Every now and then, your GetReligionistas receive emails from readers who are infuriated by the headline on a story, as opposed to the contents of the actual story. Why, they ask, do reporters write terrible headlines like that?
This provides another chance to let readers know a basic newsroom fact: Reporters rarely, if ever, write the headlines that go over their stories. They are written by copy editors.
(It’s possible that this fact has changed in the digital age. Maybe, as economic woes shrink news teams, reporters are asked to submit headlines. Young journalists can drop me notes telling me to get a clue.)
All of this is a set-up to discuss a double-decker New York Times headline that recently caused me to do a near spit take while drinking my morning cold-caffeine beverage. See if you can spot the offending phrase:
A Boom, a Fire and a Stampede: Dozens Die at a Coptic Church in Egypt
A blaze that killed at least 41 at a church in greater Cairo caused anguish among a religious minority that has long felt itself oppressed in Egypt
The key words, for this Orthodox believer, were these (with an added dose of italics — “a religious minority that has long felt itself oppressed.”
Whoa. The Copts feel that they are oppressed? This is a matter of emotions or their own opinions of what is happening to them?
In short, are there any experts who study global religious-freedom issues who do not accept, as a reality — demonstrated for centuries — that Coptic believers are persecuted or at least “oppressed” in Egypt? If readers question that statement, I would suggest a quick scan through this U.S. State Department report — “2021 Report on International Religious Freedom: Egypt.”
Now, the good news is that the actual Times report eventually offers quite a bit of information about the plight of Coptic believers. But first, here is the overture that helps set up the implied question in this tragedy: When is a church fire more than a simple church fire?
