Into the GetReligion guilt file we go once again, as I continue to dig out from a recent one-two punch of travel and sickness that, truth be told, still has me down quite a bit.

However, I called "dibs" some time ago on a very interesting Crux think piece by Vatican correspondent Ines San Martin that I really think GetReligion readers will want to see.

It's about Pope Francis, of course. And it's about President Donald Trump, of course. Obviously, these two men have some past history. It's also safe to say that, at this point, it's hard to get a fix on what either of these men stand for without taking into account the way the mainstream press has framed almost everything that they say or do.

In the case of Pope Francis, this has led to a very important question that pro-Catechism Catholics have been asking pretty much since the start of this papacy. The blunt way to state it: Is Pope Francis the "reform" pope that The New York Times and other elite media seem to think that he is?

In this context, of course, "reform" means going soft on lots of icky ancient Catholic doctrines linked to morality and, especially, sex. It also means that Francis is supposed to be carrying out a consistent agenda of punishing, or at the very least throwing cold water, on doctrinal conservatives in the church. It also means that his emphasis on the care of the poor and weak is "liberal" or "progressive," as opposed to being an expression of basic Christian orthodoxy.

But back to the press. As I have stated before, concerning the conservative Catholics debates about Pope Francis and the press:

There may be a few -- repeat few -- who (1) see him as a secretly liberal Machiavelli who is steering the Catholic boat toward icebergs in order to cause massive doctrinal changes. There are others who think (2) he is fine, when you read him in context, and that the press is to blame for any confusion that exists. There are others who (3) think he means well, but that he is naive when it comes to how his off-the-cuff papacy will be presented in the news media. I am sure there are other options on the right that I missed.

Now, if you overlap these Francis issues with the "meltdown" mindset that continues to frame much of the media coverage of Trump, you have an interesting dynamic.

Anyone who knows anything about America in the past half century or so knows that we live in a culture that is increasingly dominated by visual images and the emotions they produce.

Images were crucial as modern print journalism evolved. It goes without saying that images are crucial in visual storytelling in television, past and present.

Today? While words matter in social media, nothing grabs people quite like that punchy, ironic, cute, infuriating or poignant image that seems to sum up (a) whatever is happening in the real world at the moment or (b) whatever we are consuming in order to be able to ignore whatever is happening in the real world at the moment.

Thus, a former GetReligionista sent the current team an email the other day -- with the simple headline, "Hmmmm" -- containing the item at the top of this post.

What's the point? The question has been asked many times: Why do so many people get confused and think that Sikhs are Muslims? Is there something compelling about the Sikh turban (the dastaar) that makes journalists think "foreign," "exotic," maybe "Arab" and, thus, "Muslim" or someone who would be accused of being a "Muslim terrorist"?

Ah, but the turban is VISUAL and it all but screams "diversity," "other world religions" and "multiculturalism."

At the moment, is the whole point -- in terms of journalism shorthand -- that a Sikh believer looks like the kind of man that the angry, fact-challenged, Islamophobic Donald Trump voter is supposed to want to (a) beat up and then (b) accuse of being a "Muslim" terrorist?

Well, a few key facts are all wrong. But, hey, the point is to make a point. Right?