Religion and the media

There are very little religious programs on TV regularly but the BBC has quite a few for example:

• Songs of praise – Christian - Songs of Praise is a weekly celebration of Christian heritage and experience featuring the very best inspirational music and stories.

• Heaven and earth - Heaven & Earth with Gloria Hunniford: a live, topical magazine with an entertaining mix of guests, features and music, covering the biggest talking points in the world of religion, ethics and belief.

• Heart and soul - A weekly half hour documentary broadcast by BBC World Service which explores personal experiences of religious belief from around the world

But the BBC does many more radio religious broadcasts than they do TV. But most of there religious broadcasts are still of only one faith, mainly Christianity. Where as ITV (formally known as Grenada) do no religious programs at all. But channel 4 does a variation of different religious TV programs and documentary’s from all different faiths, here are some examples:

• Women Bishops
  First shown on Channel 4 in July 2005
  Katie Streten traces the history and outlines the arguments for and against the ordination of women as bishops in the Church of England and comes to her own conclusions
• Great British Islam
  First shown on Channel 4 in October 2005
  Sun reporter Anila Baig traces Islam's centuries-old relationship with Britain and discovers that it is more creative than most people realize.
• Gay Muslims
  first shown on Channel 4 in January 2006
  the experiences of five gay/lesbian Muslims in Britain challenge the heterosexual bias in Muslim communities and illustrate the diversity within Islam. Tamsila Tauqir reports.
• The Fundamentalists
  First shown on Channel 4 in September 2006
  Mark Dowd finds that there are fundamentalists of all religious persuasions across the world – Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims and, unexpectedly, Buddhists.
• 
  First shown on Channel 4 in December 2006
  Judas Iscariot is one of the most reviled names in history but an ancient papyrus manuscript has been discovered which throws new light on his life and role in the life and death of Jesus.

Religious groups often don’t want the media interfering with or publicising there ways of life. For example the media in the UK and US often perpetuates the stereotype of Islamic followers all being terrorists and suicide bombers. Which a well-rounded person would realise is not true and only the fair few are suicide bombers for reasons we do not know. But the media do not publicise anything to do with the good side of the faith, because it might change people views of the faith and go against what the news is telling them.

The media almost always will twist a news story to the way they think and to what they believe. This means a lot of things in religion are twisted against them but people still believe it because the media is such a powerful influence.

The media involves itself in issues like terrorism because it affects the whole world they also involve themselves in issues that they don’t believe in and are against for example the Islamic headscarf and berka.

I think the media can be a good and bad influence because