Last week it seemed that the news media couldn’t get enough of a Florida minister with a flock of 50 parishioners who was threatening to hold “Burn a Koran Day” on Sept. 11th. Many media outlets complained that they really didn’t want to give publicity to someone who was otherwise unimportant. And all the while they kept giving the minister publicity. (You will note that I’m following the lead of some journalists by not naming him here.)
Here are links to several stories and commentaries about how this minister held the American media hostage with his threat of action. This is a great topic for a journalistic ethics discussion in class.
- NPR’s On The Media ran two stories this weekend, one on how the news media couldn’t help themselves when it came to covering the story, the second on how the Arab and Middle Eastern media covered the story.
- CNN and WP media correspondent Howard Kurtz discusses media coverage of threatened Koran burning on CNN’s Reliable Sources. (video)
- Fox News had least coverage of Koran burning threat. Of all the major cable news channels (other than C-SPAN), Fox News was the only one that actually showed restraint in its coverage.
- Cartoons on threatened Koran burning from Daryl Cagle’s political cartoon site.
- Earlier coverage of this issue here.