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How the media covered religion
The Pew Forum tells us how the news media covered religion in the 2008 campaign.
- Religion stories accounted for 4% of the news coverage.
- 53% of the religion stories were about Obama. Palin got 19% of the religion-focused stories, and John McCain got only 9%.
- Biggest religion story—rumors that Obama is a Muslim (30%). Then Palin and her family life, Rick Warren and his Saddleback Forum, and abortion. Clergy (Jeremiah Wright, Michael Pfleger and John Hagee) took up 11% of the religion coverage. James Dobson took 5%.
- Culture war issues didn’t get a lot of attention. Social issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research comprised 9% of religious-focused news and only 1% of all news coverage.
Read the entire report here.
Topic: Campaign 2008, WorldMagBlog
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back to top11 Comments to “How the media covered religion”
I think if Mike Huckabee had won the Republican nomination, then there would have been more focus from the mainstream media on religious views. Throwing Sarah Palin into the mix as late as the Republicans did brought a bit more focus on religious issues but not to the extent a more right leaning presidential candidate would have brought. McCain’s presence I think affectively extinguished religion from the presidential debate even though McCain has a faith.
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The media never covers religion in terms of actual matters of faith. It is always covered like zoology, observing the strange behavior at the fringe and chortling lightly to one another.
The media covers the bizarre and weird, like Rev Wright and places conservatives and Islamic fundamentalists in the same taxonomy. And if public funding is involved, then we are lectured by Moyers and NPR and others about the proper way to view religion, as comforting mythology, an opium that pacifies ignorant and bitter gun owners.
The Pew Forum got it right:
“there was little attempt by the news media during the campaign to comprehensively examine the role of faith in the political values and policies of the candidates, save for those of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.”
“And when religion-focused campaign stories were covered by the mainstream press, often the context was negative, controversial or focused on a perceived political problem.”
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rumors that Obama is a Muslim (30%).
That can’t be right! Everybody knows (per Make It Man and others here) that the media covered up for Obama and refused to report anything but praise about him.
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#3 the media covered up for Obama and refused to report anything but praise about him.
Are you saying that being a Muslim is not praiseworthy?
No news organization said that Obama was a Muslim now. The so-called rumors that Obama was a Muslim as a child came from his own memoirs, which he recently revised for political expedience. It isn’t a rumor if Obama admited it.
The real question is why Obama chose to cover up his own heritage.
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The real question is why you wingnuts keep peddling this tired, long-debunked and ineffective innuendo.
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Well Xion?
It’s well known that Obama’s father listed his religion as “Muslim” on a school form when Obama was far too young to be actually practicing any religion. Nothing about that has been “revised.”
So do you have evidence that Obama has been a practicing Muslim by choice as opposed to by parental declaration? Or better yet, as an adult when it might actually have been a meaningful religious commitment? Or are you just breaking the Ninth Commandment again?
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No one says Obama is a Muslim now, except Muslims and wingnuts. Give it a break already!
Obama is a practitioner of Black Liberation Theology, which has its roots in Marxism, Islam and Christianity.
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You accused Obama of covering up his heritage. Where is the cover-up? How do you cover up something that’s already widely known?
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#8 SteveG. Obama covered up his Muslim childhood education by removing his own words admitting this from later editions of his book.
No one cares about this. But the cover up is strange. He abandons his friends and his heritage for political expediency. It worked for him. But it also proves he has no backbone.
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Obama covered up his Muslim childhood education by removing his own words admitting this from later editions of his book.
Source?
I have not heard of this.
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But again I ask … how can you “cover up” something that’s already known?
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