Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
On Saturday, a multi-bylined story in the Washington Post wrote that terrorists became helpful intelligence assets after — and only after — they were subjected to the CIA’s harshest interrogation methods, including waterboarding.
That tmatt file of GetReligion guilt is getting pretty deep, in part because of two weeks of dizzying travel — a combination of vacation, work and a funeral for a loved one.
Josh Levin, senior editor of Slate, wrote an epic series this week on the theme “The End of America.” The series begins here, and rolls on in eight segments and about 23,000 words. That’s not counting Slate’s embedded notes and thousands more words in The Fray. Slate also offered discussions on Facebook and Twitter, so the most obsessive readers easily could have devoted an entire week to debating Levin’s reporting.
We need some kind of special award here at GetReligion to salute really fine news stories about religion that still fall one or two facts short of being, you know, just right. It’s frustrating, you know. The story is really enjoyable and then — bzzzzzzz.
Move over Azzam the American. You may be a spokesman for Al Qaeda, but another American in your midst has stolen the media spotlight.
At GetReligion we must often acknowledge how difficult it is for reporters to tell complex stories in shrinking news spaces — which makes it so important to praise reporters who do an exceptional job.
This isn’t a news story, which means that it has no direct connection to the purpose of this weblog. However, it is a insightful note by a veteran religion reporter who, sadly, now has to let his insights into the Godbeat trickle out through blogging at a site other than the one he used to call his own.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting much of my news about Iran from Twitter. This weekend, many of the Tehran-related items were about Neda, a protesting woman who was killed with a shot to the chest. I have chosen not to watch, but there are graphic videos of the death. As those of us outside Iran are struggling to understand all of the social, political and religious nuances at play there, I must comment Robin Wright’s article in Time about the death’s consequences to the struggle there:
Every now and then, editors really need to bite the bullet and tell their troops, “OK, this is just getting too complicated. We are going to have to make room for a sidebar that lets our readers know what in the heckfire we are talking about.”
