This is a headline why exactly?

A Saudi Arabian man who allegedly admitted perusing child pornography is demanding a Quran and a prayer rug while behind bars.
A Nigerian man who allegedly admitted perusing child pornography is demanding a Bible while behind bars.
An Israeli man who allegedly admitted perusing child pornography is demanding a Torah and prayer shawl while behind bars.
A Russian man who allegedly admitted perusing child pornography is demanding a Orthodox prayer book and Bible while behind bars.

Which of those would make a great lede for the front page's main story? Yeah, you guessed it.

The Knoxville News Sentinel today ran this headline:

Quran, prayer rug requested

You can see that it's one of the two main heds today:


(We also have "Pit bulls get 'parenting', "Musharraf warns U.S. against action", and "Well water around illegal dump to be tested", all below the fold.)

I'm not quite sure why this is the main story, but it is. Not Saudi arrested for child pornography, but a Muslim man having the nerve to ask for ‹gasp› a Quran while in jail.

The guy in the article was arrested in Knoxville for speeding and not having his driver's license in his possession. That's all cleared up - he produced his documentation and paid his fine - but he let them look at his laptop, and they found child porn. Now he's in the federal slammer, and he wants his religious needs cared for while he awaits trial. And somehow, this becomes the whole point of the story. The reporter dutifully runs through the circumstances of the arrest, but the big deal for her isn't the porn, it's the request (or "demand") for a Quran and prayer rug. I wonder, would she carry on so if the guy was a Christian asking for a Bible? And would the paper feel that demand was headline-worthy?

(PS - Predictably, the comments section is full of people (a) assuming he's here illegally, though the story never says so; he's almost certainly on a student visa; (b) assuming he's guilty though he hasn't been tried yet; (c) demanding he be humiliated and/or deported immediately; and (d) calling for him to be shot ASAP. Hardly anybody mentions due process or the rule of law. But then, this is pushing a couple of buttons: Islam and child porn. Combine them and you get all the loons.)