COLUMN: Muslim photo troubles readers -- and that is news

These days the third rail of politics, the fatally untouchable subject that every politician must avoid, is generally figured as cutting Social Security.

The third rail for journalism?

Might be anything to do with Islam.

We were reminded of that again this week here at the Morning News after we published a couple of photographs of some Muslims at prayer (in public!) in Florence last week. A minor flood of calls and emails rolled in, lambasting us for our decision. Some subscriptions were canceled (maybe). At least one caller threatened to boycott the site where the photo was taken, namely the Starbucks parking lot on West Palmetto.

Readers couldn’t understand what the heck we were doing, so first, a few words on that.

As the name suggests, the Morning News is a newspaper. Much of what we publish would certainly meet almost every definition of just what news is, but some would fall into a gray area. That’s fine by me. A newspaper is a form of entertainment. We compete against magazines, television, the Internet, gardening, golf, books, facebooking, and anything else you could spend your free time on. If we’re not interesting, you won’t spend any time with us, and all the dire predictions about our business will come true. So, we try to offer an interesting mix each day (and more frequently, online), and while we do publish plenty of arrests, and business developments and city council votes, we also publish stories about lost dogs, outlandish celebrity doings, unusual people and interesting goings on.

A good test for what is “news,” one I’ve used for a long time, is to ask the question would you tell the story at a party? In other words, would people who aren’t your immediate family find it interesting? If you would, it’s probably news, although it might not fit into the obvious and traditional categories. (I might point out here that this test does not meet the standard of reciprocity. A story you would tell at a party because it’s interesting might be news, but not every story told at a party is news … or for that matter interesting. If you’ve been to a party you probably know this.)

So back to last Wednesday and the photo in question. Morning News photo editor and coffee fiend Rebecca Ducker was pulling into Starbucks for an afternoon fix when she noticed two men in the parking lot, making preparations for what looked like prayer. Her journalistic radar began going off. She grabbed her camera and headed out to talk to them.

As it turns out, the pair were passersby, headed to Virginia. They stopped in Florence for coffee, and, since it was near time for one of Islam’s five daily prayers, they decided to use a nice sunny spot outside Starbucks to practice their religion. They graciously allowed Rebecca to photograph them doing it.

Rebecca returned to the office a few minutes later, energized by a jolt of java and a nice little scoop. “Guess what I found,” she said, grinning. She told me and I agreed with her: that was pretty neat; you don’t see it every day, maybe not any day at the Florence Starbucks; and yes, I might tell that story at a party.

So we decided to run the photographs, and some explanation of what the men were doing, on our front page. It wasn’t what we in the business call “hard news” but it was newsworthy and it was interesting.

As noted earlier, readers didn’t like it. One of the best spoken, Jim Smith, agreed to share his views on the subject. They appear on the opposite page.

Other readers were less thoughtful and more pointed.

Not only was this not news, they said, it wasn’t in good taste. It was un-patriotic, sacrilegious, or some combination of the two. It was an affront. We’ll never buy a Morning News again, said one. We’ll never go to Starbucks again, said another.

I get the point, we get the point. America is the target of worldwide terrorist groups with ties to Islam. The 9-11 attacks were carried out by Muslim extremists.  The word “Muslim” is, for many Americans today, an epithet.

It shouldn’t be.

I will not belabor the obvious point, but will re-state it one more time: just because some Muslims are terrorists does not mean that all Muslims are. The vast majority are not. To tar all Muslims with the terrorist brush would be similar to calling all Christians racist because a handful also belong to the Ku Klux Klan.

Islam is no more a religion of hate or terror than Christianity is.  Any thoughtful study of the Koran or Islam leads to this general conclusion, although I concede there is room for some debate on the matter.

There is no debating this, however: America’s current bias with regard to Muslims is proof of a growing streak of intolerance in our nation. In a country built on freedom of religion, and most of everything else, that’s troubling.

And that most definitely is news.

Tucker Mitchell is Regional Editor for the Morning News. Contact him at 843-317-7250 or by email at cmitchell@florencenews.com.