Stop Listing Religion in News Articles

I was reading a news article today about a man arrested in New York that contained the following line “the 25 year old muslim…” when I couldn’t help but think “is it really relevant to this story that the man was muslim?” Chances are, if he were catholic or protestant that his religion wouldn’t have been listed.

So why do we list somebody’s religion only if it’s muslim? Has the witch hunt really progressed that far?

Don’t believe me? A Google search for “year old muslim” shows almost 90,000 results. “year old protestant” only shows 900. Catholic? 76,000. Hindu? only 26,000.

If you’re a news reporter or writer do me a favor: Stop listing somebody’s religion in the story unless it’s a story about religion. You’re only adding to the fear mongering.

December 11th, 2006