How to report a religion story without opining on that religion

There’s an interesting discussion going on over at Get Religion about the news coverage of Washington media celebrity Sally Quinn taking communion at Tim Russert’s funeral Mass, feeling bonded with her old friend by doing so. The point of the blog post in the first place is integrity in journalism and specifically, that reporting about religion should stick with the facts of the story and not judgment of dogma.

Good point. Bottom line questions:

Is it a newspaper’s job to tell the Catholic Church what is and what is not good Catholicism? Is it the newspaper’s duty to call for doctrinal change?

Then the Comments section continues the discussion, though it’s hard to keep it out of the doctrinal issues again.

Being a lifelong sports fan, I particularly liked comment #10:

I’m a basketball coach and a competitive tennis player. Using the logic of those who run the Newsweek “On Faith” site, that makes me an expert on all sports. I’m hoping to get on a panel similar to the “On Faith” panel so I can throw in my two cents about the Indians’ recent trade of C.C. Sabathia and America’s chances to win gold in the decathlon next month.

As the debate continues, this same guy comes back in comment #18:

If a newspaper were to treat certain people as experts on all sports and use a specific event in one sport as a general example for all sports, that newspaper would be laughed right out of the market. “On Faith” is an exercise in dumbing down religion.

He makes his point.

So does the blogger, Terry Mattingly, when he says that much of what we get as reporting on religion (especially Christianity these days) is more about emotion and feelings than, say, truth.