Ignoring religious persecution

Get Religion is a great blog that reviews religion coverage in the media. This short interview with Julia Duin, the stellar longtime religion reporter for the Washington Times, is worth reading. Her response when asked what religion-related stories aren't getting the attention is unsurprising but still maddening.

(2) What is the most important religion story right now that you think the mainstream media just do not get?

Overseas religious persecution tops the list. I did a front-page story recently on how the Chinese government is killing off hundreds — no one knows the true number — of Falun Gong prisoners for their organs and I got no pickups. Now that story is not completely new but the MSM is not touching it. It’s Nazi horror stuff: people getting snuffed out for their skin, lungs, corneas, livers and kidneys. The Falun Gong had a press conference recently in the Capitol on this — with secular folks who are not part of their movement testifying — and it was pathetic how few media attended. The slow strangulation of Orthodox Copts by the Egyptian government is another story. Teen-aged girls are getting kidnapped, gang-raped and forced to convert to Islam. Islamic mobs attack Christians with impunity. These stories are not hard to do but I don’t see journalists out there doing them.

These are incredibly important stories, involving egregious, unambiguous violations of human rights, involving a oppressive majority preying on an oppressed minority. In other words, they actually fit the template into which the mainstream media tries to stuff just about every story it can. And yet these stories are ignored -- even when all it would take would be to reprint a story already written by a pro like Julia Duin (and thus her Times front-pager on the Falun Gong got "no pickups"). It makes one especially grateful for journalists like Duin, and like Jay Nordlinger, who has been shedding light on the ChiCom's persecution of Falun Gong practitioners for years.