Hotshots: Religion and Media

Title: Religion and the Media

Preparation:

You’ll need powerpoint or keynote for this.

On the internet find a negative headline about young people that includes a big photo of young people up to no good eg being arrested (a search for ‘UK teens worst in Europe’ should bring up a headline from The Sun). Copy the page and headline into powerpoint (best way to do this is by pressing ‘Print Screen’ on your keyboard – PrtSc – then switch to powerpoint and paste). Now paste over the ‘nasty’ photo a ‘nice’ picture of teenagers – do google image search for teenagers.

That’s your first slide, slide 2 should be the ‘real’ headline and image, slide 3 – the text ‘Does anybody get fair representation in the media?’ the next 3 slides should be headlines about differing religions – the point being ‘does religion only appear in the press when it’s being controversial?’

Headlines you could search for are: ‘Theatre stormed in Sikh protest’ ‘Multiculturalism drives young Muslims to shun British values’ ‘Archbishop faces boycott at gay summit.’

Talk:

Show first slide and ask if anybody can spot what’s wrong with it. If no one says the teens look ‘too normal’ or ‘they aren’t doing anything wrong’ prompt them by saying. ‘If you were editor of The Sun (or whatever paper it is) would you choose that photo to go with that headline?’

When they say ‘no’ ask them what kind of photo they would choose.

Get feedback then show them the real headline and photo. Put the third slide up and ask if they think the way young people are represented in the media is fair. Say ‘A recent Mori poll concluded that 3 out of every 4 headlines that appear in the press about young people are negative. It seems that the press is only interested in bad news because bad news sells. It’s true that we’re all interested in bad news and conflict, who’d watch Eastenders if everybody was nice to each other in Albert Square?’

‘But is that a fair way to picture young people all the time? No it can give the impression that every young person in Britian spends Friday night getting arrested.’

Go on to make the point that the same might be true of how religion is portrayed in the media – eg ‘when do you see the Sikh community mentioned in the national press? – when they storm a theatre.’

Conclude by saying ‘Remember the press are limited in the way they present news, unfortunately often what sells papers is bad news so you only get one side of the story.

Make sure that you don’t do the same though. Nearly 90% of the world belongs to some form of religious faith, if we don’t try and understand peoples beliefs it’s an awful lot of the world we’re ignoring. So don’t find out from the papers why Muslim women wear headscarves, Sikhs wear turbans or Christians wear crosses why don’t you, particularly if you have people from different faiths in your school, ask them yourself?’

For Further Illustration:

Christian Perspective:

Matt 7.1 ‘Do not judge.’

Do we ‘judge’ people by what we read in the papers or see on the news?

TV Clip:

‘Homer the Heretic’ episode from The Simpsons Classics DVD ‘Heaven and Hell’

Homer creates his own religion as he can’t be bothered with any of the ones on offer, toward the end of the episode he’s forced to change his views after being rescued from a house fire by a ‘multi-faith’ volunteer fireman team.

Statistics:

Various stats on religion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion