Daniel Bennett – författare

When, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the US Supreme Court held that bans on same-sex marriage violate the Constitution, Christian conservative legal organizations (CCLOs) decried the ruling. Foreseeing an “assault against Christians,” Liberty Counsel president Mat Staver declared, “We are entering a cultural civil war.” Many would argue that a cultural war was already well underway; and yet, as this timely book makes clear, the stakes, the forces engaged, and the strategies employed have undergone profound changes in recent years.

In Defending Faith, Daniel Bennett shows how the Christian legal movement (CLM) and its affiliated organizations arrived at this moment in time. He explains how CCLOs advocate for issues central to Christian conservatives, highlights the influence of religious liberty on the CLM’s broader agenda, and reveals how the Christian Right has become accustomed to the courts as a field of battle in today’s culture wars. On one level a book about how the Christian Right mobilized and organized an effective presence on an unavoidable front in battles over social policy, the courtroom, Defending Faith is also a case study of interest groups pursuing common goals while maintaining unique identities. As different as these proliferating groups might be, they are alike in increasingly construing their efforts as a defense of religious freedom against hostile forces throughout American society—and thus as benefitting society as a whole rather than limiting the rights of certain groups.

The first holistic, wide-angle picture of the Christian legal movement in the United States, Bennett’s work tells the story of the growth of a powerful legal community and of the development of legal advocacy as a tool of social and political engagement.

This book explores the impact of new forms of online reporting on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism. Informed by the views of over 100 BBC staff at all levels of the corporation, Bennett captures journalists’ shifting attitudes towards blogs and internet sources used to cover wars and other conflicts. He argues that the BBC’s practices and values are fundamentally evolving in response to the challenges of immediate digital publication. Ongoing challenges for journalism in the online media environment are identified: maintaining impartiality in the face of calls for more open personal journalism; ensuring accuracy when the power of the "former audience" allows news to break at speed; and overcoming the limits of the scale of the BBC’s news operation in order to meet the demands to present news as conversation.

While the focus of the book is on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism, the conclusions are more widely relevant to the evolving practice of journalism at traditional media organizations as they grapple with a revolution in publication.

This book explores the impact of new forms of online reporting on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism. Informed by the views of over 100 BBC staff at all levels of the corporation, Bennett captures journalists’ shifting attitudes towards blogs and internet sources used to cover wars and other conflicts. He argues that the BBC’s practices and values are fundamentally evolving in response to the challenges of immediate digital publication. Ongoing challenges for journalism in the online media environment are identified: maintaining impartiality in the face of calls for more open personal journalism; ensuring accuracy when the power of the "former audience" allows news to break at speed; and overcoming the limits of the scale of the BBC’s news operation in order to meet the demands to present news as conversation.

While the focus of the book is on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism, the conclusions are more widely relevant to the evolving practice of journalism at traditional media organizations as they grapple with a revolution in publication.