"One of the fundamentals of these United States is freedom of religion, which most people interpret as one of any number of religions. But what if your religion is not to have one at all?"
You see I live in Oklahoma, center of the Bible Belt. Here objectivity coming from a local news station is an often hard commodity to come by when most of your constituents and advertisers would protest to the extreme any objective, non-biased journalism when it comes to the topic of religion. So when I heard the opening line of this news story, I cringed, assuming what was to follow would be the typical, biased rhetoric I was used to hearing. But after listening further to the story, I was pleasantly surprised. The journalist interviewing seemed to be, well, acting like a professional journalist.
He asked questions. The people being interviewed answered. We were hearing both sides of the story and were being allowed to come up with our own opinion about the topic. I was shocked. I was confused. I asked my husband, "Are we still in Oklahoma or did we move and I just haven't realized it yet?"
And then we got to the final question from the journalist to the Catholic priest being interviewed, "Bottom line. If there is an Atheist celebration at a park, and a storm rolls in, should I not be any where near them when the lightening strikes?"
The priest replies, "Good idea..."
And they both laugh.
Phew. I was confused for a moment. I thought we might actually get an objective new story. Instead we got a weak attempt at comedy.
Here's a tip for that journalist. Don't quit your day job. You're not remotely intelligent or funny enough to appear on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Why don't you work on your journalism skills instead?
You see I live in Oklahoma, center of the Bible Belt. Here objectivity coming from a local news station is an often hard commodity to come by when most of your constituents and advertisers would protest to the extreme any objective, non-biased journalism when it comes to the topic of religion. So when I heard the opening line of this news story, I cringed, assuming what was to follow would be the typical, biased rhetoric I was used to hearing. But after listening further to the story, I was pleasantly surprised. The journalist interviewing seemed to be, well, acting like a professional journalist.
He asked questions. The people being interviewed answered. We were hearing both sides of the story and were being allowed to come up with our own opinion about the topic. I was shocked. I was confused. I asked my husband, "Are we still in Oklahoma or did we move and I just haven't realized it yet?"
And then we got to the final question from the journalist to the Catholic priest being interviewed, "Bottom line. If there is an Atheist celebration at a park, and a storm rolls in, should I not be any where near them when the lightening strikes?"
The priest replies, "Good idea..."
And they both laugh.
Phew. I was confused for a moment. I thought we might actually get an objective new story. Instead we got a weak attempt at comedy.
Here's a tip for that journalist. Don't quit your day job. You're not remotely intelligent or funny enough to appear on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Why don't you work on your journalism skills instead?
