Malaysiakini.com（http://www.malaysiakini.com）
The case for reporting religion fairly, 1 December 2008
by Eric Loo
At the time of writing (Nov 30), my nephew had just arrived in Sydney from Mumbai. He was one of the Australian trade delegates who had been staying at the Oberoi Hotel when it was attacked by gunmen.
He managed to escape via the emergency exit staircase from the 15th floor when the ‘Deccan mujahideen’ invaded the lobby and killed those in sight.
Hearing his eye-witness accounts, and not being there, how could I have filed a ‘fair and balanced’ account beyond the routine ‘Islamist terrorist’ frame repeatedly shown on the cable news?
I had visited parts of India on several occasions. Muslims are among the poorest of the poor there. I had visited the opulent Taj Mahal Hotel, not as a guest but as a curious passer-by.
The Taj’s the place where the bejewelled local rich and foreign tourists dine and mingle, oblivious to child beggars on the streets and, where just about a kilometre away, slum dwellers survive with no ready access to clean water or basic toilet facilities.
The gap between dire poverty and excessive opulence in India is so wide it raises questions when terrorism strikes in the heart of Bollywood. Could the story be about more than a group of young mujahideen, brainwashed by al-Qaeda teachings, attacking the symbols of decadent wealth?
Is the bigger untold story wrapped in one of their statements to the media: "Muslims in India should not be persecuted. We love this as our country, but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?”
When the smoke clears, journalists will reflect on the siege and speculate on the source of the mujahideen’s financial support and training camps, the implications for the Indian economy and relations with Pakistan, and so forth. Would a religion reporter tell a different story?
Like their audience, journalists react to explosive events with religious, ethnic and political underpinnings, and often miss biting the core of the stories. Recall the Bali bombers, framed as mad murderers - which they were. The stories, however, missed explaining the fact that the bombers’ deviant radicalised political interpretations of the Quran were wrong.
Recall Mel Gibson’s film ‘The Passion of the Christ’. Journalists were more taken by the shock value of blood and gore - which the film clearly showed - than the deeper story about Jesus’ sacrifice to atone for the sins of humankind.
Sources from religious institutions understandably hesitate to respond to public interest issues because of their learned fear of being misrepresented in the secular media.
And it doesn’t help either when journalists generally profess to be atheists, agnostics or free-thinkers who routinely frame controversial religion stories as a conflict between conservative and liberal values while centrist or moderate views are marginalised. It does a disservice to the public by legitimising a vocal religious minority which consequently influences the course of the country’s politics.
Feel for core issues
As the messenger for all communities, journalists, through their stories, can break down the sectarian walls that are deeply rooted in ideologies of historical, religious and cultural rivalries.
Or, journalists could drive a deeper wedge - because they don’t know any better about the subject matter, hence overlooking the influence of religious convictions on human behaviour and missing the religion dimension of the story.
Indeed, controversial reporting of religion and its followers risks fomenting sectarian angst in pluralistic societies.
The solution, however, is not to blankly bar the reporting of inter-faith issues, such as the Home Ministry’s show-cause letters to the Catholic weekly publication Herald, for using the word ‘Allah’ in its stories and for politicising its coverage, hence breaching its licensing conditions.
To bar the Herald from editorialising on politics when religion, race and politics are inextricably linked, is to deny the Catholic media and its readers their constitutional rights to freely and responsibly express their views on issues that affect their beliefs.
The irony is that religion is not new to the mainstream media ever since the call-to-prayer began to be broadcast on RTM in the 1970s. The teachings of Islam have also received dedicated space in the English and Malay papers.
Whatever religion-related stories there are in the mainstream media, they’re seasonal and event-oriented, most recently the pilgrimage to Mecca. A journalistic opportunity lost in enlightening non-Muslims of the spiritual significance of the haj to every Muslim and how it frames their worldview.
A former UiTM colleague Ahmad Murad Merican had understandably alluded to the need to teach Malaysian journalism students how to report about Islam (NST, July 30, 2008).
I think it’s less about teaching students how to report about the teachings of Islam, Christianity or other minority religions. That belongs to the realm of religious newspapers published by religious institutions.
A more sensible step is to find better methodologies of reporting context faith-based issues that matter to all religious groups. Just as a business reporter focuses on the economic implications of a story, and a celebrity-lifestyle reporter on personalities, a religion reporter essentially feels for the religious and spiritual dimensions of issues.
Overlooking this dimension is to miss the core of many stories that emerge from the enduring human spirit to overcome life’s adversities. Thus, the imperative for journalists to know how to ask questions - across different faith lines - respectfully and sensitively while maintaining a healthy scepticism that is necessary in ethical journalistic inquiry.
Resources on best practices in reporting religion are accessible from the Religious Newswriters Association based in the US. The organisation was founded in 1949 to help journalists “cover religion with accuracy, balance and insight”.Another is the Religion News Service in Washington DC with its network of correspondents reporting on diverse faiths and religious movements for dissemination to American media outlets. Closer to home, the Asia Media Forum, Asia News Network and the InterPress Service frequently publish stories about religion and faith-based issues.
The millions of Malaysians who flock to their respective places of worship weekly deserve better coverage of faith-based issues from the mainstream media. But for now, quality religion reporting will remain under wraps as long as the Home Ministry uses the licensing regime to keep the secular and religious media in check and sweep religion stories under the carpet as non-issues.
Reporting religion
This is a long shot. But what if government attitude towards the media changes for the better with time and journalists are free to exercise their transformative role in bridging the perceptual gap between Muslims and Christians, Buddhists and Hindus?
Can we rely on journalists to be fully accurate in reporting the facts and contexts of faith-based issues? Yes, but only to an extent.
Generally, journalists are good in reporting facts, but not so good in reporting matters of faith and beliefs that are beyond the human capacity to understand and prove. Hence, the need for journalists to be better informed and educated on how different religions respond to the same issues.
Can we rely on our journalists to give us a full account of what they’ve seen, heard and feel? I think, no. Space and air-time are limited. Thus, journalists necessarily focus on what they think is most significant to their audience.
With religion-related stories, journalists are by conventions generally drawn to the views of cynics, sceptics and doubters. Like their audience, journalists carry their own baggage to the stories they write.
Can we rely on religion reporters to expand our horizons and educate us? Yes, theoretically, but only if journalists consciously frame their stories with that public service goal in mind.
In reality, journalists are trained to provide the ‘facts’ and reactions from different sources on the assumption that their audience is sufficiently educated to read the stories and use the information to find out more and make the ‘right’ decision. In a way, journalists and their audience ‘work’ together to discover the truth of a story.
A Washington Post story on Oct.19 shows an example of how religion-related stories can be reported. The story is about the economic crisis and how American families are re-examining their “life’s larger priorities … about what is important and why, and about the kind of sacrifice and hardship that was deeply woven into the lives of their parents and grandparents, the generation of the Great Depression and World War II”.
The story does not mention specific religions except in attributing the quotes and comments to a rabbi, parishioners of a local Catholic church and academics. Religion reporting, as the story shows, does not necessarily delve into the believers’ faith, theological teachings or doctrinal issues, which one reads in religious publications.
The goal of religion reporting is not to evangelise or preach, but to contextualise and explain the issues - for example abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, death penalty, terrorism - that are framed and driven by religious beliefs and spiritual values.
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