'The 'Ground Zero Mosque': can the media separate fact from emotion?'

It was a memo to staff and not a news story from the Associated Press last week that gave me the best understanding of the much-reported plans for a Islamic centre near Ground Zero in New York.

"It may be useful in some stories to note that Muslim prayer services have been held since 2009 in the building that the new project will replace. The proposal is to create a new, larger Islamic community center that would include a mosque, a swimming pool, gym, auditorium and other facilities," reads the AP advisory from standards editor Tom Kent.

In the search for an eye-catching headline some of the facts in the where and when of this story seem to have got lost.

The plans for Cordoba Project or Cordoba House Project concern a site two blocks away from where the twin towers stood. It is close to where the World Trade Center once was and a building site now exists, but is not being built on directly on top.

As a report by NPR points out, the new centre would be one block closer to Ground Zero than an existing mosque, Masjid Manhatten. Along with the AP's memo, these "corrections" or softening of the language used to cover the story have belatedly started to creep in to some news organisations' reports, though still not all.

Of course, plans for a mosque or Islamic prayer space even near the site of the 9/11 attacks is undeniably a sensitive and divisive issue for America's politicians and people, raising issues of race, religion, freedom and the boundaries of tolerance.

But in its reporting of the ongoing debate, the media seems to have got caught up in the language of incendiary exchanges between its opposing sides.

"Ground Zero Mosque" in a headline will attract attention and acts as a reference point for readers who may be unfamiliar with the real name of the project. But isn't it the media's job to make the public aware of the true details of these plans and let them decide for themselves?

In purely headline news terms, this is a story that will run and run and is almost to good to be true in terms of the controversies it throws up and the emotional chord it strikes. The phrase "Ground Zero Mosque" is powerful even without the media's weight behind it. The more news organisations unthinkingly use such evocative and misleading language, the harder it is to get at the issues and debates really being discussed here. There are plenty of parts to the Cordoba House plans that will provoke strong differences in opinion - there's no need for the media to stir up and perpetuate extra debate through its frames of reference.

Perhaps this raises further questions about the media's ability to be objective, especially those based in the US, when reporting such stories. That's a topic for a different comment piece. What news consumers deserve is reporting of this subject in plain language - from start to finish.

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