Koran (Creative Commons)

Discussions about the extremism festering in backwater Florida started through Facebook, YouTube and Christian and Muslim religious organizations. But it wasn't the Facebook posts, or even Pastor Terry Jones, who made the story an international media circus, experts say. It was traditional, American news outlets.

"There were other stories to cover this summer: housing foreclosures, the educational crisis, economic problems," said Diane Winston, the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. "But none of them were as sexy as burning a Koran."

The story has created controversy around the world, and it presents the American press with tough ethical questions. What's fit to print? Which is a greater duty: informing the people, or making a statement by ignoring extremists who manipulate the media?

It gets harder every year to balance those two directives, Winston said. She and other experts say news values have fallen prey to the demands of the 24-hour news cycle.

Historian Rick Perlstein writes that anti-JFK mobs in the 1960s drew bigger crowds than Tea Party rallies today, but news coverage of the Tea Party has far surpassed coverage of the anti-JFK mobs. 

"Associated Press reporters did not feel obliged to show up," Perlstein writes. "That shift in news values, not the rise of the Internet, is the most profound way that times have changed."

The way our country's press covers its stories affects the way the rest of the world sees us, Winston said. Each country's news outlets are, to some extent, the gatekeepers for which stories go international. There wouldn't have been protests in the Middle East or roundtable discussions about Jones on BBC World News if the American media hadn't picked up the Koran burning story.

"Media attention at home makes it seem that burning a Koran is actually a normal thing to do here," Winston said. "If we were to adapt at all after this, I hope it would be to strive to be more responsible in what we print and how we print it."

Reach staff reporter Laura J. Nelson here.

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