Dear TMatt,

I normally consider myself a fan of GetReligion, but I’m not one right now after discovering this hatchet job. This post makes several of the mistakes that GetReligion regularly hammers the media for whenever we slip up. It’s your mission to find fault, and I have no problem with that. But this post doesn’t even try to establish the facts before laying down layers of innuendo meant to ridicule this story.

The verbal drumroll into “Roman holiday for Turkish converts?” calls the upcoming story “a strange one” and notes that you have to “focus on the negative.” Then comes an unconvincing throwaway line — “With that as a prologue, please understand that I have no idea if the following Reuters report contains an hilarious error.” Well, why didn’t you just check before writing this? Also, note the adjective “hilarious” – no fact-checking has taken place but the drumroll goes on. The reader is now primed to assume the journalist got something dead wrong.

Then comes a second sleight-of-hand: “It could be that the story is completely accurate… It could happen.” That last sentence is linked to a YouTube clip from a Disney movie about miracles. So subtile, so snide … there’s a lot of work going into this drumroll here.

When you finally get to the story, you’re amazed that Kanal T would send the Christians to Rome. “Isn’t it more likely that Eastern Orthodox Christians would choose to go to, well, Jerusalem?” you ask. “Wouldn’t the Church of the Holy Sepulchre be a more logical pilgrimage point than St. Peter’s Basilica?”

Did you miss the fact we’re talking about a gameshow here? Run by a popular TV station in a country that’s 99% Muslim? A TV station aiming to make a splash with Muslim viewers who probably neither know nor care too much about these distinctions has clearly decided to go with glitz. The Jews would go to Jerusalem so the Christians need some other attractive destination, like Rome. They couldn’t offer them just a bus ticket to Fener. Once again – we’re talking TV gameshows here, not parish Holy Land tours.

Before anybody suggests the post at least ended on a positive note towards Reuters, let’s check out the final drumroll before and after the last quote. “Meanwhile, the Reuters report does offer this insight … (my emphasis — read: ah, at least he got this right!). And then the kicker – “Ah, the religion beat. You can’t make this stuff up.”

Well, Kanal T did say in a statement that it would send Christians to the Vatican. Our Istanbul bureau chief Daren Butler, who wrote this story, interviewed its chief executive Seyhan Soylu and she repeated this to him. “She also said that they were seeking a priest from the Vatican. There was no mention of them going to Jerusalem and no mention of Constantinople,” he told me in an email.

Soylu also said the same thing to several Turkish newspapers, such as the centre-left Radikal and centre-right Sabah linked here. Just write “Vatikan” in your browser’s Find facility and the relevant section pops up.

The Kanal T statement was posted on several Turkish websites like this one, Habername. In the final paragraph (all in caps) it mentions the “VAT?KAN.” That sentence says: “We are sending Christians to the Vatican or to the Virgin Mary.” The second option is probably a reference to the House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus.

The drumroll seems to have worked with readers who wrote … “Reuters not only doesn’t make sense but contains a characteristically Western mistake…” or “Reuters not verifying such an assumption is of course inexcusable…”

The Guardian can write whatever it wants and your readers can speculate to their hearts’ content. Daren is an experienced correspondent who lives in Istanbul and speaks fluent Turkish. He interviewed Kanal T’s chief exec and has provided the links showing her saying the same thing to Turkish publications.

This is responsible journalism and you ridicule it. Running an unfounded post like this is what is inexcusable.

Tom Heneghan
Religion Editor, Reuters

The Kanal T statement was posted on several Turkish websites like this one, Habername. In the final paragraph (all in caps) it mentions the “VAT?KAN.” That sentence says: “We are sending Christians to the Vatican or to the Virgin Mary.” The second option is probably a reference to the House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus.

The drumroll seems to have worked with readers who wrote … “Reuters not only doesn’t make sense but contains a characteristically Western mistake…” or “Reuters not verifying such an assumption is of course inexcusable…”

The Guardian can write whatever it wants and your readers can speculate to their hearts’ content. Daren is an experienced correspondent who lives in Istanbul and speaks fluent Turkish. He interviewed Kanal T’s chief exec and has provided the links showing her saying the same thing to Turkish publications.

This is responsible journalism and you ridicule it. Running an unfounded post like this is what is inexcusable.

Tom Heneghan
Religion Editor, Reuters

You say in comment “I stand by my post as written.” How can you say that after reading all this?

