by Dalia Hashad

“Muslim to Host MTV Movie Awards”! When the press statement hit my inbox, I sighed. The members of a Muslim advocacy group are celebrating the ascent of Aziz Ansari–a comedian and fellow Muslim who currently stars in NBC's Parks and Recreation–to Billy Crystal-esque pop-culture status. And not that I blame them. Muslim advocacy groups are forced  to issue an apologetic statement each time a Muslim, somewhere in the world, commits an act of political violence. Once the news breaks that another Nidal Hasan has done the unthinkable, I painfully await the stream of condemnations from a host of Muslim organizations. If you haven't seen them, the pattern breaks down along these lines:

“This is terrible. We are sorry. This person's actions aren't representative of Islam. Please don't hate us.”

The advocacy group's statement that a Muslim got the coveted MTV gig is the flip side of the typical apologist declaration. It highlights that Muslims are generally good, harmless–even funny–people. I suspect that the effort to draw attention to MTV's choice is, in part, a PR effort to “rehabilitate” the Muslim image, assuring skittish Americans that there is no need to transfer their child to another school when she comes home to tell them about her new friend Ahmad.

Good or bad, I've never thought that one person's actions could represent the character of an entire religion/ethnicity/nationality/sex/whatever. We are all individuals, and regardless of the popularity of certain Fox News commentators, I still want to believe that most of my compatriots are sophisticated enough to understand that no major religion exists for the purpose of providing a road-map for the destruction of humanity. 

Still, it is disturbing to think that we live in a society where a woman walking into a store with a scarf on her head provokes fear. But alas, if Deepak Chopra expresses that fear, then it must be widespread. 

After I received the press statement, I scanned various media outlets looking for journalistic commentary on MTV's choice of a Muslim host. Apart from a few perfunctory news briefs, I didn't find much, which felt good. Maybe that means we are one step closer to seeing Muslims as regular people who don't need to be held to account for the actions of each of their one billion cohorts.

Or maybe not. The absence of chatter around Ansari's selection could also mean that the news media and the consumers they serve simply don't see Muslims except in the context of mayhem. That in itself is a story.

To try to gauge the situation one way or the other, I wondered whether MTV could manage to spotlight a Muslim comedian without stooping to terrorist jokes. I received the answer in the form of a commercial promoting the upcoming awards show. The spot featured a sweet-talking Ansari cuddled up next to his movie date–a blonde, “all-American” and unsuspecting Kristin Bell–with a bomb in his pants. Sigh. Let's see what happens when the event airs on June 6.  

Dalia Hashad is an attorney specializing in human rights and civil rights.  She has also been a host and co-executive producer of “Law and Disorder,” a weekly talk-radio program.

by J. Terry Todd

Media chatter about the Supreme Court's religious composition ramped up this week in the wake of President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to fill the vacancy on the bench when Justice John Paul Stevens retires this summer. On mainstream news outlets and in the blogosphere, legal experts and religion professors rushed to explain the significance of the fact that Kagan's confirmation would leave six Catholics and three Jews on the bench – and no Protestants.

“Religion used to be the most important consideration for the court,” George Washington University Professor of Law Jeffrey Rosen told ABCNews.com, “it's a fascinating truth that we've allowed religion to drop out of consideration on the Supreme Court, and right now, we have a Supreme Court that religiously at least, by no means looks like America.” 

If the Court is to reflect diversity of opinion, Baylor Law School Professor Mark Osler said in Tom Breen's AP story on the Court's religious composition, “There's an important part of our population that's not represented here.” Osler went on to say, “We have to recognize that faith plays into the development of conscience in the same manner that race and gender do, and perhaps more so.”

Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero expressed something similar when he told the Boston Globe, “We think through ethics and law in our lives, whether we are Supreme Court justices or not, in light of our backgrounds and religious commitments,” Prothero said. “And I think it's a pity to have only two religious traditions represented on the court

All of this crystallized for me on the religion page at the Huffington Post, where Diana Butler Bass offered a “lament” over the loss of the “lived memory of American Protestantism” on the Court. It's not the lack of representation that troubles Bass, only the fact that the Court won't have someone with “Protestant sensibilities” on the bench.

