Adults across the world desire more coverage of religious news from media outlets, according to a report published on Sept. 20 by Faith and Media Initiative.
FMI conducted online interviews with nearly 9,500 people from 18 nations and across five languages to gather data on their perceptions of, and desire for, religious news coverage.
A plurality of these participants were Christians (42.85%), followed by Muslims (12.63%), Hindus (6.84%), Buddhists (4.61%), Atheists (3.87%), other faith traditions (3.69%), Agnostics (3%) and Jews (1.58%).
In addition to asking if they identified with a particular faith tradition, participants were asked “To what degree do you consider yourself to be a person of faith, with 1 being not a person of faith at all and 7 being a strong person of faith?”
Nearly four out of 10 (38.63%) of respondents were categorized as highly faithful / religious, followed by secular (37.12%) and middle of the way (24.25%), with seven nations (including the U.S.) having a higher-than-average percentage of highly faithful / religious respondents.
Around one-third (34%) of all respondents say they follow “media sources that are focused on faith-based news,” with nearly half (47%) of respondents in highly faithful / religious nations doing so.
A majority (63%) of respondents said there is a need for “high quality content on faith and religion” in their nation, while 59% say that the media should cover “a diverse set of faith and religious perspectives.”
In addition, 56% of adults surveyed say they are very / somewhat likely “to read, subscribe or get email updates from a publication that has high quality faith and religion reporting,” and the same number say there “should be more … coverage of complex religious issues.”
More than half (53%) of respondents feel that “the media actively ignores religion as an aspect of society and culture today,” while 61% have concerns that media coverage of religion “perpetuates … stereotypes rather than protects against them.”
Yet, most respondents recognize that they need to do a better job communicating their faith tradition’s views to journalists, with 84% agreeing that “religious groups need to provide the media with relevant spokespeople, particularly people with lived experience.”
JMI also conducted more than 30 interviews with English-speaking journalists from 17 countries and six continents to gain a sense of the media’s views on faith and religion coverage.
Journalists acknowledge the limited amount of religious news coverage, citing a number of contributing factors to this trend: budget reductions that have resulted in fewer specialists in newsrooms (including religion reporters), fear of covering religion due to the challenges of providing sufficient nuance to religious views and due to the politicization of religion, as well as faith / religion not being seen “as a driver for reader engagement.”
Faith and Media Initiative was launched by the Radiant Foundation in order to foster dialogue and relationship between faith leaders and members of the media to achieve four primary objectives: “Foster open, public dialogue about faith, provide consumers relevant, high-quality content, inspire more frequent faith stories, restore public trust in the media, and position faith as a valuable resource to society”
The full report is available here. The margin of error for the online interviews of non-journalists was plus or minus 1.0 percentage points.
Managing editor for news and opinion at Good Faith Media.
