All together now. It’s time to recite one of the semi-official GetReligion mantras: “Politics is real. Religion is, well, not all that real (or words to that effect).”
At the heart of the whole “The press … just doesn’t get religion” syndrome is fact (I’m wonder if anyone would dispute this) that politics the most important subject in the world of news, according to the people who run our culture’s most powerful newsrooms.
More often than not, religion news gets major coverage — on television especially — when (a) religion affects politics or (b) religion-news facts and trends are debated in ways that, to many journalists, resemble politics (lots of Catholic hierarchy coverage fits into this mold).
With this in mind, let’s look at a recent NBC News story that ran under this sprawling double-decker headline:
'A deep and boiling anger': NBC/WSJ poll finds a pessimistic America despite current economic satisfaction
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 70 percent of Americans say they're angry at the political establishment
Here is the overture, which centers on the horrors at the heart of the Donald Trump era:
WASHINGTON — The political and cultural upheaval of the last four years has divided the country on ever-hardening partisan and generational lines, but one feeling unites Americans as much as it did before the 2016 election.
They’re still angry. And still unsettled about the future.
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that — despite Americans’ overall satisfaction with the state of the U.S. economy and their own personal finances — a majority say they are angry at the nation’s political and financial establishment, anxious about its economic future, and pessimistic about the country they’re leaving for the next generation.
So what is the most newsworthy angle in this poll-driven story? What is the most shocking information in this package of poll numbers?
It would appear that the biggest news here is -- #Surprise — politics and the political implications of the latest numbers about the state of the U.S. economy.