Will Hayward has been a reporter at Media Wales for the past nine months after graduating from Cardiff University’s School of Journalism. As a general reporter he writes about anything and everything for Wales Online, The Western Mail and The South Wales Echo. His main areas of interest are science, the environment, West Brom and politics.
On May 10, he attended the NUJ Training Wales event “Reporting Belief” in Cardiff.
The aim of the session I attended was to enlighten journalists in making connections with different belief groups, understand those communities and report stories about them with accuracy and sensitivity.
Overall it was a really productive day. One of the things that surprised me – which perhaps shows my naivety and why this training is important – was that to describe the “Muslim community” is misleading. It is not a morphous, single entity but rather something multifaceted and hard to pin down. Pretty obvious when you think about it, but clearly I hadn’t given it enough thought.
Despite an engaging debate in many ways it raised as many questions as it answered. The main one that I think deserves analysis is the question of religion and identity.
As a reporter you have duty to question authority and it should be woven into your DNA to question any organised institution. All faith-based organisations certainly fall under this umbrella and deserve thorough scrutiny. This is especially true when they all make claims about devotion, the nature of the universe and often receive state funding to run their schools.
However this can present a problem when trying to engage with so called “religious communities”. It is all very well to develop a thorough understanding of, for instance, a Muslim community in your area but it does present a challenge.
Often people’s religions are intrinsically linked to their identity. Catholics will feel an affinity to The Pope for instance and whether or not the Pope is God’s representative on Earth is irrelevant. He is the most powerful figure in an incredibly rich and influential organisation. He deserves the highest level of sceptical scrutiny. How can any reporter worth the name do otherwise?
Balancing the building of relationships with religious communities whist unapologetically questioning and scrutinising the institutions that have grown up around their belief system is a tricky prospect.
I suppose this can be approached in a number of ways:
Firstly, by being incredibly upfront and honest about your purposes in questioning these institutions.
Secondly, being aware that you may offend people. Clearly you are not trying to offend people but it is often an inevitable by-product of doing your job. If you have handled the matter as sensitively as possible, you can sleep easily.
Finally, I think it is really important to distinguish between religion and nationality/culture.
A person’s religion is a choice. In my opinion, you cannot be born Muslim or born Christian anymore than I was born a West Brom fan. It is something you choose.
What we are born with is nationality and heritage that deserves to be properly respected, not an organised institution preaching a moral code.
Following the horrific attacks in Manchester the Reporting Belief event certainly helped me develop links for a story I had to put together for the Western Mail magazine (How Muslims feel seeing the awful news of a terror attack, by Abbie Wightwick, Will Hayward and Laura Bellis) particularly with regard to awareness of the diversity within that community.
It strikes me that when “reporting faith” most problems or issues can be avoided or at the very least mitigated, by following good journalistic principles. Practice empathy, do your research and most importantly – question everything.
@WillHayCardiff / www.facebook.com/WillHaywardJournalist