My first thought about all of this somewhat self-important hand-wringing? Don't worry. Like Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel Alito, Kagan went to Princeton, where I'm sure she (like they) absorbed enough “Protestant sensibility” to last a lifetime.

In the rear-view mirror of history, the fact that no Protestant will sit on the Supreme Court, at least in the short term, is remarkable. It wasn't so long ago that the Court was seen as one of the last bastions of (white and male) Protestant privilege, with some justices holding on rather anxiously as the ground shifted under their feet. A story from the 1947 Everson case on public funding for parochial schools illustrates the point. According to Donald Drakeman's recent Church, State, and Original Intent, during oral arguments in the Everson case, Justice William O. Douglas passed a note down the bench to fellow Justice Hugo Black that read, “If the Catholics get public money to finance their religious schools, we better insist on getting some good prayers in public schools or we Protestants are out of business.”

Protestants are in no danger of going out of business in the U.S., even if a Protestant won't show up to work on the bench at the High Court anytime soon.

Amid all this chatter, there's been little attention to what a Protestant really is these days – except for some of the broader reflections in Bass' lament. Nor is there much truly thoughtful analysis of history. Protestants have always been a contentious, infighting and spiritually eclectic bunch. Over the centuries, the result of the Reformers' throwing off the papal yoke has been a dramatically de-centered, perpetually evolving family of movements.

So even if there were a Protestant seat on the Court, who would hold it? A gay Episcopalian? A Korean Presbyterian? A Methodist who does Zen meditation or a Southern Baptist who would have more in common with the Court's conservative Catholic bloc than, say, a Quaker when it comes to adjudicating on social issues? 

Religion – and particularly Protestantism – plays just as prominent a role in American public life as it ever did, only in different ways and in different configurations. As the coverage of Kagan's nomination intensifies over the next several months, journalists (as well as academics like me) will have plenty of opportunities to examine the interplay between politics and religion in the U.S. Somehow I doubt any of us will find that the Protestant influence on our culture has really, truly gone missing.  

J. Terry Todd is Associate Professor of American Religious Studies at Drew University and director of Drew's Center on Religion, Culture & Conflict. The author of many articles on religion in 20th-century America, Terry is especially interested in religious conflicts over family life and sexuality, and how Christian ideas and practices shape U.S. politics and mass media.

Do babies have an innate moral sense? According to psychologist Paul Bloom, they do. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Bloom says that “a growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.” Summing up a series of experiments over the last 20 years, he concludes that infants and toddlers prefers niceness to meanness, and the older they are, the more likely they will reward or punish those behaviors in others.

That finding, however, does not imply that babies are hard-wired for impartial altruism, a conclusion that might cause some to see a divine hand in human biology. Rather, Bloom argues that babies are predisposed to prefer their own kind—whether racially, linguistically or somewhat arbitrarily (such as dressed similarly). But our fundamental ability to make moral judgments can, thanks to nurture, education and culture, develop into a predisposition for the generalized justice—Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—that informs most religious traditions.

Accordingly, after reading, Mark Lilla's essay “Tea Party Jacobins,” I can't help but wonder what's gone wrong with American families, education and culture. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Lilla analyzes the rise of the Tea Party movement. Unlike previous populist movements that sought political power for the common good of the people, today's protesters are radical individualists eager to get rid of government. As Lilla describes it:

“A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for a half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is as estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that.”

Much of the Tea Party's momentum is a reaction to recent governmental programs that promote social welfare. But whether the final straw was financial bailouts, health care reform, or Obama's alleged pro-African American agenda, protesters are angry that politicians are wasting their money, trampling their rights and assuming too much control over their lives. Ballyhooed by rightwing politicians as well as the echo chambers of talk radio and Fox News, their agenda has assumed a gravitas that is only enhanced by hand-wringing editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Maybe the best mainstream journalists can do is to report the who, what and why of the movement. Understanding Tea Partiers' passions is one way to muster a defense. But I'm not sure arm's-length, “balanced and objective” reporting is really what's needed. Prophets once used jeremiads to remind the people that God seeks justice, mercy and lovingkindness. Psychologists today may or may not see those characteristics as part of God's plan, but they do believe they represent an evolved state of human behavior. Perhaps journalists working outside the legacy media can write normatively of the need for altruism and a higher good—a story about babies' moral development in the context of American families, schools and society is a good example of what that kind of reporting would look like.

