We’re pretty juvenile here at The Revealer, and we get jealous when a lot of other people start nosing into our territory by badmouthing the media’s lapses in covering religious news. So now that calling the media religiously illiterate is such a jumping cottage industry within the world of MSM-bashing, we’re cheered whenever we see the MSM fight back. In The Miami Herald, Knight professor of journalism Edward Wasserman does just that, taking apart the obligatory self-lacerations of the press in the wake of the Terri Schiavo case, with reporters and commentators coming boldy forward to say the same thing: the media does a bad job covering belief because all journalists are arrogant heathens. Thankfully, Wasserman doesn’t waste his time countering the accusations of godlessness, but instead challenges the disinterestedness of religious groups that say they want more coverage, but really want good press — testimonials and help spreading the Word — as well as the popular explanation of bad coverage: missing a big religion story isn’t due to the media’s impiety, he writes, but good old journalistic incompetence. And that’s the reason Wasserman has no use for the choreographed media mea culpas that punctuate each big religion story with laments about the disconnect between the people and the press. “That’s the problem with this ritual shriving. It connects dots that ought to be separate. Journalists are supposed to be outsiders. That’s the deal.”