Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Two basic kinds of stories have been written about the retirement of Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy. The first are about Dungy’s results on the gridiron, his record-setting 10 straight playoff seasons, and six in-a-row seasons of 12-plus wins. The second story is about Dungy’s faith and his personal impact on the world around him.
As part of our new effort to highlight opinion columnist and their work that could have and should have been covered as straight news, I wanted to highlight a pair of articles by Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. The first, which dates just before Christmas, highlights some interesting statistics purporting to show that “[w]e liberals are personally stingy.”
Since so many of you liked talking about Florida Gator two-time champion quarterback Tim Tebow, I thought I would drop this quick follow-up on last night’s national championship BCS championship game. I managed to avoid most of the game until the final quarter, but I happened to stay awake for Tebow’s (short) post-game interview that included a shout out to his Lord and savior Jesus Christ.
I keep forgetting that this evening’s alleged national college football championship game is something in which sports fans are expected to be interested. The lack of a proper method for determining a national champion in college football really puts a downer in my interest in the game. Or maybe I’m still just sore about the Colts and the fact that Tony Dungy likely coached his last game in Indianapolis.
Oh the constant joy it must bring to be a religious person associated with President-elect Barack Obama. With Baptist minister Rick Warren being sued by atheists over the use of the Lord’s name in an inauguration prayer, Obama’s old home church appears to be breathing a sigh of relief now that the election is over and Obama has officially moved to Washington, D.C.
This past week saw two excellent examples of the American media’s efforts at finding and portraying in the most positive light possible Muslims that make claims of being moderate. These two examples, one in The Los Angeles Times and the other in The New York Times, both portray Islamic preachers. Both reach their audiences primarily via the television. And both articles keep the basic beliefs of both preachers fairly obscure.
Time magazine’s Person of the Year feature rightly focused on President-elect Barack Obama. Unfortunately, while the magazine managed to slip in an unremarkable (but first-person) look at Obama’s basketball skills and its influence on his life, none of the magazine’s four articles on the Person of the Year Obama touched on the influence of religion on the campaign of the influence faith has had on Obama’s life.
Sometimes the religious angles in a football story just jump out and grab the sports writer and force them to dig into the topic. For example, see here this excellent profile piece by ESPN.com’s Wayne Drehs on Kurt Warner. This is one of those athletes you simply cannot write about without mentioning his faith:
How often do you see scripture appropriately quoted in a front-page news article? I was hoping I would see something like this in one of the mid-sized American newspapers before the Christmas season was over. To my pleasant surprise, my own local paper, The Indianapolis Star, on Christmas Day gave its readers an informative, meaningful and insightful news article on how the Christmas holiday season and the current economic downturn is affecting people spiritually.
