Washington D.C., Jun 13, 2012 / 01:01 am
Nina Shea, a prominent Catholic advocate for global religious freedom, says the Washington Post presented her as a "religious bigot" by falsely crediting her with an inflammatory statement on Islam.
Shea, a Hudson Institute senior fellow and commissioner of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, told CNA June12 that the Post's religion writer Michelle Boorstein committed an "inexplicable journalistic lapse" with her use of a "fabricated" quotation.
While Boorstein noted some of Shea's objections in an "update" to her story ("Federal lawsuit charges religious freedom commission with discriminating against Muslims," June 11), she has refused to make a correction or withdraw the story, after being notified of the errors of both fact and attribution.
The inflammatory words were misattributed to Shea in a story about Safiya Ghori-Ahmad, government relations director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Ghori-Ahmad is suing the U.S. religious freedom commission, saying she suffered religious discrimination while employed as an analyst.