Politics Up Close: Media Coverage of the LDS Church
10.23.2009 by Jeff Robinson
(KCPW News) When an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints give a speech, what’s the news angle? Is it the speech itself, is it how others react to the speech, or both? We talk about bias related to covering the Church with Josh Loftin, managing editor at the City Weekly and former Deseret News reporter, Monica Bielanko, executive producer at FOX 13, and Glen Warchol, who writes the Salt Lake Crawler blog for the Salt Lake Tribune. Deseret News Editor Joe Cannon was invited to join, but respectfully declined.
For a different perspective, we also talked with Joel Campbell, associate professor of communications at Brigham Young University and author of the “Mormon Media Observer” column for the Mormon Times, a section of the Deseret News.
Boo. I was totally disappointed with this article and expect more from KCPW. Is there nothing more important happening in Salt Lake? Really? Was this so important I needed to listen to it on NPR morning “prime time”?
I expect sensationalism from Fox. I also understand an overly emotional tweet (re. “my head is exploding”) from a journalist who tweets about her profession as a “recovering Mormon.”
What I don’t expect is to be disappointed by NPR and my favorite local station. Looks like I’ll need to contribute to KUER this next fund drive.
[...] colleague sent me a link to this discussion on KCPW. It’s worth the 20 minutes it takes to listen to it. The focus is on the response to [...]