soupsoup:

Brilliant

Jodi Kantor, Arts and Leisure Editor at The New York Times, discusses her recent book The Obamas. With falling approval ratings after the passage of President Obama’s health care legislation, Kantor shares the Administration’s strategy to leverage Michelle Obama’s high popularity.

WASHINGTON — Politicians should keep their religion to themselves and quit publicly praying and talking so much about their faith, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

The number of people saying “there has been too much religious talk by political leaders” stands at an all-time high since Pew’s Forum on Religion & Public Life began asking the question more than a decade ago. Most Americans continue to say that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of politics. Nearly 4 in 10 Americans, or 38 percent, say they have heard “too much expression of religious faith and prayer from political leaders.” Members of both parties say there is too much discussion of religion but that view is more common among Democrats than Republicans.

Read more: ‘Too Much’ Religion In Political Talk, Pew Survey Finds

pewinternet:

Today at SXSW, our director Lee Rainie discussed new findings on social media + politics at the panel “Voting’s Viral: Voters, Election Officials & Social” (http://bit.ly/xH17ga)

Check out the new report; turns out that that on social networking sites, friends disagree with friends about political issues and usually let their disagreements pass without comment, and users can be surprised to learn the political leanings of their friends.

Also of note: 18% of users have shunned “friends” who have different ideas and 16% have found friends whose beliefs match their own.

pewresearch:

Election news continued to be the public’s top story last week, just ahead of the March 6 Super Tuesday voting. Just more than two-in-ten (22%) say they followed news about the candidates for president more closely than any other news. Somewhat fewer (17%) cite the tornadoes that hit parts of the Midwest.

Citizen journalists can apply for a paid reporting stint.

The Huffington Post seeks U.S. and Canadian citizen journalists to cover the Republican and Democratic conventions.

Read more: Huffington Post launches citizen journalism contest

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark commissioned a survey of Americans’ trust of news sources. The Washington, D.C.-based polling firm Lincoln Park Strategies conducted the research, which interviewed 1,001 people over the telephone (landlines and cell phones were called). Among the findings:

- Newspapers are the most trusted source of news for most respondents, but that’s not exactly something to crow about: Only 22 percent overall called newspapers “very credible” for reporting on politics and elections; 

- 34 percent of all respondents thought social media had a “negative effect” on the quality of news; 17% thought it had a positive effect;

- Only 6 percent of respondents said being first to report a story was very important to them in choosing a news source, a finding that supports caution in reporting breaking news that before it’s confirmed.

Read More: Newmark study finds newspapers most trusted news source