Media Coverage

Church role in voting Beth Gillin quotes a woman who has been a Roman Catholic for 60 years who thinks that her parish is "going down a slippery slope" toward violation of the "separation of church and state" because her parish encourages prayer for abortion-rights advocates. Unfortunately, many people are poorly informed on this issue. In reality, religion and politics can and should mix, and that is just what the Constitution allows: freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

John Servis should have known that the last day before the Belmont Stakes had no shot at being a normal one. Yes, that champagne-colored Mercedes-Benz S430 on the side of the road with the flat rear left tire early yesterday morning belonged to Smarty Jones' trainer, who needed a lift from his father to get to the track on time for his horse's last prerace gallop of the Triple Crown trail. His horse galloped great, but his day kept getting stranger. Like when those five Little Sisters of the Poor dropped in from sportswriter heaven, all dressed in white, bringing a couple of healing relics from the tomb of their founder in France.

President Bush withheld direct comment yesterday for the second day on the downing of a U.S. helicopter in Iraq, though he vowed to "never run" from the continuing attacks on American forces. Traveling in Alabama, Bush spoke mainly about new favorable economic statistics. About losses in Iraq, where 16 U.S. soldiers were killed in Sunday's attack on the helicopter, he said: "We mourn every loss. We honor every name. We grieve with every family. " He stressed that the conflict in Iraq was a direct outgrowth of the war on terrorism that began with the Sept.

IS THE American media embedded or in bed with the military? That's the question some Americans are asking as the war in Iraq - and its media coverage - is proving problematic. We don't know all the motivations behind Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's surprising decision to allow reporters to travel with ground forces. Was it out of a genuine desire to show the world how humanely American forces would go after Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq? Or was it in hopes of co-opting the media into delivering news that could be used as propaganda?

Indisputably a miracle: Elizabeth Smart, abducted from her bedroom nine months ago at the age of 14, was found alive and physically well Wednesday. Against this happy ending, consider the horrifying deaths of Danielle van Dam, age 7, and 5-year-old Samantha Runnion, also snatched from their families by strangers last year. As the news spread, people who will never know her or her family rejoiced. And a flood of curiosity was unleashed. Inquiring minds want to know a lot more than we have any right to expect.

A BEAUTIFUL SCAM has turned into a media nightmare for three men accused of trying to extort money from Down Under hunk Russell Crowe. Yesterday's trial in Syndney, Australia, of Philip Antony Cropper, 36, Mark James Potts, 42, and Malcolm Brian Mercer, 37, - all accused of perverting the course of justice - was postponed because of the case's heightened media coverage. The trio is accused of trying to extort a lots o' cash from his royal curmudgeon in exchange for destroying a security video that purportedly shows the Gladiator in a fight.

MICHELLE MALKIN, in her March 4 column, counts the stories about Danny Pearl's tragic death to make a bogus argument about media hostility toward religion. Three thousand people die in the World Trade Center, the most closely covered story in decades. Millions in Africa die anonymously of AIDS every year. Is it because the African AIDS victims were devout and the Sept. 11 victims were heathens? Malkin's methods show far more obvious biases against foreigners, non-whites and the poor.

THE KIDNAP-murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was an awful, brutal and evil act. But the wall-to-wall coverage of his abduction and death raises questions about media double standards. Pearl, you see, wasn't the only American being held hostage by foreign thugs with suspected ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network. Since May 27, 2001, Americans Martin and Gracia Burnham have been imprisoned by the Abu Sayyaf, violent Islamic guerrillas in the Philippines who have ties to Osama bin Laden.