Diane Winston

by Johns Adams

Last month, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released its latest survey detailing how the public views Pope Benedict's handling of the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. Results: not so good.

According to the survey, the number of people who believe the Pope has done a poor job of handling the scandal has increased dramatically in almost every category in the past two years.

A New York Times/CBS poll published May 4 shows that the vast majority of American Catholics believe the Church covered up the sex scandal in the past but is now looking for ways to prevent further sexual abuse of children by priests. Interestingly, those surveyed also believe that the news media have been harder on the Catholic Church than they would have been if the controversy had embroiled another religious organization.

Peggy Noonan, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, titled her angle on the situation “The Catholic Church's Catastrophe,” and although she gave the Pope and the press credit for confronting the scandal, her final analysis was nothing short of pending doom.

“It is damage that will last at least a generation. It is an actual catastrophe, a rolling catastrophe that became public first in the United States, now in Europe. It has lowered the standing, reputation and authority of the church. This will have implications down the road.”

In the vein of “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” the Vatican caught a break when Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed her state's controversial immigration bill into law. The rekindled immigrant-rights issue, a topic in the wheelhouse for the Catholic hierarchy, will provide an opportunity for the Pope's proxies to reap some positive PR as the Church returns to the “days of old” as a movement focused on giving voice to the tribulations of the voiceless.

In his newly launched and irregularly updated blog, Cardinal Roger Mahony quickly denounced the law, referring to it as a “German Nazi and Russian Communist technique” that is the “most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law that is totally flawed in its reasoning.” Mahony took his mission to the streets, spending May Day at the immigrant-rights rally in Los Angeles.

BUT JOURNALIST BEWARE: Don't be distracted by this sleight-of-hand. This Church-inspired movement to give succor to those who are oppressed by politicians mustn't obscure the plight of those who have been abused by the Church's own.

Noonan wrote, “Without the famous 2002 Boston Globe Spotlight series with its monumental detailing of the sex abuse scandals in just one state, Massachusetts, the Church would most likely have continued to do what it has done for half a century, which is look away, hush up, pay off and transfer.”

The news media must continue to scrutinize the Catholic Church, whose leaders and representatives engaged in a shocking degree of neglect and malfeasance that–it bears repeating–journalists were instrumental in exposing.

“In both the U.S. and Europe,” Noonan wrote, “the scandal was dug up and made famous by the press. This has aroused resentment among church leaders, who this week accused journalists of spreading 'gossip,' of going into 'attack mode' and showing 'bias.'”

This gnashing of teeth should make journalists proud to be in the profession. We must not shy away from chasing social predators with ferocity, whether they are neighborhood drug dealers, crooked politicians or corrupt figures in respected religious institutions.

There should never be a free pass for anyone or any organization. It is the responsibility of press to present the truth to the public. A professor of media law recently said to a group of young journalists, “Press freedom is not worth anything unless you have the courage to use it.”  

If I were a religious man I would admonish you with a passage found in First Chronicles 19:13 from the Hebrew Bible, but since I am a degenerate journalist I will just say, “Be strong, courageous and unafraid to stick it to anyone for the sake of the little people of this world. That is why we do what we do.”

John Adams is a second-year grad student at USC Annenberg, where he is working toward a Master's in online journalism. He was a pastor for 12 years before leaving his church and heading to grad school. He is now focused on sports journalism and is the co-founder of thesportsunion.com.

by Brie Loskota

Stoxx Europe Christian Index recently launched to allow enterprising Christian capitalists to exercise their moral principles in the context of the free market. A press release announcing the fund notes that it was developed for a “growing number of Christian market participants who wish to invest in accordance with their religious beliefs…[and] the new index provides a broad representation of European companies who act responsibly on an ethical, environmental, social and economical level; and are therefore in-line with Christian values.”

