Check out the new decor at Get Religion by reading "Perfectly Pedestrian Polygamists." The post reviews media coverage of a college basketball player's polygamous family. Interesting story, of course, but GR's focus is on how the media covers religion stories, and the point of the post is that, in the newspapers, everyone is normal. The more unconventional the relationship, the more "normal" the media will describe it. The GR post calls this "advocacy reporting." Interesting term. The media falls all over themselves this political season citing surveys and quoting conservative Christians that depict patriotic, monogamous Mormons as wacky pseudo-polygamous cultists. But when a real polygamist shows up in a story ... they're "normal."
Help me with some synonyms for "advocacy reporting." Biased reporting? Shallow reporting? Worthless reporting? I don't even bother to subscribe to a newspaper anymore. They just seem like a waste of paper to me.
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