I'm a media critic who specializes in religion coverage. Over at GetReligion, we produce daily critiques of how well the mainstream media handle religion news. It's been a weird couple of weeks. There was, for instance, the CBS slideshow of "March for Life activists" that somehow managed to avoid capturing a single picture of, well, a March for Life activist (despite their being, literally, hundreds of thousands of them). Instead, a dozen or so pro-choice activists were photographed and rephotographed.
And there has been the surprisingly restrained coverage of the Obama Administration's aggression against Catholic and other religious charities. They have one year to choose the impossible -- whether to stop serving the poor or violate their conscience. Neither option is fair. When the HHS rule was met with a huge backlash -- literally 80% of bishops have issued personal communications to their dioceses condemning the intrusion on religious freedom -- most media outlets ignored it. Some still haven't even covered the general rule!
Read Full Article »