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We’ve debated before whether Westboro Baptist Church is worthy of newsprint. Probably not. But the group likely won’t go away if we simply ignore it, which seems to be what The Washington Post had in mind when leaving any mention of Westboro out of this story about their protest at the school the Obama girls attend.
USA Today put the following headline on Associated Press religion reporter Eric Gorski’s story about James Dobson stepping down from Focus on the Family’s main radio broadcast:
There’s something curious about the way the media have been handling the difficult and complicated story of Rifqa Bary. She’s the Ohio teenager (pictured here) who fled to Florida after she converted to Christianity over concerns her Muslim father might kill her. We last looked at this story when CNN inexplicably referred to the girl as “Muslim” even though the whole point of this saga is that she’s not.
When it comes to God, Oprah Winfrey and Dallas — the city that many consider the evangelical capital of America — I am sure of two things.
A reporter friend sent along the following story that appears on BBC. It begins with such a promising headline: “Fighting the ‘contraceptive mentality’.” Unfortunately, the article approaches the topic narrowly.
Get out your party hats and reading lights. If it’s the last week of September, it’s Banned Books Week. This is the annual awareness campaign that draws attention to censorship. From the American Library Association:
Not that I want to encourage more coverage of Westboro Baptist Church, but this was worth bringing up.
