(ANALYSIS) “News as we have hitherto known it has died and been laid to rest.” So wrote illustrious former BBC war correspondent Martin Bell, ending his autobiography, “War and the Death of News.” He was not writing the BBC’s obituary, but he could have been. No, he was arguing the BBC no longer knew the difference between fairness and neutrality.
Read MoreOnce again, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops gathered for debates and votes with serious implications for the current occupant of the White House and his supporters.
Read More(ANALYSIS) The Oversight Board, a body making precedent-setting content moderation decisions on the social media platforms Facebook, Instagram and Threads, issued a decision calling on Meta to mitigate information asymmetries in armed conflicts. The Oversight Board is a body examining whether Meta’s decisions are in line with its policies, values and human rights commitments.
Read MoreAs we enter the final two months of the year, I want to take a moment to thank you — for reading, for sharing and for supporting our work.
Read MoreWhile most episodes of “Crossroads” focus on religious issues in news coverage, this week’s podcast was quite different. The hook for my discussion with host Todd Wilken was a New York Times interview in which Hopkins described, in often cryptic language, an “epiphany” that made him the man and movie legend that he is today.
Read MoreWhat do you know? If you go to a typical online dictionary and look up the verb “drawl,” you will find, “to speak slowly with vowels greatly prolonged.”
Read MoreIf the president of the United States boards Air Force One for a dramatic trip to Israel — in the larger symbolic region often called the “Holy Land” — please consider putting at least one or two skilled religion-beat specialists on the airplane.
Read MoreA reporting trip to middle-of-nowhere western Idaho got our Weekend Plug-in columnist thinking about the speck-on-the-map places that chasing stories takes him.
Read MoreThe bottom line: Weiss (a liberal Jew who is married to another woman) has demonstrated a strong belief that real religious believers, acting on real religious beliefs, can shape real news events in the real world.
Read MoreAfter 40-plus years on the Godbeat, let me offer this observation: It’s extremely difficult to write about ancient, complex, often mysterious religious beliefs and doctrines in language that is both accurate and easily understandable in the mainstream media.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Twenty years after Katrina’s landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, the hurricane remains one of the biggest disasters in American history: 1,392 deaths, and damage of about $200 billion (in 2025 dollars). This will be a week of remembrance in New Orleans. We’ll probably hear a lot about the scope of the loss and the failures in response.
Read MoreThe brouhaha over a certain country-themed restaurant/store’s brand redesign touches on a topic that churches encounter at some point. “Someone in your congregation should want to get a cap or t-shirt with your logo on it, and wear it,” said author Mark MacDonald. “It actually represents them, since they are the church.” It goes much deeper than a shirt and expands beyond the church’s walls.
Read More(ANALYSIS) International lawyers from a U.K.-based Doughty Street Chambers and Howard Kennedy raised the dire situation of Iranian journalists globally, with several of them being subjected to serious threats. According to their statement, over the past six weeks, Iranian authorities have intimidated and threatened 45 journalists and 315 of their family members.
Read MoreLegendary journalist Jerry Mitchell reflects on faith and journalism. “The church is supposed to take care of sin,” Mitchell says. “We’re not supposed to wink at it or cover it up.”
Read MoreThis old-school journalism issue loomed over this week’s “Crossroads” podcast as we discussed a new essay in The Atlantic — “Why Marriage Survives” — by sociologist Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.
Read MoreWeekend Plug-in columnist Bobby Ross Jr. reflects on his 35 years in full-time journalism. It started with the editor of a small-town Oklahoma newspaper taking a chance on him.
Read More(OPINION) If you are a regular reader of MinistryWatch, and you appreciate our approach to the news, you should know about Bob Case. In fact, if you read WORLD Magazine, or Christianity Today, or The Dispatch, or any of dozens of other news outlets, you have — whether you know it or not — been influenced by Bob Case.
Read MoreWhat do Texans want to find if they have the financial ability and the time to get away from that searing reality? To be blunt, they are looking for water, breezes, dry air and, yes, altitude. This brings us to the tragic headlines at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Moyers died on June 26 at the age of 91, after a long and complex career in which he served as a speech writer and press secretary for President Lyndon B. Johnson, followed by decades of work with CBS, NBC and PBS. However, before that, the Rev. Bill Moyers was a Southern Baptist pastor in Texas towns like Brandon and Weir. He was proud of those roots and his convictions as a progressive Baptist.
Read MoreBill Moyers was arguably among the best reporters on the religion beat. Even if it wasn’t always the main focus of his work or what comes to mind for those familiar with his legacy, still, he was a lifelong spiritual seeker.
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