WHEN THE PHONE wakes me up from a delightful nap on a Sunday afternoon, the last thing I want to hear is a journalist requesting a list of books to ‘put’ in her article. What is the article about? Oh, it is an ‘insightful’ story on how reading certain kind of fiction or non-fiction can guide women in handling the men in their relations better – you know, husband, brother, father, son. Could you suggest a list of books women should read, ma’am?

Let me leave that journalist at the end of that phone line – till eternity, if possible — and consider these questions:

Should a woman’s reading choice be circumspect to the boundaries set by social systems and limited to the multiple ‘roles’ she has to play? What about looking at a woman as an individual, as a human being? Can she not just read for her own pleasure? Can she not pick what she wants to read? Is it not more important that women read books that will open out new worlds (real or imaginary) – books that will make them evolve into fine, articulate human beings?

Why is everyone trying to dump down on women?

In retrospect, I realise the journalist was only trying to do her job. She was, in all probability, working on what she thought was a ‘progressive’ story, being self-righteously ‘modern’ in trying to portray women reading. After all, reading is learning and if you read stuff on how to deal with men smartly, you are a smart woman! This was her brand of feminism – a brand that defines a woman’s identity by weighing how successfully she plays the roles the society has ascribed she must enact.

My own view, which I must confess I conveyed to the journalist rather brutally, is that it is not a war where we wrestle power from each other. It is about living a life with a freedom to make choices not governed by dictates like ‘because you are a woman, you must read Grahshobha and because you are a man, you must watch business and political news on TV all the time’.Feminism has waged various battles over years. People imagine a stereotypical image of an angry, man-hating, unattractive woman with hairy armpits, screaming irrationally about imagined insults and leading other ‘closet feminists’ to voice their opinions without identifying with the cause.

It is time to look at it as a liberal humanistic approach. It is not just about women being liberated, but also about liberating men from sexual stereotypes. It is about equal opportunities and positive action. It is about breaking free from prescriptions of sex-appropriate behaviour and self-perceptions. There are set social patterns and norms, which have been fed as a regular diet to women. This has led to ample misrepresentation of the ‘real’ person, not only repressing what women are made up of, but also making them believe they are, for the most part, responsible for only ‘playing’ gender typical roles in life. Any deviation from this norm connotes ‘inadequacy’. If we were to investigate the effects of patriarchy on women, it does show that we are ‘expected’ to be respectfully subservient to ‘rules’ at play. Expressing an opinion that contradicts any such construct immediately labels the woman in question as ‘improper’.

Should not the media and all those who proclaim themselves to be socially egalitarian and sensitive make an effort to consciously grow away from portraying women in the same standardised way? There has to be an effort to construct a consciousness of selfhood and individual identity instead of a focus on how ‘womanly’ women should be, how it is all aimed at suiting the men in their lives.

Be womanly, by all means. Dress yourself up, flaunt what you have, but do it for yourself, not to pamper the male definition of the fluffy feminine. That is exactly what my brand of feminism says – be yourself, the realisation of your own identity based on your self-hood, your being a human being is the essential core of your existence.

I cannot blame that journalist entirely, because the dominant forms of feminised fiction in the 19^th   and 20^th century were moral, didactic, domestic and habitually focused on private, domestic experiences. All discourse on fiction was organised around the concept of the proper and improper feminine – the dangerous other. The journalist possibly grew up on that. She probably felt she was being smart about learning how to ‘handle’, ‘manipulate’ men which was her feminist agenda coming from a very simplistic definition of feminism. She was ultimately talking about the power of manipulating men, but then we do not want the male definition of power handed down to us as a legacy.

A new discourse is possible. It is still a minefield since we have not transcended gender yet. It is still another ‘F’ word. “The misrepresentation of how different the sexes are, which is not supported by the scientific evidence, harms men and women of all ages in many different areas of life,” writes psychologist Janet S Hyde. “The claims can hurt women’s opportunities in the workplace, dissuade couples from trying to resolve conflict and communication problems and cause unnecessary obstacles that hurt children and adolescents’ self-esteem.”

We have had supposedly mature politicians play the sexist game. It reveals how deeply entrenched the social stereotypes are. What if the media did not respond to such comments? It is utopian, but what if some of us actually took a stand and ignored all such references, instead of printing a whole column? And can we think of starting to change mindsets at home?

We have to work towards not retaining the binary divide between men and women. We need not reverse the hierarchy. We are not looking to demean or demolish men. We are looking for a better way of life that liberates us all – men and women.Men cannot be our destination; we are not theirs. They can be companions, lovers, friends, but not the main plot of our lives. We are not looking for subtle manipulative power. We do not want power that is gained to win over men, but the power that comes from logic and choices made by the individual.

If power has to come to us, we need to earn it. Men are not the generous donors of power. We are not eager supplicants. We are moving in an age that demands this way of thinking. Have you ever come across a man doing an article on what books men should read to make their relationships work with their mom, sister, girlfriend and wife? There has always been a sexist approach, and it is pathetic to see women succumbing to it mindlessly.

The Pink Chaddi Campaign in India worked, which is proof there are lots of women out there who want to break out of sexual stereotyping. So why the delay?

Mita Kapur is the CEO of Siyahi, a Jaipur-based literary agency. She can be reached at mita.kapur@gmail.com

I WAS A broadcast journalist in India and when news about the string of terror attacks in Mumbai broke on the evening of November 26, I knew exactly what to expect from the television channels there.

The channels would splash the TV screens with ‘breaking news’ tags in bright red, the anchors would have phone-ins with their reporters from Mumbai, which would become live chats once the Outdoor Broadcast (OB) vans reached the spot(s); some reporters would upload ‘walk-throughs’; they would try to talk to eyewitnesses with timeless questions like “kya hua, kya dekha, aapko kaisa laga, police kitne der se pahunchi” (what happened, what did you see, how did you feel, how late was the police in arriving).

The second wave of the ‘breaking news’ reporting would be led by strings in red and black, with or without a Mumbai backdrop, and carrying bold headlines articulating each channel’s opinion of what the attacks mean to India. They would include labels like ‘India’s 9/11′ or ‘maut ka aatank’ (the scourge of death).

In this phase would come more eyewitness accounts. The crime reporters would go live with information about police and paramilitary movements, the scenes at hospitals, reactions of relatives and, of course, the politicians. More importantly, the channels would take on a nationalistic hue saying things like “India’s pride is attacked”, “Bharat will not submit to terrorism”, and so on. In the absence of any clear, factual information, it will be left to the anchors to mouth generalities or repeat themselves to keep the channels live.

In the third phase, the channels would intersperse spot visuals running in loops with graphics explaining the salient points over a map showing the points of attacks. By this time, the channels would have invited retired policemen, bureaucrats or terrorism experts to studios for live analysis. International reactions to the attacks would be beamed, along with human interest stories and, where possible, phone-ins from people holed up in the buildings where the attacks occurred.

If the attacks continued into the morning, as the ones in Mumbai did, the reporters, including senior journalists flown in overnight from New Delhi, would start a fresh cycle of the same news, with lives and walk-throughs, and give us their opinion of how the counterterrorism operations are going on. The bulk of the day’s reporting would focus on the ‘why’ of the attacks, notwithstanding the absence of any official statements on it.

