced by the Boy Scouts of America. It’s a must read and it’s clear that this expensive project is — to one degree or another — in trouble.
NPR had a story on the Texas legislature passing what journalists usually call “sweeping abortion restrictions.” Let’s look at a big chunk of the story right at the top:
The Associated Press has a story about the Texas Senate passing a law that would protect some unborn children who had reached five months’ gestation. Or, as journalists always and forever frame it, “sweeping new abortion restrictions.”
The New York Times published a lengthy travel piece with tons of religion in it. It’s written by David Laskin, and nicely weaves religion, history and travel together. A reader complained about one portion, incorrectly, but before we get to that, let’s look at the top of the story.
Someone on Twitter noticed something illuminating about mainstream media coverage of social issues that’s worth a look. Remember, first, how tmatt quoted the New York Times‘ Bill Keller on the bias dividing line of that paper:
