1. New Zealand Diversity Forum 23 August 2010
The Media and Religion Forum
Professor Paul Morris, Victoria University
The rubric ‘media and religion’ covers a lot of ground. The media is diverse and
includes TV, print, digital, religious media, commercial media, the new social media,
and within these: news, entertainment, educational, drama and so on. Religion too
is diverse and increasingly so. The plan for my allotted time is to introduce and
delimit our focus to a number of pertinent issues, say a little about the new inter-
disciplinary research area of ‘media and religion’, particularly as it might relate to
New Zealand, and then to conclude with a few thoughts on where we might go from
here.
New Religious Diversity
Our population is becoming increasingly diverse raising a series of new challenges
for media representations of this new religious demography. Our news and society
now include, or should include, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish and secularist
alongside Christian personalities and stories. While Christians are still – just – a
majority according to the last census, there are now sizeable Hindu, Buddhist and
Muslim communities and these ‘non-Christians’ who declare a religion are more than
6% of the population. In addition, the Christian community has been transformed by
migrant Christians from the Pacific, the Philippines, the Middle East and South Africa
and significant increases in the numbers of Evangelicals and Pentecostal Christians.
We need some sort of context for understanding these figures. Nearly two thirds of
New Zealanders declare a religion – 75% of these are Christians - and even in this
sports obsessed nation there are still more people at Church on a Sunday than
people going to weekly rugby matches. Nearly a third of the population are ‘nones’,
declaring ‘no religion’ (2006) and this number is noticeably increasing. New Zealand
has become increasingly more ‘secular’, that is, the public face of religion is
diminished. However, it is important to recognise that that still leaves a ‘religious’
majority - albeit with many having a deinstitutionalised spirituality – some with a
vibrant religious life, and a growing but as yet small number of New Zealanders who
are more religious than their parents.
There are a number of growing gaps between the Pakeha cultural majority and
numerous religious and cultural minorities, between a secular press and changing
religious realities, and between a changing international comprehension of the
enhanced importance of religion and a New Zealand still dominated by largely
secular ruling elites. The older secular view that media and press freedom were
established on the foundations of the restriction of religion: superstitions, prejudice,
and censorship – and that this is a as a zero sum gain so that more freedom equals
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2. less religion - is now being extensively challenged internationally. The public media
here is still largely secular and generally reports religion poorly. There is an almost
exclusive focus on beliefs rather than on the ways that behaviours can change,
transform, create and sustain our religious communities. We often don’t include
under ‘religion’ the extensive religious charities sector involved in welfare provisions
across the not for profit sector. There is little appreciation of the religious politics of
identity and the growing concern over moral issues that bring religion into the public
sphere. I recently did a Media Watch slot on RNZ discussing John Campbell’s
pursuit of Brian Tamaki and his Destiny Church. The most basic principles of
research were ignored and the analysis of religion reduced to totting up Tamaki’s
personal fortune.
Representing Religion
What are the issues? In the US, UK and Europe there is a growing body of academic
evidence that clearly indicates that minority religious communities are dissatisfied
with the media representations of religions, particularly their own. This is significant
in that there is also evidence of the important role that media plays in our acquisition
of knowledge of religion generally and of religions other than our own specifically.
While the specifics differ between communities the complaints are shared in
common or overlap considerably. For example, the study, The British Media and
Muslim Representation (Islamic Human Rights Commission, 2007, see also, the
British Council’s British Muslims: A Media Guide, 2006) reports that a staggering 86
% of British Muslims consider the British press to be Islamophobic (62%) or racist
(16%). The complaints are that mainstream media is both exclusionary and
discriminatory. The news focus is uniformly negative and offers stereotypes of
Muslims and these are often ‘extremist’ and are also found in drama, sitcoms, soap
operas and documentaries. Hindu and Sikh communities decry the media obsession
with arranged marriages and inter-generational tensions (Connecting British Hindus,
2007, has a section on Hindus and the media). Jews in the UK, the US, France, and
Holland contend that the news is hostile to Israel and that this unjustified hostility is
also directed at their communities as ‘anti-Zionism’ descends or overlaps with anti-
Semitism. Evangelicals are concerned at the negative portrayals of born-again
Christians as crazy or uneducated and the overemphasis on sexuality issues;
Catholics balk at the exclusive focus on clerical child abuse; Mormons complain at
the undue attention on polygamy, and almost every new religious movement at being
labelled as an ‘extreme’ brainwashing ‘cult’. The use of stereotypes, stereotypic
issues, the focus on untypical ‘extremists’, the disproportionate focus on some
issues rather than others, the over-simplifications of complex issues that actually
distort, and the lack of materials on the diversity within faiths, are repeatedly
highlighted by the faith groups.
