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Blessed be the educated journalist: Reflections on a religious literacy gap in the field of journalism

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Abstract

Religion has ‘returned’ to news discourses, since 9/11, with a focus on Muslims and Islam and more recently on Catholicism (in the wake of paedophile priest scandals) and anti-Semitism (with the rise of the far-right movements). These news discourses, however, tend to adopt limited perspectives, and do not reflect the diversity of practices and viewpoints within these religious traditions. As Australia becomes increasingly ‘superdiverse’, there is a greater need for the inclusivity of cultural perspectives of these religions. Current research findings show that religious literacy among media practitioners in Australia is not only limited to specific notions about a small number of religions, it is exacerbated by an Anglo-Celtic dominance in the media workforce. This article suggests that for news media to provide a more culturally and religiously inclusive public service to promote societal understanding, current and emerging journalists require a more reflexive understanding of religions, through journalism studies and humanities more broadly, and how they have historically shaped the world, and continue to do so.

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This chapter explores newsroom barriers to covering religion well, and draws on a series of interviews with journalists and editors generally believed to be doing well at connecting religion and journalism. It highlights the need for journalists to examine the religious language and labels that they use; the need for diversity of religious knowledge and awareness in newsrooms; the role of editors in offering better training and resources both to religion reporters per se and others whose work veers into religious territory; and the need to strive to get inside the daily lives and mindset of the people covered.
Article
The article focuses on how media and religion relate, investigating the specific professional practices of media reporting on religion. Journalism is objective, while religion is subjective - however, scholars agree that today it is difficult to imagine religion isolated from the relation with media. Therefore, the media coverage of religion, that includes identifying the proper approaches to objectively frame subjective topics, becomes a challenge. The paper provides a theoretical background on the main characteristics of the media industry and the models of journalism, good professional practices in reporting on religion, along with a brief overview at the situation of religious media content in worldwide media institutions and in Romania. Finally, a study on professional practices in local media was conducted, investigating how both mainstream and religious (niche) media journalists cover religious topics. Questions addressed by this paper refer to the principles of good reporting on religion, to the specific interaction between the Church and the media since more and more indicate media as source of knowledge for religion, and, finally, to the way media and religion are handling together the continuous challenges imposed by the fast technological progress in worldwide media communication.
Book
Mediatization has emerged as a key concept to reconsider old, yet fundamental questions about the role and influence of media in culture and society. In particular the theory of mediatization has proved fruitful for the analysis of how media spread to, become intertwined with, and influence other social institutions and cultural phenomena like politics, play and religion. This book presents a major contribution to the theoretical understanding of the mediatization of culture and society. This is supplemented by in-depth studies of: The mediatization of politics: From party press to opinion industry; The mediatization of religion: From the faith of the church to the enchantment of the media; The mediatization of play: From bricks to bytes; The mediatization of habitus: The social character of a new individualism. Mediatization represents a new social condition in which the media have emerged as an important institution in society at the same time as they have become integrated into the very fabric of social and cultural life. Making use of a broad conception of the media as technologies, institutions and aesthetic forms, Stig Hjarvard considers how characteristics of both old and new media come to influence human interaction, social institutions and cultural imaginations. https://www.routledge.com/products/9780415692373
Article
This paper discusses selected findings and implications of a recent qualitative Australian study, Community and Radicalisation, focusing on grassroots community and government perspectives about what radicalisation and violent extremism mean for Australian communities a decade after 11 September. The key aims of the study were to identify how communities understand the meanings of and relationship between radicalisation and extremism; to explore community perceptions of the underlying drivers for radicalisation and extremism; the perceived impact of radicalisation and violent extremism on sense of community and social harmony and cohesion; and to investigate community approaches to and solutions for eliminating or reducing the threat of violent extremism in Australia in order to inform and support effective policy and strategy development around countering radicalisation and extremism in Australia. The study's findings suggest that a broad national sample of 542 participants were reasonably confident that Australia is in a good position to meet and address some of the continuing challenges presented by the threats of radicalisation and violent extremism to a peaceful and open democratic society. However, a range of strategies and solutions were identified that help focus attention on what work still needs to be done and what innovations may be needed to stay abreast of a social and political environment that is dynamic, fluid, occasionally volatile and still working towards broadscale resilience and social cohesion in Australian contexts.
Article
Reflecting a broadening interest in finding new ways to talk about contemporary social complexity, the concept of 'super-diversity' has received considerable attention since it was introduced in this journal in 2007. Many utilizing the term have referred only to 'more ethnicities' rather than to the term's fuller, original intention of recognizing multidimensional shifts in migration patterns. These entail a worldwide diversification of migration channels, differentiations of legal statuses, diverging patterns of gender and age, and variance in migrants' human capital. In this special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies, the concept is subject to two modes of comparison: (1) side-by-side studies contrasting different places and emergent conditions of super-diversity; and (2) juxtaposed arguments that have differentially found use in utilizing or criticizing super-diversity descriptively, methodologically or with reference to policy and public practice. The contributions discuss super-diversity and its implications in nine cities located in eight countries and four continents.
Book