This story has gotten scant coverage in the United States, beyond a few briefs quoting the company press release. But there is a rich field of journalistic inquiry to be mined here.

Yet to be explored in the reporting around Stoxx is that great monolith, “Christian values.”  Companies like Nestlé are Christian enough to be included in the fund despite decades of boycotts over questionable practices regarding the marketing of infant formula in the developing world. The New York Times points out that the environmental impact of companies like BP and Royal Dutch Shell doesn't seem to warrant their exclusion from the list.

The formula developed to vet companies for inclusion is designed to ensure that they are not making money (or not making too much money) from weapons, pornography, birth control, gambling or tobacco. This roster of sins institutionalizes and validates only the most conservative ethical perspective within the religion–i.e. the one concerned primarily with personal and sexual morality. Further, it essentially reduces 2,000 years of Christian moral teaching to a marketing maxim: the imperative here isn't “thou shalt manage production in an ethical manner” but “thou shalt not produce something really, really bad.”  

Then again, maybe the Stoxx fund does take other ethical considerations into account. The investment firm leading the independent committee that selects companies for inclusion in the fund, CBIS, has a well-developed social responsibility policy. Still, articles in the Financial Times and the San Francisco Chronicle note that these Christian-branded financial products and services were developed in response to investor demand for ethical investment options in the wake of the financial crisis. Surely other reporters will not let this curious association stand without further investigation.  

The financial crisis was not a result of corporations' making money off porn, guns or gambling, so the Stoxx fund does nothing to address the real source of investors' fears. Actually addressing the root causes of the global financial meltdown would require not only taking a hard look at the way companies do business but also at the regulations that determine how they operate. Perhaps the foundational assumptions of the free market itself deserve closer scrutiny. But that systemic analysis probably isn't high on the agenda of the investors Stoxx may be wooing with this fund–conservative Christians who, in the United States, often overlook structural solutions to social problems in favor of individual responsibility.

Does this mean that branding a financial product “Christian” is just a cynical marketing ploy? The writer for the San Fransisco Chronicle got it right when she reminded us that in this business as in any business, old wisdom offers the best advice: Let the buyer beware.

Brie Loskota is Managing Director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She also serves as the program officer for the CRCC Pentecostal and Charismatic Research Initiative, a program that seeks to spur new research on one of the world's fastest growing religious movements.
 

by Sarah Grooters

When singer/songwriter Jennifer Knapp revealed her homosexuality this month, legacy news media reporters instantly recognized a good story, but were quick to sensationalize it.

Seven years ago, Knapp was a leading Christian rock musician. She labeled herself a Christian and marketed her music through Christian bookstores and other media outlets. Then she suddenly dropped out of sight. Now we're learning that she had moved to Australia with her same-sex partner.

Knapp is “coming back and coming out” as some articles have cleverly put it in their headlines. She's returning to the music scene, but not as a Christian artist; instead, she's touring under a secular label.

Mainstream news media have largely chosen to highlight what some conservative Christians see as a contradiction. Many articles still refer to Knapp as a “Christian Artist” despite her secular label and her deliberate attempt to distance herself from the term. In interviews, she has said she's not a Christian artist anymore, but someone of faith who makes music.

This is an important distinction, but one that has been mostly lost or overlooked in the secular press. The Huffington Post headlined its story: “Jennifer Knapp GAY: Christian Music Artist Comes Out as Lesbian.” Larry King Live titled its segment: “Christian Singer Comes Out as Lesbian.” The New York Daily News said, “Jennifer Knapp, Christian Music Singer, Announces She is Gay…”

Most articles in the Christian press went the opposite route, omitting the word “Christian” from headlines and ledes. The Christian news site The Underground titled its story: “After a 7 Year Absence, Jennifer Knapp Says She is a 'Gay Person of Faith.'” Christianity Today simply stated, “Jennifer Knapp Comes Out.”

This reportorial strategy is more accurate since Knapp's new record does not specifically target Christians and will not be sold in Christian bookstores. The story without the Christian label is also less sensationalistic, less inflammatory (to conservative Christians) and closer to Knapp's stated intentions as an artist.