There was a particular emphasis on the media’s inappropriate and careless uses of
language. Terms such as ‘extremist’, ‘terrorist’, ‘cult’ and ‘fundamentalist’, for
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3. example, need to be carefully handled if not simply avoided. For example, last year
TV3 ran a documentary on a number of religious groups which it referred to solely as
dangerous ‘cults’; the bulk of the uncorroborated information was gleaned from
interviews with ex-members , and the two experts were not - an educationalist and a
psychology academic. Experts are needed but the right experts. Starting a project
with predetermined ideas is a liability but if these do not extend beyond salacious
sensationalism via repeated stereotypes then the result is hardly likely to be accurate
or informing. It is interesting to note than on a sports analogy one of these ‘experts’
was introduced on Close Up as a specialist in ‘extreme religions’. The purpose of
both ‘shows’ was sensationalism rather than understanding, and the wilfully ignoring
of twenty years off scholarship. Media can equally distort by the sins of omission by
not mentioning just what a minority a reported view is or by giving other views from
the same faith group. While the intense pressures for increased viewership and
readership have to be fully acknowledged it should be recognised that
sensationalism is not sustainable and the ante is constantly raised. A current
example was the Sunday programme aired yesterday that linked Somalis with illicit
drug sales and the support of a terrorist group in Somalia on the skimpiest of
evidence and the segment actually ended with Cameron Bennett reporting that they
had no evidence of the terrorist support claim at all!
Mention should also be made of the Journal of Media and Religion; the Pew funded
Centre for Religion and Media at New York University; the International Study
Commission on Media, Religion and Culture, and the Oxford Centre for Religion in
Public Life. For example, Pew issued a helpful report on the media and religion for
the 2008 US presidential elections examining the media reporting of Mitt Romney’s
Mormonism, Sarah Palin’s Pentecostal faith and the claims that Obama was a
Muslim (18% of Americans and rising)! In addition there have been books and
monographs on the Arabic press, the religious press in Israel, media and religion in
Turkey, evangelical TV presentations, and studies from a variety of countries and on
a number of topics.
I have not focussed today on religious media and broadcasting (see, Stewart
Hoover’s study, Religion in the Media Age (Routledge 2006). This growing sector is
in the main Christian but there are more and more other than Christian
developments too. In New Zealand we have our mainstream ‘god spots’ for Charter
religious worship and we have two ‘commercial’ Christian TV channels.
The New Media
Alongside and in some cases replacing the print and TV and radio is the explosion of
‘new media’. The internet and WWW has played a huge role in the dissemination of
contemporary forms of religion. We are just beginning to consider the impact of
social media on our lives, including religious lives. The blogosphere is already
credited with playing a part in our last general election and it plays an as yet
understudied role in the available representations of religion in our society. One of
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4. my students is looking at moral discourse in evangelical blogs, including local
bloggers. There have also been a number of academic studies of cyber-religion.
There is an issue here. There is little point is reporting the disquiet of religious
communities over media representations of religion when distortions, stereotypes
and misinformation is all too easily found in ‘sectarian’ zines, newspapers and blogs.
It is important that communities directly address these issues for the human right to
express oneself religiously and be free of discrimination applies equally to media
inside and outside of religious communities. But the new media also offers unique
possibilities to create opportunities for gaining background information about matters
of religious concern via web-pages, and so on.
