The besiege of Islamabad-Rawalpindi by the activists of newly-founded Tahreek Labaik Ya Rasool-Allah is the main issue of the day; the media has been discussing it without any second thought since it started two weeks ago. The Tahreek leader, Khadim Rizvi, blares from the pulpit in Punjabi.
He talks in Punjab, and the language requires the speaker to be straightforward.
So does Khadim Rizvi.
He talks straight. When he speaks, his followers say "Subhan Allah", while others smile or laugh or turn green with anger because of his straight Punjabi talk.
Media only degrades him.
Ask a media if they have a reporting strategy on the sit-out, and they will seem clueless.
In 2012, I chanced to attend a course on covering religion by the ICFJ.
Course instructor Stephen Franklin shared some guidelines about the reporting strategy on events involving religion.
What to do when there is a conflict involving religion?
To Stephen Franklin,
- Identify an issue that religious groups or leaders have embraced and has become a political issue.
- Keep your focus on the issue as you show its importance, and what role religious groups or leaders have upon it.
- Your goal is to measure their impact.
- You can follow up this story later to see if there have been any changes and whether expectations were met.
Let me also add this very long description of what reporting means to a democracy. I think it applies to what we are talking about.
This is written by Herbert Gans and here is the link:
This particular rethinking might begin with a better understanding of journalism: as an early warning system, as a reassurance system, and as a panic preventative.
Stephen Franklin says
"The news media enable their audiences to monitor their distant surroundings for harm and danger — the ones beyond those with which people can stay in personal touch. The popular — or non-elite — news media do even more, because even as they are reporting bad news, they also inform their audiences by implication that the rest of the physical, social, economic, political and moral order is free of immediate danger. Without such implied news, an informational vacuum would be created that would soon be filled with rumor and speculation, which in turn would likely result in panics and other forms of political and social chaos. Whether they know it or not, the news media protect the country, including its democratic institutions, from such chaos.
"That said, the popular news media’s other contributions to democracy are more modest, for their regular political reporting is generally limited to top-down (and pegged) news: the decisions, actions, and speeches of top elected officials and the events in which they participate. Journalists may be a bulwark for democracy, but a bulwark is only a stationary obstacle. Because the popular news media limit themselves to covering top-down politics, they often pay little if any attention to the political processes that swirl under and around the bulwark. Only rarely do they report directly on the problems of and dangers to American democracy.
"For example, today they say almost nothing about the long-run polarization of political parties, the disconnects between practical politics and ideological orthodoxy, the Senate’s nearly permanent filibuster, Congressional decision-making gridlock, voter suppression, and gerrymandering. Other problems include the increasing intrusion of the political economy into electoral politics, and the massive campaign donations of the very wealthy.
"The peg-driven news format allows the news media to report instances when these problems manifest themselves dramatically — but that format prevents journalists from going into depth or discussing the causes of and solutions for democracy’s problems. These subjects are normally left to commentators and op-ed writers, but what they write is categorized as opinion even when it is easily proven fact. No wonder that a large portion of the public ascribes democracy’s problems to needless political squabbling.
"Admittedly, journalists alone cannot make America more democratic. But they can turn democracy itself into a newsworthy topic. In so doing, they would sometimes have to set aside their defensive objectivity and their division of the political world into two sides, as well as the false equivalences this division can breed.
"Last but not least, they would need to figure out how to create a mass audience for the kind of political news I am proposing. True, large audiences are ideologically diverse and may not want their beliefs challenged. Advertisers do not like to make audiences unhappy, and news firms rarely venture into politically controversial and economically risky areas. Nonetheless, the attempt is worth making — perhaps for a time when more people are directly affected by democracy’s problems and are ready for more than peg-driven, top-down political news."
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