The news channels, by and large, did not belie my expectations. And that is the point of this article.

Whether it is a story about a stampede in a temple, a boy falling into a manhole, a thief being beaten up by the public, the sensex going up or down, or an act of terrorism, the treatment by channels more or less follows the above routine. If one cares to go through the video archives of channels, one would find a striking similarity in even the words and phrases and visuals used then and now.

Indian journalists have been reporting on conflicts and terrorism for over two decades now, from the militancy in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and the north-eastern states, the low-intensity conflict on the India-Pakistan border, and in recent years, the number of attacks on several Indian cities – even the Indian Parliament – by so-called terrorist groups.

What is missing from reporting on terrorism in India, unfortunately, is the big picture, not only in terms of (a) exhaustive reportage on the event, but also in terms of (b) the geopolitical impact in the global sense.

The first points to the gullibility of the journalists, the second to their lack of awareness. Whether both notions are wrong and such impressions are primarily caused by the newsroom chaos in handling breaking news, it is up to the channels to introspect.

Novice journalists are often told by their seniors that the single mantra in a breaking news scenario is to keep one’s cool. That is the rule practiced more in the breach. Each channel has its own editorial crisis news committee that oversees how breaking news is treated. But somewhere along the way, things snap.

Often it is found there is no one in the newsroom drawing up coverage plans and directing the news team. As a result, the coverage is more of a dish-it-as-it-comes variety even after the first hour of the event. It is the duty of the newsroom seniors to ensure that information is not repeated throughout the news wheel, but is refreshed frequently. It is true that new information is flashed as soon as it comes, but it does not stand out in the general melee of visual loops and continuous, non-informative chats.

The worst aspect of television coverage in India is the abject display of sentiment by journalists. They use adjectives at random, deploring the terrorists and pining for the victims. The channels rave about “nationalism”, the “national spirit” and so on. A sense of an objective assessment of what is happening is, therefore, lost. A glaring example in the Mumbai attacks case is the killing of three senior officers of Mumbai’s anti-terrorism squad. The anchors broke the news with their throats constricted, searching for words like “sacrifice”, “altar of duty” and “honour”. What was lost were simple details like how they died, where they died, what were they doing, etc, which was left for later bulletins.

It is pertinent here to recall what Canadian journalist and media educator Ross Howard said at the 2003 International Roundtable on New Approaches to Conflict Reporting in Copenhagen on the use of sentiment by the media:

“Look at the work of the FOX Television network in the USA. During the invasion of Iraq, newscasters waved and wore American flags, and abandoned all impartiality or fairness by providing a kind of play-by-play home-team coverage of the war between ‘our boys versus the enemy’. It was not professional journalism. Increasingly, this uncritical (and overtly partisan) journalism is contributing to a dangerous American public isolation and insulation from reality on the global scene. Restoring and introducing critical thinking to Western journalism is a partial antidote to the FOX News style of journalism. We need to restore some old standards.”

In the initial hours of the Mumbai attacks, foreign channels were far ahead with factual information, which they culled out from blogs and chat rooms, and strengthened with details from interviews, including with guests at the two hotels attacked by the terrorists. Some foreign channels put the Mumbai attacks in perspective right away by giving a timeline of previous attacks in India to conclude that the latest strikes were actually an escalation in terrorism. They pointed out that unlike in previous cases, the current strikes also involved taking hostage of western nationals. It was a logical deduction on the basis of some good homework, plus locating the new angle of hostage-taking in the current strikes.

A major reason why the Indian channels looked no different the day after the attacks from the night before was sheer lack of information about the ongoing counter-terrorism operation by the security forces in the two Mumbai hotels where the terrorists were holed up with hostages. Broadcast journalism in India is no longer in its infancy and many of its practitioners have reported on conflicts worldwide and therefore, there is no excuse for substandard coverage of such a serious issue.

Secrecy on part of the official agencies and lack of access by journalists both played a role in this blank phase of news on the strikes on the second day. Indian journalists, routinely attuned to covering crime, often find it difficult to cope with such situations. How to keep their channels moving forward in such situations? Lack of knowledge about the country’s anti-terrorism apparatus, the types of agencies and personnel involved, and general information about their operational techniques appear to have hindered the journalists. As a result, uninformed theories, even rumours were reported as news.

Such reportage looks childish. Like, for instance, a channel showed its reporter, standing at the back of one of the Mumbai hotels, telling the audience that the police were clever enough to post themselves at the hotel’s rear so that the terrorists would not be able to escape unnoticed.  Knowledge about the encircling tactics of counter-terrorism agencies as well as the level of determination of the terrorists inside the hotel – would they allow themselves to be captured alive? – would have made the reporter’s chat more meaningful.

Even when channels secure tactical information about an operation, they should have second thoughts about broadcasting it for fear of the data benefiting the attackers. A couple of channels had some such information about the ongoing operation in Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, which they screamed as exclusive news, oblivious to the larger ethical questions involved.

What Indian broadcast journalism should now look for is specialised reporting on terrorism. Treating a terrorist strike story in the same way as a child falling into a manhole will not help, simply because news channels influence people’s perceptions and an unprofessional approach to news dissemination can result in inappropriate fallouts. Also, terrorism is not a domestic issue restricted to the borders of one country and as it is there exists enough evidence of its globally intertwined presence.

The Mumbai strikes were treated more as a local Mumbai event, rather than a national issue. The ‘national’ duty was discharged by becoming inanely sentimental. There was no attempt to see the strikes in the perspective of the global, or even sub-continental, spread of terrorism.

In such situations, journalists should keep in mind they are no longer dealing with local police or petty criminals. They should be able to raise the standard of reporting by making themselves aware of the causes, impact and nexus of terrorism beyond their own country’s borders. This calls for journalists undergoing training programmes in terrorism reporting, on the lines of conflict reporting.

More important than such training is developing a professional attitude when dealing with terrorism and not giving into bouts of sentimentality, which derails the whole purpose of reporting on such events. Not the least, journalists must realise that while it is professional to break the news first, a race to break it can be hazardous in such situations, with accuracy, objectivity and credibility the first victims.

Venkata Vemuri is a senior Indian journalist, currently doing his PhD in the UK. He can be reached at vevemuri@gmail.com

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Despite the Crowngate and Blue Peter scandals earlier this year, 61 per cent of respondents to a March 2008 online survey said they trusted Beeb journalists “a great deal or a fair amount”, ahead of ITV, Channel 4 and up-market reporters, and way ahead of red-top and mid-market newspapers.

That is the good news. The bad news is the BBC has fallen from grace in the last five years.

The British Journalism Review-YouGov poll, which had 1,328 adult respondents, found 20 per cent less people trusted the BBC now than they did in 2003. Then, 81 per cent of the population had said they believed in the Beeb.

This trend is not limited to the BBC. The whole of British journalism has taken a tumble: ITV and Channel 4 are trusted by only 51 per cent (against the 81 and 80 per cent of 2003, respectively), up-market and local journalists by 43 and 40 per cent (down from 65 and 60 per cent, respectively), mid-market papers by 18 per cent (down from 36 per cent), and red-top scribes by 10 per cent (down from 16 per cent).

Though the BBC rates better than senior police officers (but below local police officers and schoolteachers and family doctors, mind), and ITV fares better than the local MP, trade union leaders and ministers in the current government, that is no cause for celebration.

“What ought to worry all journalists is the massive slide in trust, relative to other organisations or groups, since this question was first asked 5 years ago,” writes Professor Steven Barnett, who analysed the survey findings in a BJR paper titled On the road to self-destruction (2008: 19; 5).

The only comfort from the findings is that tabloid journalists are not at the bottom of the pile anymore. They now have the dubious consolation of being the second-least trusted, with estate agents faring the worst among the 23 professions compared.

Up-market and local journalists are among the top nine on the trust scale, though mid-market scribes have not done well. They are only a notch higher than their red-top counterparts, below NHS managers, ‘people who run large companies’, senior council officials, Labour government ministers and senior Whitehall civil servants, in that order.

There is a sliver of silver lining for the broadcast media in all this. People trust television more than they do the news in ink — BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are among the top nine, while the print journalists are ranked further down the ladder.

Discussing the many reasons for the “crumbling faith in British journalism”, Barnatt writes: “Just as one man-biting-dog story provokes a flurry of canine-biting tales, so exposés of ‘failing’ journalism have become fashionable.”

He feels the media might be adding to the widespread scepticism by exaggerating – at times even inventing – examples of media misconduct.

“Good journalism makes a difference to the kind of society we live in, and to distrust it is eventually to destroy it,” he writes. “That’s why trust matters, and that’s why we should all be worried by the findings of this survey.”

Jameela Oberman can be reached at jameela.interjunction@googlemail.com.

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Surely, and not slowly.

It’s PR that Nick Davies, award-winning investigative reporter and author of Flat Earth News, is talking about here. He believes public relation officials have an alarming degree of control over media content today.

A Cardiff University study shows the average reporter fills three times more news space than in 1985. So journalists are under pressure to produce more copy, and often recycle reports to meet deadlines.

Press ownership is at the heart of this trend, Davies said, and media giants are more concerned with checking their bottom line than checking facts.

“This injected commercialisation is killing the logic of journalism,” he said at a Westminster Media Forum conference in London on PR and Journalism – Government and Health Sector Media Relations.

The Cardiff research, which analysed 2,000 news stories, found more than 80 per cent of the items were composed from second-hand sources. Also, only 12 per cent had been checked for accuracy.

The way the news industry functions now, journalists do not take the time to research the press releases that land on their desks. “Instead of being news gatherers we are becoming information processors,” said Davies, who won the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 1999 and the Europe Prize: Journalism for a Changing World in 2004.

So the model of the press as public watchdog is being undermined. Worse, this ‘cut-corner’ approach to filling up news space is resulting in a press that can be easily manipulated – and often misleads the public.

The conference also highlighted the uneasy relationship between the media and the government, projecting it as a particular roadblock to good journalism. Political communication veteran David Hill said while everyone tries to influence the news agenda, the way in which the media sees the government is a cause for concern.

“The media’s attitude shows assumptions that the government is without ethics,” said Hill, who was Tony Blair’s director of communications till 2003, “and that political figures are only in it for private gain.”

This mindset coupled with the journalistic belief that “only bad news is news at all” has kept the government on the backfoot. But gloomy headlines rake in more profit, and Hill said he doesn’t see a truce being struck till journalists show a willingness to be balanced.

“At the moment,” he said, “there is no incentive for the media to change and no reason for the government to play along.”

While some press offices may be benign, Davies said, it is the structure of the news machine that is allowing their views to be published unquestioned. “Even honest PR makes selections for us,” he said. “We should source it ourselves, we should decide.”

The rise of the internet means more people read news online, which is not profitable for corporations. This has led to job cuts. Which, in turn, has put pressure on reporters to file more copy is less time, and Davies said journalists need to demand more time and more space. Every time they do that, a battle is won.

“Good journalism isn’t dead, it’s just terribly ill,” he said. “But it’s worth fighting for.”

Angelica Jopson is a writer at Interjunction. She can be reached at angelica.interjunction@googlemail.com

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Professor An-Na’im, you have spoken of the need for scholarship as well as journalism that is socially engaged and rigorous. How might scholarship and the media support each other in this regard?

I think scholarship and journalism or media can support each other first by combining commitments to individual freedom and social justice with professional rigor and integrity, each in terms of its own standards. Poor scholarship or weak journalism is not useful for any cause.  But the two are different in conception, methodology and expression, and should not be judged by the same standards. In other words, scholarship should not seek to be good journalism, and vice versa. At the same time, however, scholars and journalists should both work on the basis of a clear understanding of all the relevant facts, history, and context of the issues they are dealing with; and strive to frame their questions or inquiry consistently and fairly.

In this regard, we probably need to clarify what we mean by “neutrality” as a standard of good scholarship and journalism. Absolute or completely neutrality is of course not possible for human beings, but I also don’t think that it is desirable. Whether we are aware of it, admit it or not, claims of neutrality are misleading because we always have some purpose or agenda in mind, if only to maintain the status quo. What scholars and journalists can and should strive to avoid is being biased or patrician, by prejudging an issue or failing to consider both sides of an argument before coming to a conclusion. This is probably what people mean when they speak of neutrality, which does not mean that the scholar or journalist has no personal opinion or position on the issue at hand.  Rather, the point is that we should try our best to frame the questions fairly, seek all relevant information, and avoid presenting them in ways that prematurely influence our audience.

Often, media professionals and scholars seem to approach issues very differently. Mediapersons often complain that academics view their work as superficial without due consideration for the constraints under which they operate. On the other hand, scholars point to the anti-intellectualism in the media. What might be the deeper sources of this tension, for instance, with regard to coverage of human rights, secularism, or religion? Could these be productive tensions?

This tension is not only unavoidable, but in fact necessary for each of these two fields to achieve its objectives and serve its legitimate purposes in society. Some of the differences that underlie this tension are to be expected because they are inherent to the nature and functions of scholarship in contrast to journalism. It is true that journalists have to operate under constraints of space and time, which do not permit them the benefits of extensive and profound examination of the issues, as scholars are able to do. But the constraints under which journalists operate are integral to their primary role of informing the public at large about current debates and concerns. Given the wide range in levels of education, intellectual engagement, and emotional orientation of their audiences, journalists could not perform their proper function or role in society at all if they tried to be as nuanced in their analysis or careful in presenting them as scholars are able and expected to do. 

In reporting about human rights, secularism, or religion, for instance, journalists have to frame issues at a high level of generality and balance to be accessible and influential among the widest possible range of readers or listeners. They should be able to present sufficient breadth and clarity to enable people to make up their own mind about the issue at hand, without being so complex in their analysis or nuanced in presentation as to defeat the purpose. 

Regarding human rights, for example, journalists are best at verifying the facts and reporting them accurately and clearly, while scholars are trained to engage in deeper philosophical or social scientific analysis of the concepts, norms and their practice or application. Scholars can help us understand the historical roots and philosophical and policy implications of the relationship between secularism and religion, and journalists can present the findings and conclusions of scholars to the widest range of public opinion to inform public policy. Neither should try to perform the role of the other. Society needs both set of professionals to do what they are supposed to do, each according to their own functions and methodologies. If journalists and scholars are good at what they are trained and situated to do, they should be able to cooperate for the benefit of society at large.  

In your work you seek to engage public constituencies in various national and global contexts, from Indonesia to America.  Toward this end, you utilize media formats that complement scholarly texts.  What are the ways in which this approach contributes to the goals of your current project on Islam and the secular state?

In working with colleagues in various projects, we attempted to integrate communications and media strategies with the concept and basic methodology of the project because we believe in what we call “scholarship for social change”.  Since our explicit objective in all these projects has been to influence public policy and behavior, with due regard to the human agency of Muslims and citizens, we have deliberately sought to bring our findings and conclusions to the attention of the public at large. We do not believe it sufficient to produce a good idea, or substantiate a strong argument, without striving to bring that into the public domain in ways that motivate and empower people who are persuaded to struggle for the practical application of those ideas or arguments in practice, whether through official action or private practice.

But we have also consistently found that this is easier said than done, very much for the sort of factors and constraints I have outlined earlier. The fact that we think our work is relevant and practically useful does not necessarily mean that journalists would be keen to cover or disseminate our findings and conclusions. Part of our difficulty may have been that our findings and analysis were presented on websites and in books in English, while the readers who are more likely to be interested in what we do speak other languages.  We tried to address this issue by translating the Islam and Secular State manuscript into several languages of Islamic societies that can be downloaded and printed from the project’s website free of charge. Since we still did not receive much feedback from readers, it seems that another limitation is that the website format is not easily accessible to our constituencies, while books are too expensive for them. We still believe so strongly in the role of the media in our work that we keep working to overcome such limitations and to facilitate our cooperation with journalists.

What specific critiques might you have about current media coverage of human rights issues, international law, war, and conflict?

The question is whether, despite the increasingly globalized nature of media, coverage is still dictated by national interests or the interests of powerful nation-states such as the US. An example would be the mainstream US media coverage in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, where the media did not distance itself sufficiently from a US state department position.

I would first recall here the points made earlier about some of the limitations of the media that are in fact necessary or relevant to its proper role and function in society.  Still it seems to me that journalists can do better in informing themselves about the broader issues of human rights, international law, war, and conflict around the world. As I said earlier, I don’t think it is appropriate for any of us, whatever function or role we play, to be “neutral” about human rights in principle.  Journalists have the obligation to investigate and verify the facts as best they can, to present a balanced view of all sides and perspectives of an issue, but that should not mean pretending to be indifferent about the outcome, as if describing a football game. I do believe that journalists have an obligation to be socially responsible in their reporting on human rights issues. As I emphasized from the start, no cause is served by weak journalism, but good strong media must seek to uphold the principles of human rights and social justice.

It is important for journalists to avoid taking sides in a conflict, or prejudging an issue, but there is no question in my mind that they must be totally uncompromising in upholding the rule of law in international relations and condemning flagrant violations of international law like the invasion and colonization of Iraq by the United States and its allies since March 2003.  Living in the United States, I was particularly distressed to see American journalists exhibiting bias and prejudice for either chauvinistic so-called patriotic reasons, or out of concern about their ability to have access to information. The notion of so-called “embedded journalists”, whereby a journalist would live and move with units of an invading army, seems to me to mock and contradict any notion of independence and impartiality. 

Similarly, what critiques might you have about scholarly work in these areas.  While recognizing that media and scholarship are not subject to identical forces, is it the case that the same kinds of ideological factors– whether in US, India, or Saudi Arabia-often also influence scholarly work in problematic ways?

Much of what I said about the media above applies to scholarship: risks of undeclared bias or prejudice, sometimes not acknowledged to scholars themselves, and ethnocentric assumptions that essentialize the “other” to fit preconceived notions or models of analysis. The risks of such factors are probably greater with scholars because they tend to assume that they have been “trained” to overcome or avoid them. To be clear on the point, these concerns are as true of so-called “Third World” or non-Western scholars as they are of Western scholars.  There is “orientalism” and “orientalism in reverse” that seeks to recapture and finally appropriate the “true and authentic” identity of “oriental” intellectuals and political elites (Mehrzad Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West: The Tormented Triumph of Nativism, Syracuse University Press, 1996, 11-12).

Another concern that applies to scholars in particular is the myth that true scholarship must be neutral, and that advocacy for social change diminishes the intellectual purity and authority of scholarship. The illusion here is that scholarly neutrality is possible or desirable, and can be achieved by simply refusing to take a position, which is of course an actual position in favor of the status quo.  Scholars who insist on that view tend to be privileged elites who are keen to avoid questioning the basis of their privilege.  Again, this can be as true of so-called non-Western as of Western scholars.

You strongly emphasize the importance of practice and process in developing values of secularism and civic engagement. What might be some strategies by which media and scholarship could be attuned to this perspective?

The primary rationale of my emphasis on practice and process is respect for the human agency of the subjects of the theory I am trying to develop — the values and traditions of secularism in the instance of the current project on Islam and the secular state and the future of Shari’a. Another main reason is that an effort to “theorize the experience” of persons and their communities is more likely to be accepted by its subjects as legitimate and practical than a hypothetical theoretical construct. The actual methodology of this approach is to devise a theoretical framework through observation and “translation” of the daily experiences of persons and their communities.

Both the rationale and methodology of this approach clearly indicate possibilities of strong partnership between media and scholarship.  Media strategies can help articulate the practices and process by which scholars can develop theoretical frameworks, and then communicate that information to the public to motivate and inspire action that can reinforce the theoretical framework.  For instance, the role of state funding and supervision on religious education in schools or tax breaks for private religious schools need to be negotiated through practice over time. Competing views and policy priorities about controversial educational issues, like the exclusive reservation of physical exercise facilities for female students by Harvard University, can be presented and debated through various media outlets. Whenever it is wise to try a new policy on an experimental basis, the media can play a critical role in publicizing the policy and engaging people in following its progress and eventual assessment for the policy to be either terminated or extended. This can happen for various models of regulating the relationship between religious organizations and political parties, or the role of Islamic religious endowments (waqf) in funding electoral campaigns of political leaders or their parties.

Photograph: Courtesy Emory Law School

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ON MARCH 26 OF this year The Church of Oprah Exposed was posted on YouTube receiving, as of this writing, 5,916,675 views. At the heart of the video’s popularity is the allegation that the billionaire host of the most popular talk show in the history of television threatens Christianity and that she is, as LivePrayer.com‘s Bill Keller believes, attempting to establish a cult. Keller, who likens Oprah’s views to “spiritual crack,” joins others in conservative Christian circles who point to comments of hers that have been floating around the web for some time: “… One of the mistakes that human beings make is believing that there is only one way to live… there couldn’t possibly be just one way [to God]…”

Asked by an audience member “what about Jesus?” Oprah responds: “What about Jesus?”

The current firestorm over Oprah’s religious status brings to mind a certain passage from the Holy Scriptures:

“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.”

The second of the Ten Commandments seems rather unequivocal, a clear statement that follows up the first commandment’s prohibition against worshiping other gods. The underlying message is straightforward for monotheists: do not worship other gods, or “bow down” to anything else in the cosmos.

The Ancient Israelites had the Golden Calf to lead them astray; 21st century conservative Christians have Oprah.

Christians should be very concerned about the Church of Oprah but not because of her so-called New Age tendencies and Christ-less spirituality, but because it’s part of a larger competing religious culture: celebrity worship. This pervasive religious culture is a nefarious threat to social stability and moral order, part of a secular wasteland that draws on traditional religious forms and attitudes but misplaces genuine spiritual longing in inappropriate, imprudent ways, according to the critics. Today, just as in biblical times, it is feared that idol worship draws people away from God and away from true spiritual fulfillment, providing momentary animal gratifications but putting the soul, and society itself, in mortal peril — or “spiritual crack” in the parlance of our times.

Yet, even with the widespread public condemnations charging fans with practicing idolatry and showing signs of dangerous pathologies, or encouraging the spread of immorality and contributing to the decline of civilization, celebrities continue to embody and impart sacred realities — not seemingly sacred, nor pseudo sacred, nor false sacred, but just plain sacred realities — that fuel instructive mythologies, generate ritual practices, inspire personal transformations, and establish meaningful and practical values for fans who identify with Oprah and other cultural icons of our time.

Some may not like these icons and their persuasive powers. But like them or not, the power of fame and the spiritual dimensions of celebrity — a menace to some, salvation to others — constitutes a distinctive religious culture with wide-ranging communities of participants. This religious culture merges entertainment and devotional practices, commerce and sacred auras, in ways that transforms public and popular figures as well as fans themselves.

The apotheosis of Oprah is only one manifestation of this alternate form of sacred reality that is quite accommodating to those individuals who want to continue worshipping an invisible God in churches, synagogues, or temples while remaining devoted to the distant stars they keep firmly in their sights and intimately close in their hearts and minds. Like many of her fans, Oprah grew up in a household devoted to God, listening to and then learning to read from the bible, and worshipping Christ in the church, first with her mother and grandmother in Kosciusko, Mississippi, then with her father after she moved with him to Nashville, Tennessee. In the African American Progressive Baptist church her father served as a deacon and Oprah discovered the performer inside that loved to be in front of an audience.

Her fan base, of course, reaches far beyond the African American Christian communities that figure so prominently in the telling and retelling of her life story, encompassing Jews as well as Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists, New Agers and atheists too, no doubt. Indeed, the particularities of Oprah’s individual life story are compellingly pertinent to millions of primarily but not exclusively female fans in America as well as the rest of the world.

They hear repeatedly of her personal tragedies and triumphs, challenges and commitments on websites and in books, television specials and magazines, in universal terms that many find deeply relevant to their own non-celebrity, ordinary lives—not quite hagiography in the traditional sense, but clearly sacred stories so familiar, so edifying, so archetypal for Americans of all stripes that they simultaneously personalize and canonize Oprah in the popular imagination.

From humble beginnings in rural Mississippi to media mogul with vast amounts of wealth and global power, Oprah’s extraordinary life is more than the sum of its parts to faithful fans. The struggles with poverty in her early years, abuse by relatives as a girl, diet and eating as an adult, and vicious critics for much of her career; her shape-shifting transformations in church as a young performer, in the media as an actor and talk-show host, in her physical appearance as a glamorous African American woman, in class standing from the lowest of the lows to billionaire status — all of the micro-details publicly consumed again and again do not add up to the banal “rags to riches” story so close to the hearts of Americans.

Rather, in the context of racism and sexism, corporate greed and personal misfortunes, the familiar elements of Oprah’s life and tremendous success as a celebrity with more to offer than entertainment to the masses is prime myth-making material, uplifting and instructive, gripping and weighty, to those who listen. Her story transcends the specific experiences related in writing, images, and speech, transformed for many from the simple life of an individual into an iconic tale of triumph and transformation with spiritual meanings that may or may not have anything to do with God but clearly consecrate this celebrity and make her worthy of veneration and emulation.

Oprah is more than a source for religious mythology in celebrity culture, however. She is also at the center of a range of devotional practices that demonstrate the depth and breadth of her religious standing in this prominent culture of worship. Watching Oprah’s talk show, reading her popular O magazine, buying the titles she includes in her book club, visiting her official website, oprah.com, journaling at her suggestion for greater self-awareness — these are only some of the ritual activities enacted in everyday life by millions of her followers.

But how can watching, reading, buying, visiting, journaling be religious ritual in this case when, in so many other circumstances, the same kinds of activity cannot be classified in a similar way? Are these deeply sacred bonds between an American idol and her star struck fans or consumer patterns manipulated by gross, profit-driven rationales to maximize earnings from this manufactured product?

Rituals are religious when they establish order for participants who return to them again and again, bind groups of disparate people into a unified community fixed on a common symbol or totem, empower individuals through expectations of personal transformation, transcendence, and fulfillment including but not limited to physical, embodied experiences, and teach followers about what is really real, especially meaningful, and genuinely insightful.

In the religious culture of celebrity, public figures like Oprah inspire individuals to engage in ritual actions that meet these requirements because fans adore her as an intimate authority of sacred, spiritual matters and trust her guidance through the ordinary, everyday struggles in their efforts to achieve the same degree of transcendence and transformation idealized in the mythology surrounding her personal life story.

Oprah is not the Pope, but as Vanity Fair, one of the primary sacred texts in celebrity religious culture, proclaimed in an article published over ten years ago, she may be a close second in terms of cultural authority in the personal lives of followers. As a recent book, The Gospel According to Oprah, argues quite convincingly, Oprah may indeed be considered the next Billy Graham, revivalist extraordinaire and 20th-century national icon. Oprah is the nation’s premier religious revivalist for the twenty-first century, though with more of a Christ-less message than evangelical Graham, and no less infused with moral teachings, spiritual promises, and healing wisdom for the national, and now certainly global, masses.

Her non-sectarian, bible-influenced, spiritually-based therapeutic power to transform individuals and society itself was fittingly on display during America’s darkest hours after the 9/11 attacks. Oprah hosted the national memorial service after the tragedy, an intimate, familiar, trusted face who could lead Americans in the socially urgent rituals of death that did not exclude the expression of multiple religious traditions but, on the other hand, were sacred actions in their own right irrespective of the Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, and others who participated in the ceremonies.

Oprah is one of the wealthiest celebrities, but that does not detract from the spiritual authority that helps her to help others live a more fulfilling, meaningful life — a point made starkly clear in her presence at the memorial service. Indeed, her celebrity status and enormous wealth only reinforces her sacred standing in contemporary culture and her trustworthy voice in intimate matters of love and romance, forgiveness and generosity, empathy and self-understanding, truth and transcendence; it makes people believe that following her lead can help them “live your best life,” a familiar phrase to her fans but one that also sums up a fairly common goal in most religious traditions.

Is she a celebrity savior offering salvation not just from the trivialities and boredom of everyday life, but from suffering, injustices, and even death itself? Is the secret of salvation to become rich like her and live in opulence? Is it mere coincidence that her latest project, “Oprah’s Big Give,” involves the handing out of a large sums of money in “the most powerful and sensational ways to make a real difference”? Oprah cannot make all of her fans rich—a truly base, secular desire in and of itself—but she does offer the promise to make their lives better, salvation of a different sort than found in Christian doctrine, and one that surely blurs the lines between sacred transformation and psychological therapy, spiritual healing and healthy living.

