The media acts as a mirror of society. Journalists track social trends, shine a light on social justice issues and provide information and analysis that help people make sound decisions in their lives. To remain true to this mission in the age of social media and digital communications, news organizations must cover what is important to audiences, or risk losing relevance. This often means venturing outside comfort zones and looking into issues that are generally underreported or neglected.

Religion has long been a media blind spot or taboo. Despite the importance of faith as a powerful motivator of individual and community behavior, most news organizations rarely cover faith issues or faith-based organizations. When religion is covered, it is often in the context of conflict or politics. Event- based reporting of festivals usually misses the socioeconomic and even political impact of religious actors, beliefs, and practice.

A recent study that polled thousands of news consumers globally found that 53% of respondents said the media actively ignores religion as an aspect of society and culture today while 61% said media perpetuates faith-based stereotypes. The majority of journalists interviewed as part of the study said coverage of faith issues was marginalized in newsrooms.

Globally, more than 80% of people identify with one religion or another. For millions of Bangladeshis, faith is an integral part of their cultural identity and social life. Religious leaders have a powerful influence on individual and collective behaviour in many communities across the country.

While religious conflict or abuse rightly makes headlines, what is often missed is the enormous influence faith has on society and its institutions: schools, social welfare, universities and, above all, values.

The misuse and abuse of religion can be a barrier to development – the restrictions on women’s mobility and access to resources, the marginalization of vulnerable communities and the rejection of public health measures are examples. Religious actors, however, have been engaged in positive ways across every facet of development, from providing humanitarian relief to caring for the sick and delivering essential social services.

There is little dispute that religion can be a tremendous force for good or ill. It is far too important for the media to ignore. Missing the faith dimensions of a story often results in incomplete reporting or getting the story completely wrong.

The news media’s coverage of faith issues – or the lack of it – has implications for the credibility of the media. A recent Gallup poll showed that conservative Americans are more likely to report a lack of trust in the media because they feel journalists do not adequately cover topics important to them.

If the mainstream media chooses not to cover issues that are important to communities of faith, a large segment of the population is more likely to turn to alternative – and often more radical – sources of information. This accentuates fragmentation of the information ecosystem, making it increasingly difficult to reach communities with accurate, verified information, with profound implications for everything from social cohesion to gender rights to public health responses.

The popularity of waaj or religious sermons on social media in Bangladesh illustrates the demand for faith-based content. For example, Rose TV, one of the most popular sermon-based YouTube channels, has 7.8 million subscribers.

Technology has made it possible to tell more engaging stories, and to connect more directly with communities and audiences through digital platforms. However, this also means that journalists can lose their position as gatekeepers of news. Media organizations can no longer control what people read or see.

Today, when waves of misinformation and hate speech on social media fan the flames of bias and violence from Myanmar to the Middle East, the importance of accurate, balanced, and ethical coverage of religion to foster understanding, harmony, and respect among the major religious traditions is greater than ever.

In short, religion matters to a large proportion of humanity, and should be covered with fairness and accuracy.

Center for Communication Action Bangladesh, with support from the World Faiths Development Dialogue at Georgetown University, organized a series of participatory workshops involving journalists and religious leaders to explore how the news media could strengthen objective coverage of the role of faith in socioeconomic development.

Participants highlighted the media tendency to present a rigid and false dichotomy – religious vs secular. Although the majority of Bangladeshis identify with a religious faith, there are nuances that this characterization misses. The idea that religious people are ‘spiritual’ and therefore must be ‘unworldly’ propagates harmful stereotypes that can result in marginalization.

Some participants said the media often has an entrenched ideology that faith is private and must be excluded from the public domain. The narrative is that in order to be tolerant, one has to be secular. However, to many people of faith, this kind of aggressive secularism is itself intolerant, something that leads to marginalization – often forcing them to choose between being religious and availing themselves of livelihood or educational opportunities.

Participants pointed out that most newsrooms in Bangladesh assign political reporters to cover faith issues, automatically applying a political color to the story that often ignores the social role of religion and silences nonpolitical voices. Participants also highlighted a lack of religious literacy, sensationalism and harmful stereotyping as factors that hinder objective coverage of the role of faith in society.

This manual aims to examine some of the ethical issues in covering belief systems and to present practical steps that journalists and media organizations can take to strengthen objective and meaningful coverage of faith issues and faith communities. In the process, journalists can unearth new stories and broaden their audience base.

This manual deliberately moves away from using the conflict lens to covering religion. Conflict sensitivity is an important tool in the modern journalist’s toolkit, and is included here in the context of Sustainable Development Goal 16 – building a peaceful, prosperous and inclusive society. However, we widen our focus to explore the intersection between religion and sustainable development more broadly, an angle often missing in news coverage.

STRUCTURE: The manual has four chapters, each of which contains short exercises to sharpen skills, that the reader can either perform alone or together with colleagues. Each chapter concludes with a Case Study encouraging the reader to think deeper about the issues covered, followed by a quick boxed check-list of the main take-aways , which readers can refer back to when in a hurry, as journalists always are!

• In Chapter 1, Why Cover Faith?, we look at why coverage of faith is important, where the gaps are, and why media organizations so often appear to ignore faith in news coverage. We also focus on the world’s projects for universal human upliftment agreed by the United Nations and codified in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – and the key role that religious non-profits such as those in Bangladesh play in making those goals a reality.
• In Chapter 2, Understanding Religion for Journalists in Bangladesh, we look at the wonderfully diverse multi-belief origins of Bangladeshi society, provide thumbnail sketches of our country’s main belief systems, and look briefly at the debate over Bangladesh’s unique vision of inclusive, multi-faith “secularism.”
• In Chapter 3, Challenges of Reporting Belief Systems, we look at a new study on how varied the public view the way we report on religion – and it’s not always complimentary! – and examine the hard realities we face in our newsrooms, then draw out some best practices on how to cover communities of faith and their vital work in the developmental field.
• In Chapter 4, Conflict-Sensitive Journalism, advances into the specialist field of peace-building journalism, looking at understanding the dynamics of conflict, and at the principles and safety rules of working in conflicted communities. We wrap up with a general boxed check-list that sums up all you will have learned through this manual.
• The concluding annex, Resources & Further Reading, provides pointers to enable you to do a deeper dive into covering belief systems through reference to religion and development, religion journalism, and safety and conflict-sensitive journalism resources.