my brother, is a journalist.
from him i learn that...
1-a reporter will gather the facts
2-sift thru the facts to find an "angle" for the piece to be written.(lets face it...they are writing a story that needs toengage a reader, please an editor, sell a newspaper,push a hidden agenda, who knows...i'll let theconspiracy theorists sort it out)
3-those FACTS that back up the chosen angle will make it into the story (and give someone there moment of fame), and those that don't only live on in the memory of the one who will forever cherish the day that"DUDE, i was interviewed by CNN!!!"
an exemple:
since sept.11 my brother has been running around talking to the local reporters and helping them cover the muslims. yesterday he spent most of eid holiday helping with a piece on the celebration. he gathered quotes from kids, imams, leaders, and added a lengthy quote from the sermon. stressing the fact that it was an uplifting non-political, spiritual message about the holiday. he also went into the subjects of the moon sighting controversy, and all sorts of facts about EID ingeneral and the way Muslims celebrated it.
BUT...after submitting his material to the MIAMI HERALD reporter assigned to write the piece, and reading the article she wrote, He learned a valuable lesson: EID is not a holiday like Christmas or Kwanza and will not get typical Holiday coverage in the MIAMI HERALD like the others get. From the Editor on down, the article was probably chosen to be part of the larger Sept.11 coverage. And since the imam she happened to interview mentioned something about the firebombing incident in Cali and his EID Khutba spoke of Muslim suffering abroad...
HER CHOSEN ANGLE: feelings of FEAR among Muslims at Holiday time!?!
chosen from among my brothers contribution to her set of included facts: a single sentence from our imam's excellent khutba that happened in some way to fit into her angle. (this is why you run around complaining about being misquoted in the press) as frustrated as my brother was last night, he didn't blame her for what even he had been taught in school to do.
she had no knowledge about islam or muslims and was just assigned to cover an event and write a story about it. after reading her article my brother backed of from educating her too much about islam for he would lose credibility as a reporter and tread into the territory of a lobbyist.
so...How many muslims dying in Afghanistan??? Does it fit into the current "angle" our media reporters and editors may be ALLOWED to publish or release in this time of war propaganda??What must WE do to get Non-Muslim Americans (this includes the media) to think of us as Beautiful Human Beings and not just some stray facts that can be ignored or hidden from view?
But...we must also work on becoming those Beautiful Human Beings that we pretend to be.
peace and love.
