Mo problems
Posted on Dec 19 2007 | Tagged as: Media, Religion
Yesterday evening I picked up a copy of the current New Statesman to read on the train home from London, and found a great example of something that’s been annoying me for a while.
Page 42 of the magazine is home to this piece by Richard Dawkins (pbuh). Its standfirst contains the expression “son of God”, complete with those distancing quote marks that are entirely appropriate to a contentious and not universally accepted claim.
Shame, then, that just four pages earlier the same treatment wasn’t given to a reference to Mohammed as a “Prophet”, which is presented as uncontested fact.
Sure, a “proliferation” of quote marks can become (as my old tutor put it) “very tedious” (or just ridiculous, like “this”), but isn’t presenting a point of view as fact something that journalism is never supposed to do?
