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Stop Listing Religion in News Articles

December 11, 2006 by

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.

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About Ryan Jones

Ryan Jones is an SEO from Detroit. By day he works as a manager of SEO & Analytics at SapientNitro where his team performs SEO for Fortune500 clients. By night he's either playing hockey or attempting to take over the world with his own websites - which he would have already succeeded in doing had it not been for those meddling kids and their dog. The views expressed here have not been paid for and belong only to Ryan, not any of his employers or clients. Follow Ryan on Twitter at: @RyanJones, add him on Google+ or visit his personal website: www.RyanMJones.com