What are we to make of the Latina schoolteacher who considers herself a good Catholic, rarely attends Mass, but meditates daily at her home altar (where she mixes images of the Virgin of Guadalupe with those of Frida Kahlo, and traditional votive candles with healing crystals), yet feels particularly spiritual while preparing food for religious celebrations in her neighborhood? Diverse religious practices such as these have long baffled scholars of contemporary religion, whose research started with the assumption that individuals commit, or refuse to commit, to an entire institutionally-defined package of beliefs and practices. Social surveys typically ask respondents to self-identify by denominational or other broad religious categories. Sociologists attempt to measure religiosity according to how well individuals conform to the official religious standards, such as frequency of church attendance, scripture reading, or prayer. This book points the way forward toward a new way of understanding and studying religious behavior. Rather than try to fit people into prearranged packages, the book argues, scholars must begin to study religion as it is actually lived and experienced in peoples' everyday lives. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, as well as recent work by other scholars, the book explores the many ways that people express themselves spiritually and shows that they rarely fit neatly into the categories developed. Challenging those who see declining church attendance as the death of religion in the Western world, the book demonstrates that religion is as widespread and vital as ever, if you know where to look.
Article
Drawing on recent advances in mediatisation theory, the article presents a theoretical framework for understanding the increased interplay between religion and media. The media have become an important, if not primary, source of information about religious issues, and religious information and experiences become moulded according to the demands of popular media genres. As a cultural and social environment, the media have taken over many of the cultural and social functions of the institutionalised religions and provide spiritual guidance, moral orientation, ritual passages and a sense of community and belonging. Furthermore, the article considers the relationship between mediatisation and secularisation at three levels: society, organisation and individual. At the level of society, mediatisation is an integral part of secularisation. At the level of organisation and the individual, mediatisation may both encourage secular practices and beliefs and invite religious imaginations typically of a more subjectivised nature.
Article
This article investigates how five Australian television stations reported and framed the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. In Australia, Eid, the Muslim festival held to celebrate the end of Ramadan, coincided with the ninth anniversary of the events of 9/11. This provided an opportunity to examine how television news treated these two events. Our findings are situated within the literature around media coverage of terrorism post–September 11 because of the identified tendency of media to conflate terrorism with Islam and Muslims. This literature provides a context for understanding whether Australian television coverage of the ninth anniversary of 9/11 and the 2010 Eid festival replicated identified patterns of media coverage of Muslim and Islam or if there was evidence of change in the handling of these types of reports.
Article
What goes on in editorial conferences and how do news journalists decide what is newsworthy? The journalistic “gut feeling” is an important part of the professional self-understanding of journalists and editors expressing how news judgements seem self-evident and self-explaining to the practitioners. This article presents an analysis of everyday news work drawing on the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu and using ethnographic material from observations of editorial practices in a Danish television newsroom as a case study. The analytical concepts “journalistic doxa”, “news habitus” and “editorial capital” are put to empirical work on close-up observations of journalistic practices in editorial conferences and two types of news values are identified as part of the journalistic “gut feeling”: the explicit orthodox/heterodox news values which are part of the sphere of journalistic judgement, and the implicit, silent doxic news values which are part of the sphere of journalistic doxa. An important task for future studies of journalistic practice is to investigate the seemingly self-evident orthodox news values as well as making visible the doxic news values imbedded in journalistic practice.
Social Commentary, Racism & Covid-19: A Case Study on Opinion Pieces in Australian Mainstream Newspapers
  • All Together Now
All Together Now (2020), Social Commentary, Racism & Covid-19: A Case Study on Opinion Pieces in Australian Mainstream Newspapers, https://alltogethernow.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ATN-Media-Report-2020_ online.pdf. Accessed 9 December 2020.
George Pell, Catholic Cardinal, charged with historical sexual assault offences
  • Anon
Anon. (2017), 'George Pell, Catholic Cardinal, charged with historical sexual assault offences', ABC News, 30 June, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-29/cardinal-george-pell-charged-sexual-assault-offences/8547668. Accessed 25 August 2017.
A Pentecostal PM and climate change: Does a belief in the end times inform Scott Morrison’s response to the bushfire crisis?
  • J Boyce
Boyce, J. (2020), 'A Pentecostal PM and climate change: Does a belief in the end times inform Scott Morrison's response to the bushfire crisis?', The Monthly, 9 January, https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/jamesboyce/2020/09/2020/1578533086/pentecostal-pm-and-climate-change. Accessed 10 February 2020.
What Q&A needs to do to improve
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Clune, B. (2014), 'What Q&A needs to do to improve', The Guardian Australia, 12 May, https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/australia-cultureblog/2014/may/12/what-qa-needs-to-do-to-improve. Accessed 15 October 2020.
New survey reveals which religions New Zealanders trust most - and least - after Christchurch shootings
  • S Chapple
The conflict between religion and media has deep roots
  • A Day
Day, A. (2016), 'The conflict between religion and media has deep roots', LSE Religion and Global Society, 22 August, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2016/08/the-conflict-between-religion-and-media-has-deeproots. Accessed 8 September 2020.
New research shows Australian teens have complex views on religion and spirituality
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Singleton, A., Halafoff, A., Bouma, G. D. and Rasmussen, M. L. (2018), 'New research shows Australian teens have complex views on religion and spirituality', The Conversation, 18 September, https://theconversation.com/ new-research-shows-australian-teens-have-complex-views-on-religionand-spirituality-103233. Accessed 13 October 2020.
Inside our Pentecostal PM’s church
  • J Maley
Unparalleled privilege”: Why white evangelicals see Trump as their savior
  • A Gabbatt
Spirituality and Christianity in Australia today
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McCrindle (2015), 'Spirituality and Christianity in Australia today', McCrindle. com, http://mccrindle.com.au/the-mccrindle-blog/spirituality-andchristianity-in-australia-today. Accessed 22 August 2017.
We’ve already seen 780 anti-Semitic incidents this year and it’s “horrifying”, group says
  • R W Miller
Why innovation is needed in church life
  • Ncls Research
NCLS Research (2010), 'Why innovation is needed in church life', http://www. ncls.org.au/default.aspx?sitemapid=6516. Accessed 3 April 2020.