Islam and Media & Islam in the Media

You may also like...

4 Responses

  1. Tom Yulsman says:

    Presumably the NPR story was reported out of Washington, and if that’s the case, it suggests that a typical inside-the-Beltway mindset prevailed. “We’re important journalists, we know best — better than some academics meeting way out in the provinces somewhere.”

    Another issue could simply be that the conference simply wasn’t put on NPR’s radar screen. I know that there was some publicity for the conference, but if you want reporters in Washington to take note of something like this you probably have to spend a good deal of effort cultivating contacts, following up, reminding, pestering, etc. A simple press release is not going to do it.

  2. As the co-director of this conference, I spent a considerable amount of time cultivating those sources and sending emails and making phone calls and all I got were promises from national, local and regional media to provide some coverage. This is a matter too critical and urgent for reporters to complain that nobody told them about this event. We sent press releases to the Religion Newswriters (RNA) and they put us on their calendar. Religion reporters from across the country access that calendar daily. I sent multiple emails to religion writers at various news organizations, including AP, NPR, PBS, and CNN. There are really no excuses.

    • martijn says:

      Dear Nabil,

      As I wrote in the post, I wasn’t there but what you are telling me here is exactly what I have heard from those were there. I have the same experience, with only one exception: a congres organized on ‘Salafism’, and since that is targeted as THE radical Islamic movement there was an abundance of interested among journalists, until they were told they could join but not write about it. Only a few (the ones usually better informed) attended then. Keep up the good work anyway.

  3. Tom Yulsman says:

    Nabil: I should not have made the assumptions I did. My apologies!

    The decimation of American journalism may be partly to blame here. But not in the case of NPR. Shame on them!

Leave a Reply to Nabil Echchaibi Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *