Interfaith and The Media
Successive Regional Interfaith Dialogues have affirmed the need to engage the media in a positive manner to ensure balanced and accurate reporting of religion and faith issues in the region as a means of promoting inter-cultural understanding, harmony and peace-building.
Interfaith practitioners recognise the impact of the media on public opinion and their critical relationship to peace and harmony, interfaith and intercultural understanding, nation building, social cohesion and social responsibility.
Media literacy programmes in schools are needed to help develop a discerning and critical approach to news coverage about religions by media consumers.
Faith communities need to engage with the media, build relationships, provide them with news and information and enter into dialogue with them, provide journalists and media researchers with training in interfaith and inter-cultural understanding along with exchange programs in the region.
Faith leaders need to acquire skills and competency training to assist them to communicate effectively with and through the modern media, and provide resources for media outlets to train reporters in religious issues.
Successive Dialogues have called for the development and provision of training for media managers, journalists and journalism students on religious and cultural diversity, in partnership with interfaith experts and national and international media organizations; and encourage the development and review of codes of conduct and standards for the exercise of media freedom with responsibility; and support the establishment and strengthening of processes of dialogue among media executives , journalism trainers and religious and interfaith leaders.
Interfaith Initiatives in Media Education
RID Delegates and website participants are invited to submit contributions to this topic area, using the Contact form or the Submit News or Events page.
Reports:
International Symposium on Religion Journalism
Media and Values Conference, Melbourne
Practical Action
Reports:
Second International Islamic Media Conference, Jakarta
Malaysia: Deputy PM tells Media to Consider Multi-religious nature of Society
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We, as leaders of faith communities, need to develop a more inclusive view of the religious other, to recognise the humanity of the religious other as a starting point. We need to recognise the essential equality of all human beings regardless of religious beliefs. We need to affirm the mutuality and interdependency of all people... We may need even to extend this and recognise that religious other may, just may, have at least some access to the Truth. We may need to accept that the religious others also adopts more or less the same set of essential universal ethical-moral principles we share; that the religious other has feelings of pain and pleasure just like us; that the religious other has similar expectations about their children and family and the preservation of life, property and security; and that the religious other has the same fears and anxieties about the world and the future, just like us.