Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell gave a keynote address at the Religion Media Festival held at Methodist Central Hall Westminster today. Speaking on the theme of Protecting the place of religion in the media in a digital age, he stressed the vital importance of understanding faith in understanding the world around us, our history, culture, literature and law and in understanding each other and encouraging community cohesion.
He said, “Representation in the media matters because faith matters, because values matter, but also to demystify and familiarise those who have no religious affiliation, so that everyone, of whatever faith or none, can see themselves represented and that faith can be understood, represented and explained.”
The address was followed by a panel discussion chaired by Roger Bolton with representatives from the media and higher education.
The speech follows in full:
Protecting the place of religion in the media in a digital age
Let me begin by giving three, I hope, clear, inter-connected and straightforward reasons why religion matters and therefore why religion in the media matters, even a media which is now part of a larger and more diverse digital landscape.
- We will never understand the world around us, unless we understand faith. We won't understand our nation, its culture, its literature, and its laws, unless we understand faith.
- We will never understand each other unless we understand faith. Religious literacy is essential for community cohesion. It enables us to interact and communicate with each other from places of knowledge rather than assumption or prejudice.
- We will never understand ourselves unless we understand faith, because we are spiritual beings with longings inside us that only faith can really help us make sense of, and properly understood, and lived out with humility and compassion, faith can be one of the drivers for building the good and flourishing society that we all long for.
But let's start somewhere else. Because without this something else nothing else will happen, and it is the big issue affecting the whole of our society at the moment, including the Church, politics at every level, and the media, be it the BBC, Greatest Hits radio, or TikTok.
And the issue is trust.
Trust in public institutions. Trust in public figures. Because it is at a pretty low ebb.
Though with the media, the trust questions are not all the same. Trust is eroded when people don't see themselves represented, and when the things they do see happening around them in their communities are not being included or addressed.
And in the digital age, when we all get our news and information in a multiplying variety of ways, this is further undermined when truth telling, reliability and accountability are in short supply
At one end, it is hard to hold the powerful to account when it is the powerful who own the media outlet and control the editorial policy.
At the other, the unfiltered, unedited, still mainly unregulated and unmoderated content on social media platforms risks relativising and trivialising everything to my experience and even my truth.
All media outlets, including PSBs are affected by this. Consequently, trust in the media (and it’s the media we are talking about this morning) has fallen dramatically in the last 10 years.
In the UK, public trust in news stands at 30% – 20 points lower than a decade ago.
Therefore, although I've been asked to talk about protecting the place of religion in the media in a digital age, I don't see how I can really do this without also speaking about protecting the place of Public Service Broadcasting in the media - what I shall go on to describe as ‘values for money’.
Faith must be central to this. Because it is central to life. But it will also help build trust, not least with other national institutions which bind us together and help shape our lives and the values we live by, and maybe even help us to regulate the digital world more effectively.
People - all people – people of faith and people of no faith - want their children to be brought up with a set of values that will serve and equip them for a worthwhile and flourishing life.
This is why for instance, if given a choice, parents opt to send their children to Church of England schools - not because they necessarily share our Faith, but because they observe, and intuitively know, that the ethos and values they long for for their children are in the DNA of these institutions and do not exist in a vacuum. Though, sadly, this is precisely what many of our other institutions, not least our political ones, have fancifully supposed might be the case.
In other words, the values are not an ‘add on’ or a ‘take away’ but arise from and are held by the narratives, beliefs and practices which make up the Christian life, and for that matter the life, ethos and values of all the great religions that are now part of our diverse, multifaith Society, and are woven into the ethos and practice of the school, giving people purpose, belonging and identity.
But as we well know, these values are contested in our society today. It is not, for instance, self-evidently the case from the observation of the natural world or of human history, that we should love and cherish our neighbour as ourself. In fact, the world is full of examples of power and privilege crushing and exploiting our neighbour. Overwhelming them.
But as followers of Jesus Christ, and as all the great monotheistic faiths bear witness as a moral bulwark against the self-serving philosophies that we do see flourishing around us, we prize honesty, truth telling, kindness, the importance of penitence, and the opportunity to start again. And loving neighbour is an absolute non-negotiable core value.
And neither - if you’ll forgive me going into preacher mode for a moment - can you choose your neighbour. Oh, this is this is something the world needs to learn. You don't get to choose your neighbour. Let me put it very clear, whether you like it or not, right now, your neighbour is that very irritating person who's sitting next to you right now. The Christian faith either means we choose to love our neighbour, or the whole thing falls apart. We stand - or fall - together.
I believe that these values are what our nation needs. They have been the bedrock of our society for centuries. In a time of uncertainty, and as the tectonic plates of culture and climate shift, it is the values that most of our citizens crave. It is in order to promote and understand these values that we really do need to protect the place of faith within the media, even the very contested, and diverse media of our digital age.
Moreover these same values fuel so many of our institutions, even when that is not always immediately apparent. They are necessary as ways of representing the communities and cultures we serve and therefore vital for the health and well-being of a vibrant public service broadcasting sector, where for too long representation meant ensuring TV programmes had presenters with a regional accent. Of course, the UK is still a family of nations, and within that a network of regions with its own culture and identity, but 21st-century Britain is also a network of communities. Many of these communities find their identity in ethnic origin and religious faith more than geographic location. Going forward, Public Service Broadcasting needs to get better at reflecting this reality, and in particular needs to be given a much higher priority.
I believe that trust can be rebuilt but only when we all feel we are included, understood, represented and have a place at the table – even if, in the digital world – that table feels more like the food hall at the Trafford Centre than a dining room table.
But as we know, religious broadcasting is in decline. Along with all Public Service Broadcasting, it has found it hard to adjust and adapt to the digital world. Where it remains, it is often confined to worship or narrow ‘specifically religious’ content, not yet reflecting the role of faith in other aspects of national life. In print media religious correspondents have been combined with other specialisms or simply abolished altogether, leading to a decline in coverage which is rooted in knowledge and understanding.
Furthermore, religious illiteracy remains widespread in British public life, including within much media coverage. We are poorer as a result. And therefore less able to make sense of what is happening in our world and why. History’s very familiar story of powerful people using religion to bolster their ambitions continues today. It means, for instance, that the middle east conflict, unfolding again before our eyes with such horror, cannot be understood without knowing its religious dimensions and its religious history. Likewise, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has a strong religious dimension to it.
Lack of understanding contributes to stereotyping and misrepresentation, which, in turn, leads to fear of people ‘not like us’ and contributes to the false narratives of dread and hatred which multiply on the internet and, tragically, sometimes lead to actual abuse and actual harm.
The BBC is still the dominant provider of religious broadcasting and still sees its importance. This is very welcome; yet as Bishop Nick Baines said some years ago, “contrary to the assumptions of a largely secular media, religion is not a private matter for individuals – an add-on to the rest of life. Rather, religion is a prime motivator of both individuals and communities, inspiring and informing their political, economic, ethical and social behaviour.”
Therefore, representation in the media matters because faith matters, because values matter, but also to demystify and familiarise those who have no religious affiliation, so that everyone, of whatever faith or none, can see themselves represented and their faith can be understood and explained.
Across the north of England over the past year I've been visiting cathedrals and larger churches on what I have called the Lord's Prayer tour. A main focus of this work has been with schools, both teaching people about the Lord's Prayer, but also sometimes teaching them the prayer. It has been an exercise in a public explaining of the Christian faith, its content and its meaning. Of course, in my case, I was also wanting to invite people into that faith, but recognising that in order to understand our nation’s history, our culture, our laws etc, we all need to have some understanding of how the Christian faith has shaped our common life. The Lord's Prayer, and the values that flow from it, seemed like a good place to start. But this is also work I would expect to be going on - in its own distinctive way - in the media. Or at least a lot more of it.
In this respect, I was glad to see that the Sanford St. Martin Trust, which does so much to advocate for and encourage excellence in religious broadcasting, gave a special award to the recent BBC series on pilgrimage, which in turn brought together people of different faiths, both teaching about pilgrimage itself, an ancient religious practise in which there is huge interest at the moment, but also using the actual experience of pilgrimage to explore the different perspectives of different faith traditions. We need more of this.
Great national events often have a distinctive and essential religious flavour. They often include religious services. They bring us together, be it the annual remembrance of the Cenotaph or recent events like the late Queen's funeral or the King’s Coronation. These are moments of national belonging, retelling and affirming the story and history of our nation. But increasingly they need unpacking and explaining.
At the local level, the Church of England, and other faith communities and Christian denominations, offer a space to bring communities together. Countless positive stories exist of community projects, inter-faith work, support given by volunteers, people working together across difference to support others, a recent example being Bishop Rhiannon in Southampton being in the community following the unrest there, working with local clergy and other Faith leaders to provide comfort, reassurance, practical support on the ground, and calling for people to heed the words of Henry Novak's family not to allow his death to cause division.
Dear friends, these are stories that need telling.
Because divisions do exist. And sometimes they appear to be getting wider. Faith is front page news. Though often for bad reasons. But this only makes it more important that every media institution has people who are religiously and theologically literate.
At least in the digital world, religious institutions and people of faith do have an opportunity to speak directly to people, connecting with a diverse and sometimes global audience. And through the creative use of social media, blog posts and the like we have become adept at telling our own story.
But there is great risk. The rapid spread of disinformation or misinformation which often affects stories relating to religion; conversations lacking nuance and substance; commentary, sometimes anonymous, which is uninhibited by social norms; those very clever algorithms which tell us that if you ‘liked this’ you will probably ‘like that’ -and are usually correct! - all steer us towards a narrow reinforcement of existing views rather than challenge or expose us to a wider or different perspectives. Which is why, in my view the digital landscape urgently needs further regulation. It is a public space, it is not a series of platforms and should be treated and regulated as such.
The rapid development of AI makes this more important than ever. We need the media – all media - to have proper safeguards, standards, boundaries and regulations in place. So that it can be seen to be trustworthy. So that therefore, free expression can flourish. But also where lies and hatred, abuse and manipulation can be called out and those making and supporting these statements held to account.
Faith can help this too. The big questions facing the development of AI, as Pope Leo has pointed out, and Archbishop Sarah highlighted recently in the House of Lords, are to ensure that AI does not replace human judgement or human conscience and respects the dignity and worth of every person. Therefore these developments need an ethical framework, they need values and a judgement that technology cannot provide.
Which is why faith matters. And its place in society needs honouring and understanding, whether we share that faith or not.
Faith keeps alive a truth about human dignity and a set of values to live by. So do the Reithian principles of public service broadcasting, wanting to inform and educate as well as entertain.
Therefore, in supporting the continuation of the public service broadcasting sector I don't so much want to ask the questions whether, for instance, is the licence fee is value for money, but whether public service broadcasting in all its different forms, gives us ‘values for money’ - and that the promotion of those values includes and understands the value of faith and the values that come from faith, helping us to understand the world; to understand each other; to understand ourselves and building a kinder and more coherent society.
Learn more about the Religion Media Centre who organised the festival.
