International News

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Why does Vanity Fair happen to good people?

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There’s something vertigo-inducing about Bono’s editing an issue on Africa for Vanity Fair. The visual conflicts abound: Alongside Bono’s Guest Editor’s Letter about how many African children die from preventable diseases, a nude threesome promotes a Dolce & Gabbana purse; at the end of an editorial spread about 20 innovative covers shot by Annie Leibovitz, Dolce & Gabbana returns, using a piece of beefcake in a thong to promote a cologne. This is like reading an article in Playboy that condemns female genital mutilation.


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Sir Salman, champion of free speech

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In reading news articles about the decision by Great Britain to bestow knighthood on Salman Rushdie, one can’t help but wonder why in the world the British would decide to do this. I mean, all they are doing is upsetting a substantial minority of Britain’s population and inflaming Islamic sentiment around the world by honoring a man who is just a novelist. Since when should we honor people who are attacked and threatened with death for what they say or write?


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The Post helps out

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In a most unusual but welcome story deep on the inside of The Washington Post‘s Metro section, Michelle Boorstein reported on how an earthquake set back a project to create a written version of a local language spoken by 5,000 people and to translate the Bible for the people on the small Solomon Island in the South Pacific. (Lost, anyone?)


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Open and unafraid

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In his first piece for The Atlantic, Adam Minter has written an in-depth and sympathetic profile of Aloysius Jin Luxian, bishop of Shanghai, who was approved by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association but not appointed by the Vatican. Minter begins the piece with an extended description of Jin’s return, after years of imprisonment, to the cathedral where he had been ordained:


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How big is CAIR?

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Audrey Hudson’s very long story in Tuesday’s Washington Times takes the Council on American-Islamic Relations to task for its alleged falling membership. The civil liberties organization struck back in a strongly worded press release the same day that says the Times is a “right-wing” newspaper that publishes “agenda-driven reporting.”


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Gracia Burnham's hands-free Vulcan mind meld

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One of the pleasures of contemporary journalism is that it brings together a writer and subject who at first seem an unlikely pair. In this case the pairing is of poet and journalist Eliza Griswold with Gracia Burnham, missionary to the Philippines and former captive of Abu Sayyaf rebels, whose husband was shot to death during a rescue that saved Gracia.


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The elephant in the room in Istanbul

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There is no way to come to Turkey to talk about issues of journalism and religious freedom without realizing that, the whole time you are here, there is a very large elephant in the room, a subject that is hard to talk about openly.


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