I simply clicked APPROVE on that first version of Part II and thought it would post, as was. It should have.

Try again, or use the SUBMIT button as I recommended.

http://www.getreligion.org/?page_id=4211

I have already posted the second half of your email.

Sending us the story through the direct link — as opposed to the comments page — would have worked.

Again, I was making fun of the idea, that made it into print from somewhere, that it made sense to send Christians from Byzantium to Rome.

And again, I stand by my post as written.

It’s not good enough to try to shrug this off by saying after that fact that, well, you know, it was a light-hearted post, come on guys, you understand… This post pulls out the stops to ridicule this story when there is no grounds to do that. The second half of my comment gives Daren Butler’s of this. As I said above, I could not upload it despite repeated attempts, so saying “Sure, send it to us with the story link on the site” doesn’t help.

I’ve emailed the second half to you and hope to see it posted here soon.

An interesting note on an Orthodox news and commentary site. It appears that there are now more RUSSIAN Orthodox believers in Istanbul than there are ethnically GREEK Orthodox believers in the ancient capital city of Eastern Orthodoxy. That raises some interesting issues.

Click here: http://www.ocanews.org/news/Updates7.7.09.html

Then scroll down an item or two.

Sure, send it to us with the story link on the site.

But I have trouble understanding the real issue here. I still think that sending Byzantium people to Rome is funny.

I said that I did not know if this was something that Reuters messed up — and still don’t know (see that Guardian comment back up at comment No. 1).

I said that this might have, in fact, been something the Turkish TV people did and then Reuters simply reported it.

That’s what I get for trying to write a rather light-hearted post, I guess, about an strange idea linked to a gameshow.

P.S. Just found your 19 attempts to submit the post. I have no idea why they went into spam. I approved the first one.

I am sorry that you were offended. At the same time, I stand by my post as written.

Before anybody suggests the post at least ended on a positive note towards Reuters, let’s check out the final drumroll before and after the last quote. “Meanwhile, the Reuters report does offer this insight … (my emphasis — read: ah, at least he got this right!). And then the kicker – “Ah, the religion beat. You can’t make this stuff up.”

Well, Kanal T did say in a statement that it would send Christians to the Vatican. Our Istanbul bureau chief Daren Butler, who wrote this story, interviewed its chief executive Seyhan Soylu and she repeated this to him. “She also said that they were seeking a priest from the Vatican. There was no mention of them going to Jerusalem and no mention of Constantinople,” he told me in an email.

Soylu also said the same thing to several Turkish newspapers, such as the centre-left Radikal and centre-right Sabah linked here. Just write “Vatikan” in your browser’s Find facility and the relevant section pops up

Dear TMatt,

I normally consider myself a fan of GetReligion, but I’m not one right now after discovering this hatchet job. This post makes several of the mistakes that GetReligion regularly hammers the media for whenever we slip up. It’s your mission to find fault, and I have no problem with that. But this post doesn’t even try to establish the facts before laying down layers of innuendo meant to ridicule this story.

The verbal drumroll into “Roman holiday for Turkish converts?” calls the upcoming story “a strange one” and notes that you have to “focus on the negative.” Then comes an unconvincing throwaway line — “With that as a prologue, please understand that I have no idea if the following Reuters report contains an hilarious error.” Well, why didn’t you just check with the author before writing this?

Also, note the adjective “hilarious ” – no fact-checking has taken place but the drumroll goes on. The reader is now primed to assume the journalist got something dead wrong.

Then comes a second sleight-of-hand: “It could be that the story is completely accurate… It could happen.” That last sentence is linked to a YouTube clip from a Disney movie about miracles. So subtile, so snide … there’s a lot of work going into this drumroll here.

When we finally get to the story, you’re amazed that Kanal T would send the Christians to Rome. “Isn’t it more likely that Eastern Orthodox Christians would choose to go to, well, Jerusalem?” you ask. “Wouldn’t the Church of the Holy Sepulchre be a more logical pilgrimage point than St. Peter’s Basilica?”

Did you miss the fact we’re talking about a gameshow here? Run by a popular TV station in a country that’s 99% Muslim? A TV station aiming to make a splash with Muslim viewers who probably neither know nor care too much about these distinctions has clearly decided to go with glitz. The Jews would go to Jerusalem so the Christians need some other attractive destination, like Rome. They couldn’t offer them just a bus ticket to Fener. Once again – we’re talking TV gameshows here, not parish Holy Land tours.
(more in next comment)