antiwarwarrior's Journal - An interesting note on the Iraqi tennis players story

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/tenn...

Gunmen stopped the car in which the athletes were riding and asked them to step out before shooting them Wednesday, Manham Kubba, secretary general of the Iraqi Tennis Union, said Saturday. The coach, Hussein Ahmed Rashid, was Sunni, and the two players were Shiite, Kubba said.

Six months ago, if you had asked a journalist whether a murder victim was Sunni or Shiite, you'd get the same blank-faced expression that you'd expect to get from your dog had you asked it the same question. It seems of late, to me at least, that the racial(? ethnic? religious? Not quite sure what to call it) aspect of this is being paid more attention to, perhaps as an understanding of the plausibility of a civil war in Iraq.

The purpose of this thread is not to discuss the vile actions of the murderers, or to decry the horrors of religious extremism - it's to ask the following question: is the media becoming more conscious of the Sunni/Shiite/Kurd divisions in Iraq, or is the mention in this article a one-off incidence?