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Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion
Why do the media so often miss or misunderstand major news stories? One reason is that, in today's complex and pervasively religious world, understanding religion is vital in accurately reporting and interpreting current events. The authors of Blind Spot argue that all too frequently journalists and commentators do not take religion seriously and therefore fail to grasp the religious context of the news.
Blind Spot's essays examine news stories reported by major media sources in which key religious dimensions were ignored, overlooked, or misrepresented. These stories range from the 2004 U.S. presidential elections, to Iran, Iraq, and the papal succession. Blind Spot offers all readers -- whether people of faith or not -- an interesting and balanced analysis of the news media's uneasy relationship with religion and religious issues.
Blind Spot's essays examine news stories reported by major media sources in which key religious dimensions were ignored, overlooked, or misrepresented. These stories range from the 2004 U.S. presidential elections, to Iran, Iraq, and the papal succession. Blind Spot offers all readers -- whether people of faith or not -- an interesting and balanced analysis of the news media's uneasy relationship with religion and religious issues.
- GenresNonfictionCultural
240 pages, Paperback
First published November 14, 2008
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About the author
Paul A. Marshall
20 books1 followerPaul Marshall is senior fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom, Freedom House. He has lectured worldwide and is general editor of Religious Freedom in the World: A Global Report on Freedom and Persecution. He is the author and editor of 15 other books on religion and politics, including the best-selling and award-winning Their Blood Cries Out, and Islam at the Crossroads and God and the Constitution, both published in 2002. Dr. Marshall has published many scholarly and popular articles and his writings have been translated into Russian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Malay, Korean, Arabic, and Chinese. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 9, 2013
Vincent Carroll reviewed a new book in the Wall Street Journal in December of 2008 entitled Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion. What a fascinating book, and it made me think of just how blind we all are, in one respect or another.
The headline for Mr. Carroll’s review was “God Is A Problem, Sources Say”, and launches with a statement made in an article in the New York Times in November of that year regarding the attacks on Mumbai. The statement was excerpted in this way: “It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen or if it was an accidental hostage scene.” The Times also speculated that it was an “unlikely target” ………for Islam extremists?
Blind Spot discusses various conflicts throughout the world and the religious “blind spot” that seems to afflict most Western journalists. Editor Paul Marshall, as quoted by Mr. Carroll, said journalists reluctant to accept the “fundamentalist motives” of jihadist motives concentrate on “terrorist statements that might fit into secular Western preconceptions about oppression, economics, freedom and progress.”
I read that statement, and I was reminded immediately of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s attempt to destroy non-Muslim communities in the northern provinces when I was there in 1998, just as Israel today is using the issue with Hamas as a reason to destroy Palestine. Hamas is killing Israelis, and the U.S. – as a sovereign nation that used to be religiously tolerant – pushes to use the fundamentalist Christian God as a reason to infiltrate other conflicts, and so on.
Even in Africa, religion plays a part in conflict. Take, for instance, the Lord’s Resistance Army who hacked and killed hundreds in a church and the surrounding area in DR Congo not more than a couple of weeks ago. Not only was this not a top story in the U.S., the Lord’s Resistance Army – terrorists by all measures – was downgraded to the simple acronym LRA, and reported benignly as yet another hostile terrorist group. Take a look at all the predominant ruling parties in Africa and their adversaries. You will see that every single one of them is divisive not just ethnically, but religiously within that ethnicism.
Journalists ignore the religion factor, but the religion factor is everpresent – in conflict, in economics, in progress, in oppression. No one religious faction is more evil than another, either. They are all contributing factors to conflict, and yet journalists either bury their heads in the sand or are utterly ignorant of the factor religion plays in everything…or they wouldn’t plant a story in a news source as reputable as the New York Times that stupidly thinks that a Jewish center in Mumbai was not a calculated target for Islamist extremists.
Bias is everywhere in Western media – predominantly U.S. media – and most importantly bias against an understanding of fact-based reporting.
Terry Mattingly, one of the contributors to Blind Spot, has this recommendation for quality reporting: “Editors do not need to try to hire more reporters who are religious believers,” but reporters “who take religion seriously, reporters who know, or are willing to learn to hear the music.”
At a bookstore near you: Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion; Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert, Roberta Green Ahmanson, ed. Oxford, 220 pages, $19.95.
The headline for Mr. Carroll’s review was “God Is A Problem, Sources Say”, and launches with a statement made in an article in the New York Times in November of that year regarding the attacks on Mumbai. The statement was excerpted in this way: “It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen or if it was an accidental hostage scene.” The Times also speculated that it was an “unlikely target” ………for Islam extremists?
Blind Spot discusses various conflicts throughout the world and the religious “blind spot” that seems to afflict most Western journalists. Editor Paul Marshall, as quoted by Mr. Carroll, said journalists reluctant to accept the “fundamentalist motives” of jihadist motives concentrate on “terrorist statements that might fit into secular Western preconceptions about oppression, economics, freedom and progress.”
I read that statement, and I was reminded immediately of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s attempt to destroy non-Muslim communities in the northern provinces when I was there in 1998, just as Israel today is using the issue with Hamas as a reason to destroy Palestine. Hamas is killing Israelis, and the U.S. – as a sovereign nation that used to be religiously tolerant – pushes to use the fundamentalist Christian God as a reason to infiltrate other conflicts, and so on.
Even in Africa, religion plays a part in conflict. Take, for instance, the Lord’s Resistance Army who hacked and killed hundreds in a church and the surrounding area in DR Congo not more than a couple of weeks ago. Not only was this not a top story in the U.S., the Lord’s Resistance Army – terrorists by all measures – was downgraded to the simple acronym LRA, and reported benignly as yet another hostile terrorist group. Take a look at all the predominant ruling parties in Africa and their adversaries. You will see that every single one of them is divisive not just ethnically, but religiously within that ethnicism.
Journalists ignore the religion factor, but the religion factor is everpresent – in conflict, in economics, in progress, in oppression. No one religious faction is more evil than another, either. They are all contributing factors to conflict, and yet journalists either bury their heads in the sand or are utterly ignorant of the factor religion plays in everything…or they wouldn’t plant a story in a news source as reputable as the New York Times that stupidly thinks that a Jewish center in Mumbai was not a calculated target for Islamist extremists.
Bias is everywhere in Western media – predominantly U.S. media – and most importantly bias against an understanding of fact-based reporting.
Terry Mattingly, one of the contributors to Blind Spot, has this recommendation for quality reporting: “Editors do not need to try to hire more reporters who are religious believers,” but reporters “who take religion seriously, reporters who know, or are willing to learn to hear the music.”
At a bookstore near you: Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion; Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert, Roberta Green Ahmanson, ed. Oxford, 220 pages, $19.95.
June 7, 2011
This 2009 work has some excellent insights into why secular journalists miss the religious foundations to many of the world's most important stories and events. The introductory section and second chapter on Al Qaeda by Paul Marshall are top notch. He offers some very helpful information about the radical Muslim world that have been glossed over my multiculturalists. The case studies are generally quite good as well, though they suffer from the variability of quality common to all anthologies. For any budding journalist or individual hoping to understand the media and their limitations, this is a good book to read/have.
April 15, 2009
Blogged about it here: http://jewschool.com/2009/03/04/15340...
December 28, 2014
An excellent collection of essays which illustrate the many ways journalists so often get religion wrong - and occasionally right.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews