ReligiousLiberty.TV / Founders' First Freedom®  – News and Updates on Religious Liberty and Freedom
Menu
  • Home
  • Articles
  • Church and State
  • In the News
  • In the News
  • Supreme Court
  • Free Speech
  • Legislation
Menu

How secular newsrooms handle stories with a religious component (Wall Street Journal)

Posted on December 23, 2008 by ReligiousLiberty.TV

By VINCENT CARROLL

In a jarring misreading of the Islamist mentality, the New York Times last month described a Jewish center in Mumbai, India, as the “unlikely target” of the terrorists who attacked various locations there. “It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen,” the Times went on to declare, “or if it was an accidental hostage scene.”

Paul Marshall would not be surprised by such stunningly naïve statements. In “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion” — a collection of essays that he edited with Lela Gilbert and Roberta Green Ahmanson — he notes that similar assertions have been common in the coverage of Islamic terrorism. The book’s contributors explore all sorts of news stories with a religious component — Islamic and otherwise — showing where reporters have veered off course and discussing the reasons why.

Despite 9/11 and dozens of equally pitiless massacres, some journalists, Mr. Marshall says, are reluctant to accept the “fundamental religious dimension” of jihadist motives. Such journalists concentrate on “terrorist statements that might fit into secular Western preconceptions about oppression, economics, freedom and progress.” When terrorists murdered Christian workers while sparing Muslims in the offices of a Karachi charity in 2002, Mr. Marshall observes, “CNN International contented itself with the opinion that there was ‘no indication of a motive.’ Would it have said the same if armed men had invaded a multiracial center, separated the black people from the white people, then methodically killed all the blacks and spared all the whites?”

But surely journalists do a better job at stories in their own backyards. Actually, no. According to the evidence in “Blind Spot,” the coverage is often worse. Jeremy Lott reminds us, for example, of the media hysteria in 2004 that greeted the release of the movie “The Passion of the Christ.”

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com …

Category: Religion
©2025 ReligiousLiberty.TV / Founders' First Freedom® – News and Updates on Religious Liberty and Freedom
Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experience, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}