Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
What we have here is a classic “no comments” situation for GetReligion readers. I am about to praise a major Washington Post piece about religion on the other side of the world. It’s even about Islam.
Story selection is one of those media criticism topics I wish we could address more. So often we’re responding to what did get written rather than what didn’t. Arguably the decision about which stories to cover and which to ignore — or which to cover ’round the clock and which to cover once and move on — contributes more to our perception of the world than how those stories or written.
Let’s read this story together, shall me? The headline on A1 of the Washington Post was blunt, yet with very few specific details, in part because of the presence of that dishwater adjective “moderate.”
The word through the grapevine is that tmatt is wrapping up end-of-the-semester grading this afternoon.
On Saturday night, Taimur Abdulwahab al-Abdaly tried to murder as many Swedes as possible by blowing up his car and himself in crowded areas where people were busy shopping for Christmas gifts. Amazingly, and perhaps due to an inadvertent early detonation, he was the only person killed. Two others were severely injured. All signs point to radical Islam as the motivator for the deadly violence. It’s interesting to see how different media outlets lead their early stories on the terrorist once his identity was established. Here’s the Telegraph:
The topic of this Boston Globe magazine piece could not be more explosive — literally. It’s about suicide bombers and the controversial issue of why they do what they do.
Here’s the New York Times‘ latest piece about sex abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in Europe. It’s brief but unbelievably sad. Here’s the lede:
Late last month, the Associated Press‘ Rachel Zoll had a really interesting and important story about Muslim adoption. Or, rather, a story about how Islam, while encouraging care for orphans, forbids adoption. Almost immediately we heard from readers — some of them adoptive parents, some of them Muslim or having Muslim family members. They said that they enjoyed what the story said but were very surprised about something very important that was missing from the story.
Pew Research Center published the results of a recent Global Attitudes Project survey of Muslims. Folks were asked questions about Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, democracy, the role of Islam in government, and other related topics. You can read the whole report here.