Despite labeling Knapp a Christian artist, Larry King did a good job of telling Knapp's story as an individual and not as a representative of anything other than her own struggles as a singer and as a person of faith. He asked her when she knew she was a lesbian and how she thinks the Bible addresses the issue.

What was noticeably absent from most other pieces in the mainstream press was any curiosity about  how Knapp's former fans are responding to her news. Will they buy her new album? Is the music from her earlier career now tainted for them? Or do they still resonate with the younger Knapp's spiritual message?

These questions could have broad implications within evangelical Christian communities, but this potential direction for future reporting has largely been ignored. (Kelefa Sanneh's recent profile of gospel singer Tonex for the New Yorker suggests what this kind of story might look like.) By digging deeper and resisting the impulse to sensationalize narratives that deal with sexuality and religious taboo, reporters could find themselves in the midst of stories they hadn't expected to discover.

Isn't that what good reporting is all about?

Sarah Grooters is an M.A. candidate in the journalism program at USC Annenberg.

by Kim Daniels

Most major news media picked up the story about the recent march for secularism that took place in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. But not all of the outlets did a good job of reporting it. In fact, by relying on stock assumptions about religion in the Middle East, some of the reporting on the event ended up obscuring the facts on the ground rather than revealing them.

A piece in the Los Angeles Times is a case in point. Readers who knew little about Lebanon would assume from Borzou Daragahi's article that Lebanon is culturally and politically dominated by Islam.

Describing the event in his lede, Daragahi said protestors “marched… to demand that religion be excised from politics, a rare assertion of secularism in a region increasingly defined by religious identity.” But he never explained the distinctive role of religion in Lebanese politics or how that political culture reflects the country's particular demographic composition.

In contrast, Reuters noted high up in its story that marchers wanted to see “a secular system in place of the Muslim-Christian sectarianism that permeates politics, employment and family status matters in Lebanon.”

The Reuters article helpfully clarified religion's role in Lebanese politics: “Lebanon, whose five million people are split into 18 sects, developed a power-sharing system enshrined in a 1943 national covenant which gave Christians a majority in parliament and said the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Shi'ite Muslim.”

Stories that omitted this important background left readers without a context for understanding events reported as news. As a result, it would be easy for some to draw mistaken conclusions based on the reporting—especially in the case of the Times story, which quoted three march participants, all of whom were either practicing or former Muslims.

This vagueness with the facts also diminished the usefulness of CNN's Lebanon brief, which mentioned that “power is distributed proportionally among religious communities” but failed to note what would be surprising to many Americans: that the distribution of power in Lebanon is shared by the country's Muslim and Christian populations.

Along with Reuters, BBC News and a number of other outlets did a good job of providing context for the march—thereby making the particulars of Lebanese society come alive for their readers and viewers. But the off-handedness of the Times' and CNN's reporting still warrants close scrutiny. Misconceptions about Islam and the Middle East abound in the United States; for journalists, filling in these gaps in our knowledge is a public service. Reinforcing our ignorance, on the other hand, is inexcusable.

Kim Daniels is pursuing an M.A. in broadcast journalism at USC Annenberg.  
 
 

by Dalia Hashad

Of all the days to have an earthquake… yesterday, when thousands of women revealed a lot of cleavage in an effort to refute an Iranian cleric's claim that female promiscuity moves the earth, there was indeed a major earthquake. Turns out, however, that the 6.5 temblor off the coast of Taiwan didn't really represent an unusual uptick in seismic activity.

“Boobquake” may not have rocked the earth but, ironically, it put on full display the impressive power of female sexuality – at least when it comes to getting media attention.

Boobquake's creator, Jennifer McCreight, showed up all over the news. From CNN to the BBC, McCreight – and her breasts – were everywhere. Tracking the story, I quickly tired of seeing all the breasts on display.  In a show of Mardi Gras-esque exhibitionism, a CNN reporter positioned her chest toward the camera and unzipped her shirt to reveal a sexy bosom – not her own but one created by CNN's FX technicians. I turned off my TV after that. I'd seen enough.

