Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
The other day, Mollie criticized The Washington Post for running a one-sided story about gay marriage in California. Today I say that there is more than one way to be one sided. Consider this Newsweek story from Lisa Miller:
Some stories don’t get religion because they lack necessary details. Of course, few stories can get at the whole truth. But too many stories about religion are bland and unedifying.
For the past three decades, Gold’s Gym and its imitators have gained market share at the expense of the YMCA and YWCA (aka the Young Men’s Christian Association and Young Women’s Association). A whole new culture of fitness for the body’s sake was spawned. Even the 1985 film “Perfect” could not avoid the conclusion that gyms became pick-up points. Now devout Christians are forming their own health institutions.
Lisa Miller of Newsweek wrote about a heretofore unknown element of Barack Obama’s campaign: As many as 100 pastors call in to pray for Obama, including several famous ones, such as T.D. Jakes and Joseph Lowery.
Everyone knows there are two sides to every story. In the case of Fr. Michael Pfleger, there is his side and the side of Chicago Cardinal Francis George. Yet reporters so far have tilted almost exclusively toward the former. That’s a problem.
Imagine getting access to the building that stores files for and against Pope John Paul II’s case for sainthood. How would you explain and describe to readers the process by which this occurs?
As faithful GR readers may know, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. My perception of the local media was that it mostly ignored the region’s Catholics bishops, though not liberal theologians or dissidents. I read long features on the theology of Matthew Fox and top-of-the-fold stories about lay Catholics’ alleged opposition to Church teaching. But I can’t ever remember reading a quote-heavy, profile about the local ordinary.
If I had to teach a child the concept of natural law, I would tell him or her to play Dungeons & Dragons.
I criticized an Associated Press story yesterday for failing Journalism 101. Another AP story, about nonreligious camp, does not suffer from this problem.
