Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Like a gazillion other people, I’ve started reading The Christian Science Monitor each morning. That’s because former hostage Jill Carroll has been telling her story on its pages over the last week and a half.
As I’m weeks away from my own impending nuptials, the thought of marrying more than one person seems awful — like residing in the Fifth Circle of Hell. Spouses are like noses. If you have more than one, people look at you funny.
Oh the confusing tales that we journalists weave, except when we attempt to deceive by making them too simple.
The New York Times ran a rather shocking article on British Muslim calls to violence. The hook is that the Antiterrorism Act of 2006 makes it a crime to glorify or encourage political violence but that some Muslim leaders are doing just that without government reprisal.
It’s true. One of the reasons people inside and outside the Beltway read The Washington Times is to find out what Republican strategists are thinking. It’s interesting to find out what makes it into the official GOP talking points and what does not.
“British Muslim Leaders Facing Generation Gap,” a Los Angeles Times headline informed us on Thursday. Is this news to anyone? Aren’t most leaders in Western cultures facing a generation gap of some kind or another? I know for a fact that there are gaps between generations [insert snarky comment here].
I was reading this completely engrossing CNN story on Malika el Aroud, the widow of suicide bomber Abdessater Dahmane. He was one of the two fellows who killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, head of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, by pretending to be broadcast journalists. Their camera hid an explosive. Anyway, she now lives in Switzerland with her new husband running a fan website for Osama bin Laden.
Altering photographs is nothing new, especially in this digital era. When applied to the news business, it is a Jason Blair-style crime along the lines of plagiarism and fabrication — maybe worse because altered images are sometimes difficult to detect and images are so powerful. The media watchdogs have largely failed in covering this issue of altered and staged photographs, and they are failing the public.
There are, of course, huge differences in the two stories. Great Britain seems to be dealing with genuine terrorists bent on mass murder while the French rioters were less terrorists and more gangs intent on creating havoc, and not necessarily death, in their neighborhoods.
