Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
I never get a chance to look at stories about libertarianism and religion because, frankly, there aren’t that many of them. But the Washington Post had a story that joined these two topics and it was actually really good. Good stories about libertarianism and religion are even rarer to find.
I like to collect examples of the media attributing to their favorite literary or public figures quotes that actually come from somewhere else.
Some news organizations are working in their editorials and opinion pieces (if not elsewhere) — to downplay, denigrate or outright dismiss the religious liberty concerns some Americans have expressed recently. And yet, particularly when it comes to a new federal mandate requiring some religious organizations to violate their doctrines or face strict fines and penalties, people keep expressing these concerns.
Before we get going with what I’m sure will be a heavy duty week in GetReligion post (and yes, I have a couple of posts I’m writing right now on coverage of religious freedom issues) I had to share something from NPR’s Weekend Edition on Saturday.
The last few months have seen a few stories about children managing conflicts with their religious beliefs. There was the story about the Orthodox Jewish day school in Houston that won its regional championship to advance to the boys basketball state semifinals but couldn’t play because the game was scheduled during their Sabbath. There was the story about a school run by the Society of Saint Pius X that forfeited a baseball game rather than compete against a girl, in violation of their beliefs about treating women with respect.
Last week we looked at NPR’s self-analysis of its bias in favor of same-sex marriage. Even before I wrote that, I wanted to look at this earlier piece by Brian Stelter at the New York Times headlined “Did the News Media Drive the Gay Marriage Debate?” So we’re finally getting around to it.
When I came across this Associated Press story about the trial of a Muslim U.S. soldier accused of planning to bomb Fort Hood troops, I had to go back and check out our analysis of stories from when then the news first broke last year. It’s instructive. In the breaking news, we looked at how the soldier, Army Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, was identified as well as how his religion was put in context with other aspects. For instance, he’d recently had his efforts to be given conscientious objector status held up because he’d been caught with child pornography.
Do you remember the conflagration that erupted in the mainstream media, fueled in part by members of the mainstream media, when the Susan G. Komen Foundation decided to stop voluntarily giving a small portion of its budget to the even larger Planned Parenthood? Do you remember some of those nightly newscasts?
