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 am certainly not the first to note this, so let’s all say this together: What were the editors at Bloomberg Businessweek thinking? Basically, its cover story about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ finances could offend just about anyone who practices just about any kind of faith.
Let’s be honest: Mitt Romney isn’t exactly giving reporters many religion angles for reporters to pitch. He doesn’t talk about his faith much, so you won’t necessarily see how it explicitly plays out his policies. What’s a reporter to do? Write about his Mormonism, all the time, it seems.
A few years ago, I covered an Atheist de-baptism ceremony where de-converts would blow dry their hair, attempting to reverse whatever they thought baptism meant. It was unclear how many of the few hundred officially renounced a formal membership where they had to do something specific to formally part ways, since it looked more like an excuse for a party.
One of the things that your GetReligionistas keep saying — to the point of aggravating many readers — is that it is often possible for journalists to spot and define a religion ghost quite easily, using relatively few lines of type in this post-USA Today journalistic world in which we live.
Sen. Marco Rubio was in the news quite a bit yesterday. Part of it was that he released his new book. Part of it was that an old Charlie Crist campaign foe who now works for Romney allegedly told a reporter that Rubio wasn’t even being considered for the Veep slot. Another day in the fun, fun world of political reporting.
There were a couple of interesting posts on CNN’s Belief Blog that caught my eye yesterday. The first was a post extrapolating from Bryce Harper’s “clown question” retort a deeper meaning relative to the Washington Nationals phenom’s Mormon beliefs. I then caught myself researching various baseball players’ religious affiliations and was quite surprised to find out that another player I’d met in a bar once was also identified as LDS. But the point being it’s a great hook for a religion angle.
There was a gay pride march the other day in Utah and The Salt Lake City Tribune, in it’s basic report about the event, certainly didn’t shy away from publishing a provocative lede:
The Associated Press has a story about a regulatory agency in Idaho banning the sale of a particular type of vodka on quasi-religious concerns:
So the Politico recently published another lengthy story on Mitt Romney. Now that’s hardly an atypical event for Politico, but this one was a little different.