While breasts abounded, noticeably absent from the media conversation was any meaningful discussion or analysis of women's rights in Iran and elsewhere. This depressing show of exhibitionism sans substance seemed disconnected from the reality of a society living under a theocratic leadership that vilifies women's bodies.

A friend who's an Iranian feminist posted a remark on her Facebook page that pretty well sums things up: “Sometimes, the best reaction to have to a statement that is utterly stupid and ridiculous is to not dignify it with any response whatsoever (especially if your response is going to be as undignified as 'Boobquake').” 

Countering Extremism By Going to Extremes (posted Monday, April 26)

Fourteen-year-old boys everywhere are celebrating. It's Boobquake time! If media accounts are to be believed, today tens of thousands of women around the world will dress (or undress, as the case may be) to impress–and provoke. The origins of this mini-movement can be traced, ironically enough, to comments made by a senior Iranian cleric. During the weekly congregational sermon, Hojatoleslam Kazim Sadeghi, filling in for the Ayatollah Khamanei, made international news when he declared that earthquakes are divine punishment for female immodesty and promiscuity. “Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray,” he said, “and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.”

A few journalists and bloggers were quick to draw a parallel between Sadeghi's statement and similar pronouncements from Pat Robertson, who has placed the blame for hurricanes, earthquakes and even 9/11 on sinners who have invoked God's displeasure. Most commentators left it at that.

But not Jennifer McCreight, a 22-year-old student at Purdue University. She expressed her outrage at Sadeghi's remarks on her blog, Blag Hag, along with a call to arms…or breasts, as the case may be:

“On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I'm sure Sadeghi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn't rumble…”

With over 50,000 people pledging to participate, the runaway success of the event surprised even the organizer. In response to accusations that “Boobquake” is anti-feminist and demeaning to women, McCreight says that she isn't asking women to wear anything that they wouldn't normally wear: “I'm not forcing people to go outside of their comfort zone.” 

Apparently, some people have pretty broad comfort zones. There have been more than 100 photos of breasts, bare and in various stages of undress, posted by users. Some images appear to be political statements, but others look more like a Playboy submission. And a quick read reveals most of the photo comments are from salivating men ogling their computer screens, not from supporters of freedom cheering on well-ventilated political activists.  

I appreciate the satirical jab of the original post. But the actual event has left me wanting. Will the execution of Boobquake be more about exhibitionism than female empowerment? To make a finer point, I wonder how many Boobquake participants in the U.S. can actually find Iran on a map.

I can't help thinking that the cleric made himself ridiculous and irrelevant all on his own. It remains to be seen whether the society he was criticizing will manage to rise above his small-mindedness or simply respond in kind. And will our news media analyze or, like overstimulated teenagers, simply ogle? Stay tuned…

Dalia Hashad is an attorney specializing in human rights and civil rights.  She has also been a host and co-executive producer of “Law and Disorder,” a weekly talk-radio program.

by Jason Ma

It's not news that South Park pokes fun at religious figures. So the recent episode that shows the Prophet Mohammed obscured in a bear costume is just another instance of its hey-look-at-me antics.

But CNN, which has seen its ratings fall off lately, used the cartoon to perpetuate a stock storyline in which radical Muslims threaten free speech with violence. Perhaps taking a cue from imagination-challenged Hollywood studios, the news channel saw a chance to create a sequel to the Danish cartoon controversy.

It's become commonplace for news outlets, always courting conflict, to quote extreme voices. But CNN has taken things a step further by sending its “special investigations unit” to dig up an obscure radical Muslim group and elevate it to national prominence. Which begs the question: At what point is CNN creating news rather than reporting on it?

That strategy played into the hands of two parties playing similar, headline-seeking games. First CNN took the bait dangled by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who seem to relish being provocative. Then they provided a forum for New York-based Revolution Muslim, which issued a “call to protest” in response to the episode and posted a photo of slain Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh on its web site. Van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004 for making a film that was critical of how women are treated in Islamic societies.

“We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh for airing this show,” the group said. “This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality that will likely happen to them.”

Revolution Muslim has denied the statement was meant to encourage violence.

