Religious Literacy in the Media

Religious Literacy In the Media

Michael Wakelin will be presenting this lecture as part of our Inspiring Research: Humanities and Social Sciences lecture series. Focusing on the Identities and Beliefs theme and hosted by Professor David Horrell.

Information

Michael Wakelin is the Director of the Coexist Programmes of the Coexist Foundation (Cambridge), and the Executive Producer of TBI Media and Co-Director of Like for Like Productions.

About the lecture

We can no longer "not do God". Secularism has not swept religion aside and there is a re-emergence of religion in the public sphere. But we don't do religion well in the media.

There is a paucity of quality debate and a sense that religion has been erased from our collective memory. There is widespread religious illiteracy. Historically, for example, religion was at the heart of the BBC - a voice piece for the Church of England – though this was very unhelpful and is no longer seen as appropriate. Nowadays religion has been downgraded in importance – except, curiously,  on BBC radio.

Other media outlets are bad at handling religious stories, often using shorthand stereotypes leading in turn to misunderstanding and prejudice. As Kim Knott has commented, "negative portrayals perpetuate and reinforce negative perceptions”.

How should we respond to this situation? Retrain all journalists? Change education policy? Seek Government legislation? All are impractical. But there is a potential alternative which might help, something Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis calls "a fantastic idea"...

Workshop

Following the lecture, there will be a workshop to discuss ideas and possible research projects relating to this theme. This will be held in Seminar room 2 in the Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies.

Programme

14:00 - 15:30     Lecture by Michael Wakelin - 'Religious Literacy in the Media', followed by a Q&A session

15:30 - 16:00     Tea and coffee

16:00 - 17:30     Workshop in Seminar room 2, IAIS

Registration

To register for the workshop, please use the contact details below