Blurring these lines is confusing to most, but especially to those more conservatively positioned in relation to larger cultural trends and changes. The threat to God, and for many Christians, the fear that Jesus Christ is not the only truly divine celebrity, the sole source for true sacrality for the modern world, is an ongoing challenge to contemporary theology which has found itself increasingly displaced by, and ill-equipped to deal with, the Oprah phenomenon—let alone other pop cultural icons like Marilyn, Kurt, or Tupac. The confusion and fear over the commingling of sacred and secular, and the possibility that people have multiple religious identities and identifications, some of which do not require a monotheistic God, is expressed in public culture through diatribe and jeremiads, sermonizing and, in some cases, soul-searching reflection.

Besides Oprah, any number of celebrities can whip fans into a religious frenzy and demonstrate the sacred power of fame—Madonna or Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and Anna Kournikova, all have legions of fan followers who find numerous ways to show their special commitments and spiritual allegiances. Whether it is building a shrine to Bob Dylan, or following the humanitarian lead of Angelina Jolie, as reported in Time magazine’s “The Year of Charitainment,” celebrities do something extraordinary to fans whose adoration is not simply analogous to religion, but is itself an example of religious activity. Seen from this perspective, Bill Keller and the makers of the Oprah video just may not turn out to be the “crazy Christians” that Hollywood uber-gossip Perez Hilton dismissed them as.

Gary Laderman is co-editor and co-director of ReligionDispatches and Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Religion at Emory University.

Image: From The Gospel According to Oprah (courtesy ReligionDispatches).

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Could the Iraq war have been prevented had the American media asked the right questions? How do conservative media commentators frame the actions of different religious communities? Does the media pay due attention to history?

INCREASINGLY FOCUSED ON competitiveness and profits, the mainstream American media is under pressure for its own survival. Indeed, it is at a critical juncture of having to choose between fulfilling its societal responsibility or succumbing to the political compulsions of our times. As a society we need to evaluate the importance of the media in our American system of governance. Does it still play the crucial role the founding fathers of our nation had envisioned for it?

Thomas Jefferson made a strong statement about the role of the media in a democracy when he noted, “If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Describing the role of the press, George A. Krimsky, the former head of news for the Associated Press’ World Services and co-author of Hold the Press, writes, “In the wake of America’s successful revolution, it was decided there should indeed be government, but only if it were accountable to the people. The people, in turn, could only hold the government accountable if they knew what it was doing and could intercede as necessary, using their ballot, for example. This role of public ‘watchdog’ was thus assumed by a citizen press, and as a consequence, the government in the United States has been kept out of the news business.”

Could one say that the government in the United States was kept out of the news business in the past, but not any more?

In the recent past, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams told host Howard Kurtz that the Bush administration had “the right” to pay a columnist to tout its views in his column. As this article notes, Kurtz spoke of the “Pentagon planting positive stories, in some cases paying for positive stories in Iraqi newspapers.” The administration also paid journalist Armstrong Williams to promote its No Child Left Behind education policy. The Government Accountability Office, however, determined that the Bush Administration was wrong in promoting its educational policy through Armstrong’s column.

The essence of democracy is the ability to question everything in fairness and without worrying about censure against such inquiry. How many journalists from the mainstream media have failed this test in recent times? Let us examine a few situations and see the specific failures of the American media in each case.

The qualities of a commander-in-chief

As we speak, the airwaves are saturated with coverage of the presidential nominees in both parties. Why aren’t journalists questioning the rhetoric from McCain and Clinton that they are fit to be the commander-in-chief of the nation? We are a democracy, and it is not essential that our government should be run by a military expert. That was not the intent of our system.

I do not expect my president to be an expert in nuclear, biological, botanical, or other sciences and certainly not a military expert. I want a judicious person who can call on real experts as the situation demands and make the right decision in each case.

Journalists can still ask the candidates this question. Will they?

Precedent and patterns in the Rev. Wright controversy

The second week of March 2008 witnessed relentless coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermon, “God Damn America,” in the American media. It was all one could hear on the cable channels. The pundits were suggesting that this might indicate the end of presidential candiate Barack Obama’s political aspirations, given that Wright was Obama’s pastor.

In the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Ralph Luker pointed out that “the quotation comes not from Wright, but from the Rev Martin Luther King Jr’s first address to the Montgomery Improvement Association on December 5, 1955. Both African-American preachers have understood prophetic biblical preaching far better than those who feign shock at and condemn Wright’s words.”

“Obama’s Minister ‘Hates America’ But When My Father Said the Same Sort of Things He Became a Hero To The Republicans”  wrote Frank Schaeffer in the OpEdNews. Schaeffer quoted his father, religious right leader, Francis Schaeffer, expressing similar sentiments. “Take Dad’s words” Frank Schaeffer went on to say, “and put them in the mouth of Obama’s preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet, when we the white Religious Right denounced America, the white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words ‘godly’ and ‘prophetic’ and a ‘call to repentance.’”

The mainstream media largely failed to investigate if there was a precedent, if some one else had used this kind of language, if the reaction had been different, and why that might have been the case.

The burning of the US embassy in Kosovo

While driving around on Friday, February 22 earlier this year, I listened to every news channel. Our embassy was torched in Kosovo by radicals on that day. The media did not describe the violence as religiously motivated nor name any religious community as the culprit. I believe that was the right approach on the part of the media.

But I wondered: had those radicals been Muslims, what kind of demonization would mainstream conservative commentators like O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh have engaged in?

The war in Iraq

As the Bill Moyers Journal’s special edition program, “Buying the War,” compellingly demonstrated, the mainstream American media uncritically accepted the administration’s claims about Saddam Hussein’s ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and his links to Al-Qaeda. The five chapter report speaks for itself.

Had the media stood their ground, perhaps our administration would not have engaged in policies that have resulted in the deaths of over half a million Iraqis as per the figures provided by the medical journal Lancet estimate, 4,000 of our men and women, and a cost of anywhere from 1 to 2 trillion dollars.

Was their inability to ask the right questions of the administration not a colossal blunder on the part of the mainstream media?

Mike Ghouse is a writer and activist based in Dallas. He runs the blogs Foundation for Pluralism and World Muslim Congress.

Image: Sunil Krishnan

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Greg Mitchell lays bare the psychology of the ongoing self-censorship in the American media. There was not so much a conspiracy of silence about the war as an ideological refusal by the media to listen, see, and ask, writes Rohit Chopra.

GREG MITCHELL’S So Wrong for So Long is an immensely significant work, for reasons beyond the apparent. The book is a record of the life of the Iraq war in the American media from the time it was a neocon idea gathering force in January 2003 to the imbroglio of the second half of 2007. It is a compendium of the complicities of the mainstream American media in creating a narrative about the inexorable need for going to war. It is an examination of the appropriate relationship between the media and the state and a provocative questioning of the meaning of journalistic autonomy during the exceptional conditions of war. Each of these aspects of the work in itself justifies the value of the book. Cumulatively, they amount to a powerful statement and inquiry about the very meaning of freedom and voice in a democracy.

So Wrong for So Long consists of more than 75 columns written for Editor & Publisher — which Mitchell edits — from January 2003 through October 2007, adapted for the book. Each chapter brings together one more columns from a particular month during this time period. These columns are prefaced by Mitchell’s reflections on the main war-related events of that month in Iraq and / or in the US and the actions, decisions, and products of American media organizations about these events. The structure of the book compellingly juxtaposes past and present. Mitchell has framed these columns with the lightest and surest of editorial touches, providing an apposite amount of contextual information and letting the columns speak for themselves.

