Is new media making us dumb and dumber?
January 31, 2009
Listen to The Boundless Show podcast.
Bad reporting on church discipline case in Florida
December 22, 2008
At the GetReligion blog, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway discusses the way journalists have reported the case of Rebecca Hancock, who says she has been harassed and threatened with public rebuke by the leaders of Grace Community Church in Mandarin, Florida:
“There are so many problems with the coverage that it’s hard to get it all down. Note the last line of the first paragraph above. It’s not that the church is going to go ‘public’ with her sin, they’re going ‘very public.’ There’s really no need to overly dramatize the situation, particularly when the woman in question has taken her situation to the national media — and not the congregation.”
“Why aren’t we drawn to Dong Yun Moon?”
December 11, 2008
Eugene Cho thinks it strange that so little attention has been given to the case of Dong Yun Moon, whose family was killed when an F/A-18 crashed into his home in San Diego … while stories about much more banal topics (snow in Texas) are flagged up:
“To be blunt, is it because he has slanted Asian eyes? He’s Asian which means he doens’t look like your prototypical male ‘American’ man.”
Story at Mercury News (San Jose).
How to report on an evangelical scandal
November 26, 2008
At GetReligion, Mollie Ziegler breaks down a recent story by Eric Gorski about disgraced pastor Ted Haggard’s new direction in life:
“The reader isn’t directed how to feel but given a lot to think about. That’s journalism.”
Gorski’s AP story can be found here.
On bias in journalism
November 20, 2008
At GetReligion, Mollie Ziegler reflects on a recent column by the Washington Post ombudsman, Deborah Howell, which examines whether there is any truth to what many Americans believe – that most in the media lean left. Strangely, Ziegler (herself a confessed liberal) notes, Howell quite typically denies the reality of bias, admitting only that there is a perception of bias. Writes Ziegler:
“I love how stories dealing with media bias always paint journalists as the good guys. Imagine a story about some major problem at Enron or in the Bush Administration where it was just asserted that the hearts and motivations of the players were good . . . but some external factor was to blame for the malaise.”
Is Obama the …
November 19, 2008
Antichrist? Apparently some Christians are entertaining the notion. Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans talks about how journalists have handled the rumor at GetReligion:
“If one accepts the notion that 666 signifies the Beast, and that the beast is commonly portrayed as the Anti-Christ — would he announce his coming with a winning Illinois lottery ticket?”
Gibson’s Top 10 religion blogs
November 14, 2008
Catholic author and Pontifications blogger David Gibson lists what he thinks are the top ten religion blogs. Here are the first five (What-no Daily Scroll?)
New books …
November 11, 2008
Terry Mattingly discusses two books related to journalism and religion: Witness to the Truth: Lessons Learned by a Veteran Journalist through Four Decades of Watching the Church, by Louis Moore, and Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication and Communion in the Catholic Church, by Russell Shaw:
“‘I have seen church people . . . violate every one of the Ten Commandments, act boorish and selfish, be prejudiced, broadcast secular value systems and in general behave worse than the heathen people they tried to reach,’ noted Moore. In fact, just ‘name some sin or some act the Bible eschews, and I could pair that vice up with some church leader or member I have known.’”
Dan Wallace introduces a new book on biblical Greek he has written, which deals with the deity of Christ and other important topics: Granville Sharp’s Canon and Its Kin: Semantics and Significance:
“Besides affirming the deity of Christ in both of these passages, the book deals with constructions that do not fit Sharp’s rule and have a different force. “Pastors and teachers” in or “apostles and prophets” in are discussed at length, for example.”
At the Conventicle, yours truly shares about a witty history of the New England puritans: Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates.
And at the 9Marks blog, Deepak Reju recommends How People Change, by Timothy Lane and Paul David Tripp. Says Mark Dever,
“This book is applied theology. It’s about heat, thorns, the cross, and fruit. It’s about present grace.”
‘Christian’ … ‘evangelical’ … What’s in a name?
November 10, 2008
Steve Knight has put up the following video at Emergent Village:
At GetReligion, Terry Mattingly breaks down another news story that seems to misrepresent the foreign policy approach of most evangelicals: “Evangelical–Here We Go Again” (and see this earlier post).
And Phil Johnson clarifies some of his views on evangelicals and politics here.
“Even individual Christians need to consider their priorities from a biblical perspective and make wise choices about the best use of time and resources. Which is ultimately the better long-term answer to sin—law, or gospel?”
Evangelical=?
November 6, 2008
At GetReligion.org, Terry Mattingly reflects on journalist Mark Bowden’s use of the term evangelical in a recent story, which is both disturbing and inaccurate. Bowden writes:
“Take, for just one example, Iran, a thorny problem for the United States in the Middle East. It is a bellicose, evangelical Muslim theocracy seemingly bent on building its own nuclear arsenal, with little regard for international law or, for that matter, civilized behavior.”
Mattingly responds:
“What in the world does “evangelical” — an adjective — mean in this context? People who want to spread their religion just like the nasty evangelicals here in America who, I assume, are preparing to invade Canada with troops to settle issues with other believers (think Iran-Iraq war) up there who disagree with them?”
