"God's Warriors," religion and the news media

At a time when the U.S. and the rest of the Western world is showing signs of finally connecting the dots between political events and religion, it is interesting that major newspapers and news magazines have continued to eliminate religion journalists positions. However, there seems to be an increase in the number of rather well-researched and objective religious reporting being done in some of the "mainstream" electronic media.

For example, Christiane Amanpour, the chief international correspondent for CNN, and perhaps one of the most familiar "faces" in evening news reports from Iraq and other locales in the Middle East, has now completed a much anticipated three-part religious series entitled "God's Warriors". It is being shown this week on CNN.

In the three-part series, Amanpour travels to six countries on four continents to report on the "intersection between religion and politics" and "the effect of Christianity, Islam and Judaism have on politics, culture and public life."

The CNN schedule indicates the following 9:00 PM EDT showings (but perhaps start-times may vary in different TV markets).
--Tues, Aug 21: "Jewish Warriors"
--Wed, Aug 22: "Muslim Warriors"
-- Thur, Aug 23: "Christian Warriors"

It will be interesting to see if this series sparks interest by other major networks to more intelligently and objectively discuss and report the intersection of politics and religion. And who knows, perhaps the print media might even consider re-establishing some of its religion journalist positions.