EDITOR’S NOTE: Matthew M. Casserly is an American who lives and works in Moscow as an editor and translator for an unbiased online-tech platform. He’s additionally finding out Orthodox theology.
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To be trustworthy, I nonetheless can’t keep in mind how I discovered GetReligion.
Because of Google, I used to be capable of finding what I’m guessing what my first GetReligion shout-out — it was a put up by Julia Duin some seven years in the past in regards to the Southern Baptist megachurch chief Robert Jeffress claiming that God had given the as soon as and doubtlessly future President Donald Trump the authority to kill North Korean Supreme Chief Kim Jong-Un.
To be trustworthy, Jeffress’ feedback had been made in 2017, which was an period whose troubles I now view with a form of nostalgia. Sigh, I used to fret about COVID-19.
The tip I’d submitted to this weblog about that story reveals that I had solely begun studying to critically view the media and the world in the way in which GetReligion taught to me and plenty of different readers and listeners. Again then, I assumed it was humorous to level out the New York Day by day Information’ editorial incompetence for having revealed the sentence “although shalt not kill.” You realize, versus “thou shalt not kill.” It’s a part of that complete Ten Commandments factor.
Within the years I’ve spent studying from the GetReligion weblog and podcast since then, I now perceive that misspelling “thou” is the least of our journalism issues — a lot in the way in which COVID-19 not appears all that horrifying when in comparison with the worldwide powder keg we now inhabit in 2024.
It’s been a pleasure studying the weblog and listening to the podcast, particularly the episodes the place I hear tmatt — after discussing some bleak media-bias subject — struggling to say his typical “glad to be right here” exit line.
A variety of the time, I might really feel it too. A lot of GetReligion’s work appeared to explaining issues that certainly mustn’t should be defined.
Absolutely issues haven’t gotten so dangerous that opposing sides conclude that they irreparably disagree with out first confirming that they’ve understood one another. You suppose?
Although issues on this sense solely appear to worsen, and I even suspect at occasions that opposing sides inside and outdoors the US are intent on not understanding one another, it has been a pleasure, nonetheless, to learn and take heed to competent, knowledgeable and gifted professionals doing their greatest to convey some readability and sobriety to what can usually really feel just like the complicated muck of the mainstream information media.
I’m grateful to everybody at GetReligion to your work and your perception. I’ve realized a lot, not simply
about faith protection within the American media and the fascinating mess that’s the American spiritual
panorama, however most significantly, to look critically on the media I devour and ask essential questions.
Am I studying a direct quote, or is that how the newspaper summarized the quote?
Did journalists contact precise members of the congregation, or did they only take a quote from a web site?
Or, simply this week, after I noticed an NPR story: How might they write an article in regards to the “nones” and never contact Ryan Burge?
I wish to make a particular notice of because of Terry Mattingly, who reached out to a trustworthy reader and listener and thought that even I may need one thing to supply GetReligion. I’m proud that I used to be in a position to assist with just a few translations from Previous Church Slavonic and Russian, however I’ve been way more impressed by how a lot coronary heart and care tmatt places into his work, and glad to had the consideration of assembly such a dedicated skilled and good man.
Mnogaya leta to Terry, and all of the GetReligion group!
FIRST IMAGE: A part of the Moscow skyline — the spires of the Kremlin. That is an unattributed picture from the article “Crimson stars over the holy church of communism” on the TravelFeed web site.
