CNN Belief

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Delving into CNN's 'dirty little secret' about religious conversions and Ben Carson

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My Christian Chronicle colleague Erik Tryggestad wrote a column from New Zealand recently in which he lamented his somewhat pedestrian decision to give his life to Jesus:

I’ve always found my own story to be lacking in drama, I told the group. I grew up in the church with great, godly parents. When I was 14 I was baptized. My salvation was an assumption — an expected journey, hardly worth sharing.

Tryggestad's not-so-boring reporting adventures have taken him to 60 countries. ("Plus, y'know ... Canada," he told me. And yes, I'm including that comment just to agitate my friends north of the border.)

Apparently, my Chronicle colleague is not alone in wishing he had a better conversion story.

Enter CNN Religion Editor Daniel Burke with the "Religion News Clickbait Headline of the Week":

The dirty little secret about religious conversion stories

(Here at GetReligion, we're much too sophisticated to ever resort to such a headline. Obviously, we'd never put "dirty little secret" in a title just hoping to gain a few extra clicks. But anyway ... )

Like the CNN headline, Burke's lede takes ample creative liberty (as opposed to an inverted-pyramid approach):


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CNN's Daniel Burke survived a GetReligion interview, but will his 'Friendly Atheists' story endure our critique?

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That there title is what is known as clickbait.

I know you people: You fancy a nice train wreck. You crave a good, no-holds-barred professional wrestling match. You love GetReligion the most when we're whacking some incompetent "journalist" (hey, how do you like those scare quotes, media person!?) over the head with a 2-by-4.

Sadly, today I come to praise CNN Religion Editor Daniel Burke, not to bury him. 

And I knew you wouldn't dare click if I said something vanilla like "CNN produces a really nice piece of religion journalism." (Yawn.)

Come to think of it, Burke didn't really write about religion, did he? If you read my 5Q+1 interview with him the other day, you know that he produced a 10,000-plus-word opus on atheists.

Hmmmm, "Religion editor can't find religion to write about." Maybe that's my angle.

I kid. I kid.


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5Q+1 interview: Daniel Burke on CNN Belief, 'The Friendly Atheists Next Door' and the next big religion story

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Daniel Burke is religion editor for CNN.

His mission: to cover the faith angles of the day's biggest stories.

Before joining CNN two years ago, Burke spent seven years with Religion News Service, where he covered everything from Amish funerals to the Zen of Steve Jobs. 

He earned master's degrees in journalism and comparative religion from Columbia University.

"Before that, I went to Georgetown University, where a course on 'The Problem of God' set me on the path to religion reporting," he wrote on his LinkedIn page.

In a 5Q+1 interview (that's five questions plus a bonus question) with GetReligion, Burke discussed CNN Belief, his 10,000-plus-word longread on "The Friendly Atheists Next Door" and what he sees as the next big religion story.


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