I’ve been a contributor to GetReligion since 2015, when founder Terry Mattingly recruited me over salad at an Annapolis mall eatery. I’m grateful that he did.
Seven years is, for me, a hefty professional run. But nothing lasts for ever. Change is constant. In short, this is my last regular GetReligion post.
During my time here I’ve noticed what I consider an imbalance in the stories GetReligion bloggers generally choose to critique. It is this: The underwhelming and frequently inaccurate religion news coverage too often offered by “mainstream media” is criticized at GetReligion on a near-daily basis. The ignorance of important religion details and the coverage’s overall poor quality are often attributed to mainstream journalists’ “secular,” or “progressive,” worldviews.
Another regular criticism is that mainstream media journalists view everything through a zero-sum political lens. This, goes the argument, renders them incapable of understanding or communicating religious complexity as it’s actually lived by believers living outside the blue-state mindset. Politics is all that really matters, is the trope.
hese broadsides are standard GetReligion fare. Importantly, the accusations are generally on target. It’s more than a coincidence that the GetReligion team members behind this website have decades of experience in the mainstream press.
Religion journalism has suffered greatly in this Internet era. Relatively few news outlets ever invested in upping their religion coverage. Today, even fewer do. Blame that on journalism’s downward economic spiral brought about by the World Wide Web explosion — a major theme here at GetReligion.
However, what’s too often missed here is criticism of the similar lackluster coverage originating in clearly conservative media. At GetReligion, conservative-market media more often than not get a pass. This is, in part, because conservative media’s most popular content is offered by right-wing commentators who make little to no effort to hide their biases and whose stock in trade is pure opinion.