As the title of the book suggests, Mitchell addresses the role of various actors, including the media, experts, political authorities, and the American people, in contributing to the American failure to establish a viable Iraqi state after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. However, the main focus of the book is on the many ways in which the mainstream media fell short of its obligations before and through the war.

Patterns clearly emerge from the story that Mitchell tells us about the media coverage of the war. He highlights the incredible consensus among the media that Colin Powell’s speech at the UN on February 5, 2003 had incontrovertibly secured the case for war, and shows the eagerness with which the media accepted the claim of ‘mission accomplished.’ With due acknowledgment of the fact that certain restrictions may apply to covering a war situation, Mitchell draws attention to the politics of embeddedness, and the problematic implications of the conventions by which the media have covered the dead and wounded, military and civilian, coalition force or Iraqi.

Mitchell notes the double standards applied by the media in evaluating the claims of pro-war and anti-war sources. He comments on the gentle self-recriminations of the New York Times and the Washington Post for their earlier failings in reporting the war, which, Mitchell argues, did not go far enough. He chronicles the stubborness of prominent media columnists in refusing to budge from the essential premise that the war was justified. The book addresses the anxieties about appearing non-patriotic and the fear of a backlash from the public that have haunted media coverage of the war from its inception.

But we also find that it is not the case that there were no skeptical voices in the media and the political arena. Mitchell provides us several examples of these voices. Daniel Ellsberg, famous for leaking the Pentagon papers, is one such figure who was unconvinced by the administration’s case for invading Iraq. Described by Mitchell as “one of the most important figures in the history of American journalism,” even though not a journalist, Ellsberg was also critical of the media for failing to do their job. Bill Moyers of PBS emerges as another dissenting voice, interviewing Mitchell for his PBS program NOW in April 2003. Four years later, in April 2007, Moyers also presented a 90-minute PBS broadcast “Buying the War” that offered a blunt, hard look at the responsibility of the media in contributing to the climate that made the war possible. In Moyers’ own words, quoted in an April 21, 2007 E & P column reproduced in the book, “the press has yet to come to terms with its role in enabling the Bush administration to go to war on false pretenses” (p. 237). Mitchell’s book chronicles how, as the war has progressed, more columnists, conservatives and liberals alike, have advocated a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Politicians such as Representative John Murtha and Senator Chuck Hagel have also recommended a withdrawal in light of the situation in Iraq.

And yet, as Mitchell notes, the editorial columns of major newspapers have continued to stay mum or have equivocated on a host of glaring issues related to the war. We read through E & P columns in chronological order, accompanied by a constant sense of déjà vu, knowing more or less what is to follow.

The book thus hints at an intriguing phenomenon, one that deserves close attention from journalists, mediapersons, and scholars alike. It demonstrates that that there was not so much a conspiracy of silence as an ideological refusal by the media and others to listen, ask, see, and believe. It shows us the pyschology of self-censorship in operation and the ongoing construction of a self-willed amnesia on the part of the American media in its coverage of the Iraq war. What we see is memory — or rather a particular memory and narrative of a war, a society, a time — in the making. Where and why, one might, inquire, do these imperatives come from? What are their historical and sociological roots?

The book also causes us to look at the politics of differential access to information. It is one of the cliches of our times that in our information age and networked society, flows of information can cross national boundaries in the twinkling of an eye, across national boundaries and beyond the grasp of national governments. Global media and communication technologies such as the internet, with the forms of hyper-literacy and global discourse communities that they have engendered, are often adduced as proof of this new informational economy. But Mitchell’s book is a sobering reminder that such flows of information cannot be understand independently of the structures of political power, the stark inequalities that characterize international relations, the calculations of corporate organizations, and the pressures that all of these factors bring to bear on individual voices, journalistic or otherwise.

Mitchell begins the Introduction to the book with the words, “If only this were merely a book of history. Sadly, the war in Iraq is still very much with us, which makes this a current affairs volume as well. More than anything, however, I hope it serves as a warning for the future” (1). One may disagree respectfully with his distinction between history and current affairs. Current affairs are, after all, predicated on history or histories. The value of the book too, one may observe, is as much as documentary record, a four year history of how the media in the world’s only superpower covered that superpower’s decision to go to war and its aftermath, as political commentary about the present or political critique. And, in the words of NBC reporter Kevin Sites who is quoted in the book, it is an urgent and poignant reminder that the “burdens of war…are unforgiving for all of us” (p. 107).

Rohit Chopra is Editor, Interjunction and Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Babson College, Wellesley, Massachusetts.

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The media has a crucial role in ensuring a commitment to constitutionalism, pluralism, rule of law, and rights in every democratic society. Would it serve this cause best by an ‘objective’ approach? What the media should do is not chase after hypocritical objectivity, writes Professor

A COMMON AND DANGEROUS illusion, I think, is the explicit or implicit belief that once “settled” or “resolved” by founding generations and embodied in national constitutions and political culture of societies, commitments to civic values of constitutionalism, democracy, pluralism, rule of law and protection of fundamental rights will somehow survive and thrive through subsequent generations, as if encoded in our genes.

A more realistic view, it seems to me, is that these values must be rejuvenated and developed through the constant reenactment of civic discourses about their significance and current relevance by every generation. For instance, founding visions of secularism and pluralism in the United States or India are not sufficiently sustained by constitutional texts and bureaucratic mechanisms, or infused into subsequent generations through civic classes in schools or the mythology of ritualistic politics.

It is not possible for these values to survive the inevitable crises endured by every society unless they are also reaffirmed and nurtured by each generation on its own terms and in relation to the current issues of the day. This is clear, I would argue, from the moral failure of the United States in the face of international terrorism and cyclic tragedies of communal violence in India. The fact the United States inflicts its moral failure on other societies across the world and India endures its own at home are simply different manifestations of the same underlying failure to reenact civic discourses.

A constant appreciation of the reality and urgency of this need is of course the essential prerequisite for its possibility for any society. But since that is likely to be already true of some opinion leaders, the question is about the means and process of raising awareness among wider segments of society, as well as the actual practice of civic discourse.

This is where partnership of the academy and media in enhancing public space for civic discourse is so crucial. To call for this is not to assume that it is totally absent now in any society, or to be naïve about probable limitations of the academy or media constituencies, or underestimate obstacles facing their sustained collaboration. Rather, my call is for a pragmatic yet optimistic engagement and mediation of such difficulties as part of the process of civic discourse itself.

Objectivity: that myth again

On the academy side, there is the deeply entrenched myth of objectivity and neutrality — the notion that scholarship must be detached and unaffiliated with any social or political agenda to be valid and sound from a “scientific” perspective. However, in view of the realities of the world as we have it, assertions of scholarly objectivity and neutrality are simplistic if not hypocritical, because failure to take a position against injustice and human suffering around us everywhere is in fact a taking a position in support of the status quo. At the same time, bad or weak scholarship is not helpful for any cause. So, what we need is good scholarship that is socially engaged, rather than one that is either weak or claims to be socially and politically neutral. I realize that this is not easy to do, but believe it is what we should strive to achieve.

