Along with the release of this year's World Watch List
(WWL), an annual ranking of the 50 countries where Christians face the
most persecution for their faith, Open Doors is also launching World
Watch Monitor (WWM), a fresh news initiative that aims to raise
awareness of the persecuted church.
"It's important for people to have knowledge of persecution," said WWM editor Jeff Thomas (previously editor and vice president of the Colorado Springs Gazette). "The association of our news with the credibility of Open Doors [will] enhance our news information."
Open Doors is not a new player in the persecution news arena. Long before it launched WWM, the ministry ran the well-regarded Compass Direct News service. But Open Doors began to rethink its strategy in 2011 and decided to close Compass Direct and associate its reporting more closely with the Open Doors brand, Thomas said.
The World Watch Monitor name now explicitly links the news service to
the WWL in order to "help readers encounter the larger story of the
persecuted church and be invited to more significant involvement with
it," he said.
WWM is one of many nonprofits—including Christian Solidarity Worldwide,
Voice of the Martyrs, and International Christian Concern (ICC)—that
use journalism to raise awareness of religious freedom around the world. "If you strip away the religious element of what we're doing, persecution is a niche topic," said Thomas.
But former Compass Direct editor Jeff Sellers says such news efforts
are limited by their ties to particular aid agencies. Independent news
organizations, like those in the mainstream press, face fewer
limitations in gathering and disseminating information, he said.
To test his belief, Sellers launched Morning Star News (MSN) in September. According to its website, MSN is "the only independent news service focusing exclusively on persecution of Christians."
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