Conclusion
I want to begin this conclusion by reiterating the need for basic research on religion
and media in New Zealand. Are the religious communities here happy with media
coverage of religion? Where do we get our ideas and knowledge about religion
from? What role do the media play in this? In New Zealand what are the
characteristics that we most associate with the different religions? For those of you
who are interested in the diversity in education issue you are most welcome to
attend the UNESCO session here at the Forum, at 3.30pm today.
The media’s primary job is not to please the diverse communities that make up the
public. Rather its job is to inform us accurately and competently. Our society is more
open than in the past and secrets not so easily kept from public scrutiny, the media
was, of course, complicit in this censorship. This new openness is an advantage but
it entails considerable responsibilities and competencies. Understanding the
religious dimensions of the news requires competency, expertise and training. Our
journalists simply do not have this. Asking Victoria University students about the
religious issues in Iraq and Afghanistan indicates that the media has done an
abysmal job in competently informing the New Zealand public. The public had little
comprehension of the Exclusive Brethren and yet they impacted on our 2005
election. I was interviewed for the TV3 News by a young reporter who asked me who
the Brethren were and what she might ask about them!
There is a growing need for us all, and the media has a huge role to play in this, to
understand the religious dimensions of news events. The academic discipline,
mentioned above, arose largely fuelled by an ongoing sequence of media failures to
grasp even basics about the nature religion. These include the Iranian revolution,
Waco, the Rushdie affair, the ‘Danish’ cartoons, and of course 9/11. The last of
these has done much to bring a range of commentators, academic and other, on
religion to the fore but this has cut both ways: while religion is back on the agenda it
is all too often in a fashion that misrepresents religions and can distort public
perceptions. What is equally clear is that events have moved much more quickly
than media training or sensibilities. We need real expertise and training in religions to
explain the religious significance and dimensions of news events just as we benefit
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5. from economic, political or scientific. What we need is basic competency training in
religions for journalists.
This competency needs also to be extended to programme makers, film makers,
scriptwriters and so on so that features, drama and documentaries are
commissioned that accurately and competently reflect the real lives of religion New
Zealanders - religion as it is lived and practiced, representative and realistic –
religion as an everyday integral part of life rather than extreme or deviant or
dangerous. Do people want to see this? Yes, it appears so. Connecting expertise
and programme makers requires our attention. The media must also get over its
prejudice for the moral high ground, morality is an essential part of religious
discourse and shouldn’t be stigmatised. There is more to religion in New Zealand
that ‘The Cult’ or cults, suicide or other. Avoiding stereotypes, clichéd story lines and
characters is the second step to better coverage of religion; the first is the capability
to recognise these.
Media self-regulation usually includes ‘fair and balanced’ reporting which often
seems at odds with the items deemed most newsworthy, violent conflict or
contention. Beyond competency there is responsibility. Most journalistic codes of
conduct include a decency clause that seeks to avoid offence - ‘avoiding serious or
widespread offence on racial, religious, sex, ethnic or disability” – but we know that
there is no real sanction as in Paul Henry’s recent case. There are, however, good
examples of such decency, Charlie Beckett, a political editor at Chanel 4 news chose
not to show the ‘Danish ‘ cartoons because it would ‘cause more offence than was
justified by the news story’ (Guardian 29/11/06).
The New Zealand Statement on Religious Diversity (2007, 2009), an earlier product
of this Forum addresses the media in Principle 4: The Right to freedom of expression
and freedom of the media are vital for democracy but should be exercised with
responsibility.
I wrote that in 2007 and consider it still to be true but I consider it equally true that
media responsibility extends to competency and decency and I hope that we will
collectively decide to pursue this further this morning and after the Forum.
Ideally, I think it would be very helpful to establish a Working Party, made up of
academics, journalist, media management and professionals and representatives of
religious communities. The aim would be to report back to the Diversity Action
Forum in 2011 after developing a New Zealand Statement on Media and Religion
that addressed issues such as the training of journalists around the subject of
religion, strategies for balancing freedom of religion and minimising offence, and
developing basic research on religion and media in New Zealand.
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