Similar tensions between professional neutrality and risks of bias due to social and political commitments arise in the journalism and media side of the partnership I am promoting here. Professional neutrality is needed for good media work, but that should not be at the expense of commitments to social justice and individual freedom. Once again, we need good journalism that is socially engaged, rather than one that is either biased or claims to be socially and politically neutral. Again, I realize that this is not easy to do, but believe it is what we should strive to achieve.

Beyond these types of “honorable” concerns about balancing quality and social commitments, there are other mundane issues of both the academy and media being implicated in economic and class or other interests that can consciously or unconsciously coopt scholars and journalists. Both communities are dependent on structural power relations in every society. The first step in this regard is to candidly acknowledge these realities of power relations and seek ways of systematically reducing their influence over time.

My objective in this short essay is to begin talking about these types of risk factors and their implications for the constant reenactment of civic discourse. I am not suggesting that partnerships between the academy and the media are the only way to promote these civic values, as the seeds of these commitments, institutions and practice may be planted into the consciousness of our children through early socialization at home, civic education in schools, and traces of all this may filter through our popular culture.

But none of this is likely to be sufficiently strong, at least for the majority of citizens and especially in times of severe security crises or social trauma, like the aftermath of 9/11 in the United States or outbreaks of communal violence in India. Integrating good and socially engaged scholarship into good and socially engaged media work is one way of reinforcing values.

What can academy-media engagement do?

For example, partnerships between the academy and media can promote a more sophisticated and nuanced public debate about the relationship of religion and the state, on the one hand, and religion and politics, on the other.

I have recently attempted to produce what I hope is good and socially engaged scholarship about the paradoxical need to separate religion and the state in my book Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari`a (Harvard University Press, 2008). The paradox of separation of religion and the state, with recognition and regulation of the unavoidable connectedness of religion and politics can, and should, be mediated through a variety of mechanisms, but cannot be resolved once and for all. This approach makes a difficult but necessary distinction between the institutional continuity of the state and the contingency of politics as reflected in the government of the day. While my argument is applied to Islam and Muslims, I believe that it is also applicable to other religious traditions and communities.

These issues can be explored in strong socially engaged scholarship, but that will have little wider social and political impact unless the media engaged in broader dissemination and debate about whatever the academy has to say on the subject. In terms of my thesis in the book, the media can contribute by facilitating debates about the imperative requirement of the institutional separation of religion and the state in order to ensure the strict religious neutrality of the state and all institutions.

By religious neutrality of the state I mean that official policies, laws and institutions should never favor or disfavor any religious doctrine or practice as such, i.e., by virtue of its being religious or because it is sanctioned by religious authorities. Norms or policy objectives which are accepted by citizens as based on their religious or other beliefs can be proposed for public debate and possible adoption by the state as public policy or law, but that can only be by virtue of “civic reason” and not religious rationale. That is, all state action must be based on reasons that are equally accessible and debatable, accepted or rejected by all citizens, without reference to the religious beliefs held by any of them.

Public debate facilitated by the media can help clarify the practical mediation of the paradox of separation of religion and the state, for instance, in terms of regulating the social and ethical influence of religion on public policy, gender relations, human rights and social justice concerns. Similar clarification and illustration may also be necessary for the refurbishment of the normative and institutional frameworks of transparent and accountable government, political parties and community leaders.

The media can also facilitate the process of broadening and deepening popular understanding and appreciation of the nature and dynamics of secularism and religious/philosophical pluralism, and how to safeguard and promote the critical role of dissent and heresy in a variety of settings.

Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. His research interests include constitutionalism in Islamic and African countries, human rights, and Islam and politics.

Image: Sunil Krishnan

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WHAT DO BRITISH kids do when they are bored?

They socialise. Online.

So what do they do when they are not bored? 

They socialise. Online.

Here’s the dope: an Institute for Public Policy Research study — to be published next month but sneak-viewed by Guardian Communications Editor Richard Wray — shows children this side of the Atlantic spend more than 20 hours a week on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

So kids are in effect “raised online”, whatever that means.

Of course the kids know parents don’t like them partying out there, but, hey, how’re they going to stop ‘em?

Like one smarty pointed out – and this is interesting — parents and teachers know diddly-squat about the net and there are a zillion ways around the child locks and other tricks they try:

“We have restrictions at school but we can just get an administrator’s account and take them off.”

Parents these days, we tell you.

Gotcha! No, you didn’t! 

So we had the NYT-Mint spat, which, by the look of it, Mint won, no sweat.

For the uninitiated, it began with NYT’s Sunday Business Deputy Editor Patricia Kranz complaining to Poynter about a ‘discovery’ she and friends made.

Apparently, there is this website called livemint.com (online avatar of the Indian newspaper Mint, as she, um, discovered soon enough) happily lifting “numerous” stories from the NYT and International Herald Tribune — wasn’t that shameful and such a “flagrant case of mass copyright infringement”?

Would’ve been, but seems Kranz got it all wrong.

In his rebuttal, Mint Managing Editor Raju Narisetti said HT Media, Mint’s parent, has a syndication agreeement with the NYT and could Kranz please check her facts before she spake?

For good measure, Narisetti, who took media ethics “very seriously”, also got HT Media lawman Dinesh Mittal to issue a notice to NYT demanding it withdraw its allegations and update records.

Haven’t heard from Kranz since, but are the folks at NYT making an awful lot of mistakes these days?

Shh, let’s not talk about the February embarrasment…

The jolly war in Afghanistan

Seems there’s a good laugh on in Afghanistan – if you were to believe this ITV video blog.

But war is no fun – if you go by this well-made multimedia package from Reuters.

Paul Bradshaw’s critique of the two, War reporting: two online reports — spot the difference, is certainly worth a read. As he says, one’s a blog, another journalism — and the difference is quite evident.

One day the ITV lads will grow up. Who knows, they might even spot the difference.

For he knows not

Speaking of war and Easter and five years of Iraq, the Vicar of Putney – no relation to the one in Dibley, mind – has an interesting commentary in the Guardian, A funny kind of Christian.

In a nutshell, it is about Bush the Evangelist — and why he will not go to heaven.

While on the topic, here are a few suggestions — some quite offbeat — for your Iraq reading…

In the CJR series On the Ground, Paul McLeary contextualises Iraq and the stories that do not always get reported. The Enemy of My Enemy is the first in the series.

Another good resource, the perspectives of scribes who covered the war, from John F Burns to Anne Garrels to Ted Koppel, a kind of reporter’s notebook on NPR.

Juan Cole, writing in Salon, is critical of Bush in Five years of Iraq lies – and how.

Time presents a timeline of the Iraq, month by month. And Newsweek offers a look at the next five years.

The USA Today points to how the Iraq war has gone online. And in this Reuters analysis, Andrew Gray talks about the changes Iraq brought about in the US Army.
 

Collateral damage

Here’s a pointer to a forgotten war, also to a collateral damage we don’t normally take note of — all credit to South Asian Journalists Association’s Sugi for flagging this up.

It’s from Simon Gardner’s piece on the Sri Lankan war (yes, there is a war still on that side), Elephants fall victim to Sri Lanka war. And here’s the passage that makes it so extraordinary:

“Once he came with a gunshot wound to his stomach. We made a paste of chilli powder, pepper and turmeric and rubbed it on the wound,” Jayasinghe said. “Then he used his trunk to massage the paste in!”

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