Then CNN aired a year-old interview with Revolution Muslim's co-founder Younes Abdullah Mohammed, who said the deaths caused by 9/11 were justified and that “we're commanded to terrorize the disbelievers.” For the record, the interview had nothing to do with the South Park episode or any other depictions of the prophet in popular culture.

Bloggers immediately picked up CNN's angle. Now the New York Times, USA Today and other major dailies are reporting that Comedy Central has decided to censor portions of a follow-up episode that also features the Prophet Mohammed.

The Los Angeles Times offered a little more perspective. Reporters Scott Collins and Matea Gold said that Revolution Muslim formed in 2007 and includes about a dozen members. Its website once had a poem during the Jewish High Holy Days asking God to kill all the Jews.

Quoting a source conspicuously missing from CNN's reporting, Collins and Gold talked to Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. He called Revolution Muslim “an extreme fringe group that has absolutely no credibility within the Muslim community. In fact, most Muslims suspect they were set up only to make Muslims look bad.”

Hooper added that CAIR hasn't made a statement about the South Park episode because the group doesn't want to give it any more attention.

The Times' angle may lack CNN's drama, but it does feature the virtues of context and thorough sourcing. Remember those?

Jason Ma is an M.A. candidate in the specialized journalism program at USC Annenberg.

by Len Ly

Israeli reporter Anat Kamm has been compared to Daniel Ellsberg, the source famous (or infamous) for leaking the military documents later known as the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the Nixon administration's misconduct in handling the Vietnam War.

Kamm is not being hailed by everyone in Israel as a hero of the Fourth Estate, however, nor has the news media in the U.S. done a good job of covering her story.

Kamm–a former reporter for Walla!, an Internet site devoted to popular culture–is accused of making digital copies of more than 2,000 classified military documents during her national service as a clerk in the office of a top Israeli general and then giving some of the sensitive information to another Israeli reporter.

The 23-year-old was detained in December and secretly put under house arrest. Israeli officials  allege as many as 700 of the leaked documents were top-secret. Last week Kamm was charged with passing on classified information with the intent of harming state security. If she is found guilty, the maximum sentence for such an offense is life in prison.

Kamm, like Ellsberg, said she was acting in the interest of the public's right to know what its elected officials are doing. The classified information was allegedly passed to Uri Blau, a Ha'aretz journalist, who used the material in a series of reports critical of the Israeli army. One of Blau's stories suggested the Israeli military had been assassinating wanted Palestinian militants in the West Bank, an apparent violation of an Israeli high court ruling. 

Ha'aretz, a liberal daily newspaper, said Blau has been living in London to avoid being arrested himself. Unlike the Ellsberg case, the publication said the military documents on which Blau's stories are based were all approved by the Israeli military censors, as Israeli policy requires, before publication.

What makes the Kamm affair unusual in Israel–and why it has provoked an outcry from free-press advocates–was a judge's decision to ban the news media from reporting details of the case. Ha'aretz and several other news outlets appealed that decision, but a Tel Aviv court lifted the gag order just two weeks ago–days before Kamm's trial began. Don Alfon, editor-in chief of Ha'aretz, told the Jewish Telegraph Agency, a U.S.-based news outlet: “Ha'aretz asked the court to lift the gag order, not just in the public interest but also to allow us to defend ourselves from this absurd allegation.” 

Foreign news media and bloggers began to report on the case only belatedly. According to a piece by Judith Miller for the Daily Beast, initial reports of the case first appeared in mid-March on Tikun Olam, a blog by Seattle-based writer Richard Silverstein. By April, other foreign news media outside Israel had picked up the story, including the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the Guardian, and the Associated Press.

Most legacy media in the U.S.–the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor and Time magazine, for example–only started reporting on the case around the time the gag order was lifted in Israel, four months after Kamm's arrest. What would have happened if the gag order had not been lifted? The Israeli media would still be restricted from covering the story. And how long would the American news media have waited to report on Kamm's detention and the silencing of the Israeli press?

Len Ly is an M.A. candidate in journalism at USC Annenberg and a reporter for Neon Tommy.