“I was calling on Jesus”

So a line of severe storms roared through TN and surrounding states yesterday into this morning.  Deservedly, the story is currently center-stage on CNN’s website.  But their lede choice is interesting, Tornado survivor: “I was calling on Jesus”.

A question, if you will.  If a survivor had said, “I was calling on Mohammed” or another prophet from a different religion, would they have run the quote?  For that matter, why include the quote at all?

This entry was posted on February 6, 2008 at 9:00 pm and is filed under meta. Tagged: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to ““I was calling on Jesus””

  1. Anonymous Says:
    February 6, 2008 at 11:01 pm

    Why do you have a problem with it?

  2. weatherdem Says:
    February 7, 2008 at 9:11 pm

    As I stated in the post, if a survivor had called upon someone other than Jesus, would it have been included in the story? If not, why use the quote they did? What did it add to the story that someone else wouldn’t have? Why use it as the lede?

    Should journalists reinforce societal memes or report news events without bias?

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