"discrimination" against Christians (and Jews)

I suspect sophiaserpentia will especially appreciate this situation given her recent noodling.

A few weeks ago (11-20) we had a local news article published on Somali refugee students who are trying to fit into the public schools. A picture accompanied it showing the Muslim Somali students praying their daily prayers, I think in the library. Of course, the paper was inundated with letters complaining that Christians (and Jews - and yes, the parentheses are intentional) are not allowed to pray or read the Bible in school and so are discriminated against. Such opinions continued to trickle through the letters to the editor even this week.

Yet school teachers wrote in as far back as the 26th describing the diversity of accomodations made for relgious activities of all stripes in the public schools.

So I wrote a letter to the reader advocate and the editor asking why they were continuing to publish both types of letters in the paper. They say they don't publish letters with "wrong facts." It seems pretty clear one account or the other is wrong. So I asked why they haven't investigated and reported the facts instead of serving to spread misinformation. They published my letter today. Now I kinda wish I'd said something snarky about the Christian (and Jewish) accomodations of weekends, Christmas, etc. But then maybe they wouldn't have published it, and I wouldn't have gotten my primary point across anyways, which is as much about the state of journalism as the "culture war."

I have yet to see any factual follow-up. I'll be keeping my eye out. Maybe I should write a guest column.