Two items of interest relating to the articles following the tragedy.
First, the letters column of the Sunday Telegraph on 9 January was full of reactions to the newspaper’s handling of the RW article.
Second, the Independent on Monday, had this review of how the religious press had covered the Asian tragedy.
This describes how the Church Times was able to scoop most of its competition, because it did not – like most religious weeklies – combine any issues over the holiday season:
The Anglican Church Times, which publishes a day later than the majority of the religious weeklies, was even sharper. An enterprising reporter’s calls to Sri Lanka on 28 December meant that when editor Paul Handley returned to work the following morning, he was able to throw out much of what had been prepared previously and run prominently in his 31 December issue Rachel Harden’s story about how churches had become sanctuary for some of the homeless.
Handley was ahead of everyone else in the field by also running, in the same issue, an editorial on the religious implications of the catastrophe. “Christian belief needs to embrace phenomena of this kind, and hold fast to faith in the God of compassion, even when the world seems to have destruction built into it.”