Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
For this week’s Crossroads podcast, I spoke with host Todd Wilken about media coverage of changes to the Roman Catholic liturgy. One of the things I keep reflecting on, and I know we shouldn’t praise that which should be done, is that I really do think the level of coverage was a good thing. So often we see major issues in the lives of religious adherents that are completely under the radar of many in the media.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, either because you haven’t paid close attention or don’t live in one of the areas currently being bombarded with ads, but the Mormon church has launched a flashy new public relations campaign. The Mormon church running ads is not new, but an article by The New York Times’ Laurie Goodstein explains why this campaign is different:
As Mitt Romney inches closer to the GOP nomination, we are nearing the point at which the mainstream press — especially Comedy Central — begins to realize that it’s time to cover a different Mormon story.
I’m going to break some news to you. It’s very difficult and you’ve probably never heard about it. Certainly the Washington Post hasn’t.
Reporting on sports and religion is a messy business. When these worlds collide in a news story, the finished product is often filtered through the reporter’s prism of beliefs and prejudices. The advocacy journalism common to European newspapers, but restricted to the op-ed pages of most quality American papers, tends to run riot.
Harold Bloom, America’s Greatest Living Literary Scholarâ¢, wrote an essay for the New York Times over the weekend titled “Will This Election Be the Mormon Breakthrough?” The title doesn’t seem terribly ominous, Bloom has famously written a book on American religion, and he’s known for having a fascination with Mormons. What could go wrong?
Being that he’s arguably the country’s best known Mormon and much has been made of the political impact of his religion, there has been comparatively little reporting on how Mitt Romney has actually lived his faith. To some extent this is because it’s easier for reporters to reduce Romney’s faith to just another variable in the political calculus. But it’s also true that reporting on someone’s religious life is a deeply personal matter, and it requires great effort and understanding to do it right.
I haven’t really followed much of the news from election day, but one of the more intriguing stories was the first recall election ever mounted against a state legislator in Arizona. What’s more is that it was successful. Here’s the Christian Science Monitor:
The Salt Lake Tribune ran a story yesterday about an interesting seminar exploring gay Mormon issues. But the write-up of at least one speech had some rather serious problems with accuracy. Here are the first five paragraphs of the story:
