Article 3 “What should be the media policy about identifying a person’s faith in their reporting?”

Abdul Rashid is a member of the Ottawa Muslim community, the Christian-Muslim Dialogue and the Capital Region Interfaith Council.
Ottawa Citizen, January 2, 2011. Reprinted with author’s permission.

An individual has many identities. A person can be identified by his/her name, sex, ethnicity, skin colour or faith. The media policy about identifying a person’s faith should be the same as for other characteristics.

When reporting a business fraud, it may be relevant to identify a person’s trade or position in that trade. However, it is entirely irrelevant to report on the skin colour or ethnicity of the person involved. It should also be equally irrelevant to report the faith of that person.

Sometimes, the media report on an individual where not only the faith of the person is identified but his/her entire faith community is associated with the report.

Whether deliberate or inadvertent, this practice is especially despicable.

It is also worth pointing out that sometimes an interesting bias appears in media reporting. On the one hand, a report involving a person belonging to a particular faith or ethnicity might be splattered on the front page.

On the other hand, a similar event involving a person from another faith might be reported as a routine news items somewhere inside the newspaper.

Of course, when it is relevant, the faith or religion may be discussed. I cannot think of a better example of this practice than the current column which has now been running for 13 years.