ESPN's Sportscenter has a recurring feature called Outside The Lines, in which they report on off-the-field human interest stories related to sports. Sunday night a story aired, titled "Keeping The Faith." It was about two brothers, Hamza and Husain Abdullah - NFL players who are observant Muslims and who are fasting during Ramadan, as they always do.
The short piece included an introduction by Bob Ley stating that
Islam, its perceptions and its practice here in the United States is a headline story. A poll this week by the New York Times shows a majority of New Yorkers are opposed to the construction of the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque," even thought 60% of those polled say Muslims have a right to build that mosque. Critics often cite what they say is the insensitivity of such a building near the site of the terrorist attack.In the video, Husain Abdullah explains that during Ramadan "[y]ou fast while the sun is up. Food, water, drink. No conjugal relationship with your wife. [You're] not supposed to fight, or anything of that nature. Supposed to be, you know, you're fasting from everything."
Sensitivity. That's probably the best word to describe what you're about to see.
The piece is very sympathetic to Muslims, and tries to show what Islam really is, explaining customs most Americans do not know about, and that demonstrating that observant Muslims should be respected. When asked whether they were taking a risk of being cut, given that neither are starters, by fasting during training camp neither brother would have considered not fasting, and Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt points out that when putting together a football team, the "strength of character" shown by the difficult observance is clearly "a strong mark is [their] favor."
As we've noted, it's been rare these days to hear much of the mainstream media or elected officials speak about Islam in a positive way. President Obama felt the need to suggest that building at the Park 51 site was not necessarily wise, but that they had the right, and much of the media discusses polling on the issue, as if Islam's worth is something legitimately in bounds for debate.
It's funny, people don't think of ESPN as a standard "news" outfit, but the ratings of Sportscenter compare favorably to the highest rated cable news shows, as far as I can tell. I can't find great ratings for Sportscenter, and it fluctuates with sport seasons, but here's an example where it reached 4 million in a week a few years ago (and I can't think of why that week would be a particularly big one). Here's another post that puts is just another a million viewers per day. By comparison, here is a sample daily rating for a few shows on the three cable news networks (the link has all of them listed).
The O’Reilly Factor– 2,372,000 viewersIt turns out that ESPN might be more influential than people realize as a general news source, and I bet reaches a demographic that doesn't always look for other types of news. (Everyone knows people who only ever wanted to read the sports section.) So Kudos to ESPN for affirmatively doing the right thing, trying to fight the crazy in what way they can, even when they really didn't have any obligation to jump in the fight.
Hannity– 1,452,000 viewers
Countdown w/ K. Olbermann – 1,014,000 viewers
Rachel Maddow Show —1,073,000 viewers
Situation Room—465,000 viewers
Larry King Live —543,000 viewers
UPDATE: It appears that ESPN has removed the video, and they have taken it down from YouTube as well. One can only speculate as to why that would be the case, but I'm a little concerned it was related to specifically the good effects it could have had here. I'll check back on that soon, and if anyone sees anything about it, please mention it in comments.
