items of interest

Despite travel difficulties and the demands of news coverage, 130 reporters and writers attended the 52nd Annual Conference of the Religion Newswriters Association, held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last month.

Panels on faith and ethics, faith and diversity, and the religious dimension of covering catastrophes, had been planned long before, but the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon gave them a new dimension.

Sissela Bok, a well-known commentator on personal ethics with the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, spoke out strongly on the addictive effect of violent behavior. Through activities that present killing without showing its consequences, she said that children have been raised on "glamorized, soul-killing violence." Commenting on violent acts committed in the name of religion—and specifically those on September 11—she called on individual religious leaders to tell those of their faith who do such violence that they should "not [do this] in our name, not in the name of our faith, of our God."

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