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Winnipeg, Man.
Forum’s discussion focuses on media coverage of Islam after 9/11


The events of September 11 thrust religion onto the world stage, but the media were caught unprepared to tell that angle of the story properly.

This was one of the points emphasized in a community forum on “Media Coverage of Faith After 9/11” put on by the Faith and the Media group in Winnipeg on January 21. The forum, moderated by Donald Benham of CBC radio, featured a panel discussion of four people representing different aspects of the issue.

Kirk LaPointe, vice-president of CTV News, said as he watched the horror unfolding in New York he looked around the newsroom and realized there was no Muslim there to help them. Canadian media coverage of religion has traditionally been Christian, he said, and is ghettoized to weekend time slots. He claimed that his network has been trying since then to become more knowledgeable about Muslim beliefs and to become more diverse in their staffing. We are “going back to school”, he said, “to not let our deficiencies show so obviously.”

The executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations-Canada, Riad Saloojee, said that the national media’s attempt to understand religious issues better, especially as they pertain to Canada’s approximately 50,000 Muslims, has been “strong and sincere”. They have been good in reporting anti-Muslim backlash that this community has experienced since September 11. There still are negative themes that continue to surface, however, he said, with words like “terror”, “holy war” and “fundamentalism” often linked to “Islamic”. Muslims in Canada faced a “stiffer test of patriotism” in their condemnation of the attacks on the US.

“We are not asking the media to proselytize or lose their scepticism,” he said, “but we ask them to question their assumptions and see the difference between a normative set of principles [within Islam] and the particular actions of some Muslims.”

Former Calgary Herald religion editor Gordon Legge, who is now director of the Centre for Faith and the Media, suggested that the difficulties covering religion in the wake of September 11 are part of a long and relatively dismal record of media in respect to faith concerns. The news media needs to do some soul-searching, he said. Although religion is an integral part of the lives of many people, reporting is often stereotyped and done badly. “Poor coverage breeds intolerance and hate,” he said.

Although much of the forum’s discussion concerned media coverage of Islam, the problems of representing faith in the media affects other groups as well. Legge cited misunderstandings and ignorance he has encountered about the words “fundamentalist” or “evangelical”, for example.

Panel members suggested various approaches to building better public awareness of religion. Lapointe said highlighting “mainstream” Islam, for example, was better than examining extremist views; Legge, on the other hand, said it is important to understand the “shades of belief” in a faith group.

Nicholas Hirst of the Winnipeg Free Press said religion is indisputably one part of the current “war against terrorism” as well as other conflicts like those in the Middle East and Ireland. The issues are complicated, and rarely black and white. “But journalism is about that debate,” he said.

For more information on the January 21 forum, or the subject of faith and media, contact the Centre for Faith and Media, 3539 Button Rd., Calgary, Alta. T2L 1M2 or www.faithandmedia.org.

 – Dora Dueck

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Last modified March 14, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
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