It was, for those of us who study media bias, one of the most famous anecdotal leads in the history of the mainstream media’s awkward attempts to write about itself. When reporter Susan Okie wrote on Page 1 of the Washington Post last year that advances in the treatment of premature babies could undermine support for […]
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I have a confession to make. From time to time, I have been known to read about a fascinating article that is in some elite publication that does not publish online versions of its articles and then wait to blog about it until somebody, somewhere goes ahead and posts the text anyway. Thus, I can […]
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Every now and then, a story comes out in a niche magazine or alternative form of media that stops me dead in my tracks and makes me say, “Wow! What a scoop! What will the MSM do with that?” Since this is a blog about the major media and religion news, I tend to wait until […]
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I don’t mean to be snarky about this, and I don’t think that all Godbeat stories must be driven by some statistical formula, but does anyone else thing this major feature story in the New York Times is a little bit strange? The headline is sweeping: “A Guiding Light Leaves His Church in a […]
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Anthony Grafton, a professor of history at Princeton University, has written a thoughtful summary of Pope Benedict XVI’s writings (The New Yorker, July 25). I apologize for my delay in mentioning this essay — it never appeared on The New Yorker’s website, and the paper edition often reaches my home rather late in the publication […]
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I decided to look in the Reporter’s Holy Book, by which of course I mean the AP Stylebook, to see what those gods of style have to say. The entry for abortion reads: “Use anti-abortion instead of pro-life and abortion rights instead of pro-abortion or pro-choice.” I guess only one side gets to choose their name. […]
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