Terry Mattingly at GetReligion writes about the way in which the media is missing the truly vast scale of the religious persecution currently taking place in the Middle East.

Several times a year, a major national or international story simply takes over the news. The bigger the story, the more likely — in my experience at least — it is to have a religion-angle linked to it, often an angle of historic proportions.

However, since the primary religion of journalism is politics, in the here and now, religion angles often slide into the background until, finally, the role of religion in a major story is so obvious that it cannot be denied.

This is what is happening right now with the story of Iraq, ISIS (or ISIL) and the persecution of religious minorities, especially in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain region.

The truly historic story that looms in the background is — literally — the death of Christian communities that have existed in this region since the early church.

Mattingly argues that while the media has finally, finally caught up with reporting on the atrocities perpetrated by ISIS towards Christians and other minorities, it’s largely ignoring the bigger picture.

There are some notable exceptions (such as a series of really excellent pieces from the Irish Times‘s Lara Marlowe), but largely the media have failed to grapple with the structural and historic nature of events in Iraq and Syria.

And then there’s the issue of prominence. RTE’s news website has made no prominent mention of anti-Christian persecution. Same with the Irish Times and the Independent. Take five minutes on aina.org, and realise that these are real stories – huge stories, that are simply not getting the coverage they deserve. Instead our headlines are full of the Leaving Cert.

Terry Mattingly:

News is news, but sometimes it is also truly historic. That is what is hiding in the background during this blitz of coverage in Syria and Iraq. A very important corner of the world is changing, perhaps forever.