Media Policy, Co-Existence, and Freedom of Speech

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) is an independent, non-governmental organization created by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters to administer broadcast codes dealing with issues of ethics, stereotypes and portrayal, journalistic ethics and violence on television, among others. As of the end of 2011 (the period dealt with in this chapter), the CBSC had rendered 505 Panel decisions, which have served to define the parameters of permissible (and excessive) content on a broad array of radio and television programming, including news, public affairs, magazine format television shows, radio and television talk shows, children's television, other dramatic forms, and so on. In many of the foregoing types of programming, complaints pertain to representations and discussions of religious issues and religious groups. This chapter addresses the nature of the complaints received with particular relevance to religion, religious communities, and discourses.

Media Narratives of the Interactions between Religions and Cultures in Canada

Canadian immigration patterns suggest that as the country retains its commitment to intake some half a million immigrants a year from Southeast Asia, Africa, South and Central America, the dynamics of religious diversity and interactions in Canada are bound to increase. A fixed and rigid “secularist” mindset among news outlets, magazine boardrooms, film companies, and other media will miss the richness of the creativity, diversity, imagination, and interactions between cultures and religions, which will continue to form the “street narratives” that the media's meta-narrative overlooks. This chapter documents instances of where the “meta-narrative” is seen to prevail and distort the accurate portrayal of religion and culture in Canada, where it has missed the interactions between religions, and the contributions that culture and religion are making to each other.

Foundations of Interreligious Dialogue

This chapter is less concerned with foundations as such than with the different kinds of dialogues undertaken at various levels between different religions as well as between religions and science and philosophy. The beliefs and dogmas at stake often dead-end these dialogues or lead to misunderstandings. “Spirituality” as a common trait of all religions supposedly uniting them in opposition to scientific materialism is a misleading concept. Religions deemed similar, such as monotheistic faiths, when analyzed in terms of their meanings and effects, are actually very different. However, different traditions, even when they diverge across space and time, can reveal interesting convergences in their philosophical teachings. The primeval infra-linguistic foundations of the sacred at the origins of humanity have been passed down through the millennia in different ways according to their different cultural histories. The ethical and legal issues arising from the role of science and technology today make it imperative to seize opportunities for dialogue. Faced with these new issues, religions and philosophies must collaborate in their attempts to address them. Consequently, their traditional role in the genealogy of ethics needs to be overhauled. This may be achieved through efforts to construct an empirically based universal ethics rather than a purely theoretical one that is limited to specific religious or philosophical doctrines. The success of these efforts is not guaranteed; however, they may be facilitated by the underdetermination of decisions by their motivations, an argument adapted from the concept of underdetermination of theory by facts.

Cultural and Religious Dialogue

The exhibition, “An Expression of Faith: Sacred Art of Centuries Past,” first displayed at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in 1998 illustrates the positive effects of mutual co-operation between the cultural, religious, and civic communities in preserving religious and cultural heritage. The exhibition featured a select group of European sculptures from the Renaissance period donated by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Halifax. In this chapter, the history and preservation of the three featured sculptures from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries are revealed – from their installation in the Chapel Built in a Day in Halifax, to their removal and long-term conservation in Ottawa, and finally to their eventual return, public display, and ultimate community impact, resulting in additional donations and a new and rare discovery.

Capillitas

This chapter focuses on the analysis of a small religious and funerary culture practiced alongside Venezuelan roads, where many car accidents cause a great number of deaths every year. After a car accident has caused the death of a person, family members build a small cenotaph known in Venezuela as capillita, where a variety of ritual practices are developed. According to family members, the capillita has to be built at the exact location where the victim “took his last breath.” This small funerary culture is a vivid expression of rich and complex processes of religious syncretism that combines and integrates elements originally coming from Catholic, Jewish, and African-Venezuelan practices, along with popular agrarian myths and legends. Communication processes, sometimes among distant communities, located in different roads and highways, are based on family visits and religious meetings, where messages are exchanged face to face. But capillitas are not only funerary monuments where family members and neighbors come to communicate with the deceased, visit and bring candles, flowers, water, liquor, and food, they are also signs of warning to passersby and, particularly, to drivers who are usually blamed for car accidents.

Is Religion Compatible with Media Entertainment?

Is it possible to reconcile the spectacular approach of the media with the inner nature of the spiritual? Can one imagine the presence of religions within an ambience of entertainment? There always were tensions between religions and plays and games. Religions feared theatre, play, music, arts, dance, cards, and media, of course. Why are play and entertainment considered to be so dangerous? Would it be a better approach to discern true spiritual openings through play, and through media entertainment? In this chapter, the authors discuss the point of views of an historian, a film director, communication researchers, a philosopher, sociologists, and anthropologists, who offer a refined understanding of the capacity of playing to reveal the human search for meaning and spiritual journey. Play, and certainly media entertainment, can open humans to their own various potentialities, giving significance to their relation with the world and with other humans, and so with the sacredness. However, this can be done only if one respects the typical languages of the media made out of narratives and storytelling, which implies capacity of creativity in arts and rhetoric, combined with respect for ethical and spiritual dimensions of believers.

Religious Sphere in Canada

Canadian demographic trends indicate that the number of religious adherents from various faith groups is on the rise. Despite successful integration of some religions into mainstream Canadian society, discrimination against some faith groups persists. Christianity is the dominant religion in Canada, the minorities being Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism. The mainstream media are considered a main driver of social cohesion in Canada because they construct ideologies and define communities. They are a key lever in shaping debate about religion in the public sphere; however, debates exist on how religion is portrayed in the media. Despite the vast religious diversity in Canada, media organizations commonly ignore religious minorities, deeming them insignificant, unfavourable, and sometimes invisible. This chapter reviews and compares research findings on Canadian media depictions of these faith groups over the past few decades. Canadians of various faith groups have expressed a wide array of sentiments toward their representations in the media. Vast differences in media depictions exist; however, dominant discourses and representations prevail for each faith group: Christians are the normal group; Muslims are in discord with Western societies; Jews require sympathy; Buddhists are peaceful; Hindus are friendly; and Sikhs are extremists. It is suggested here that considerable research needs to be conducted on Canadian mainstream media patterns of coverage and portrayals of interfaith activities within Canadian society.

Transculturality and the Included Third

Transculturality is principally defined by its relation to multiculturalism and interculturality as the constant invention of relational identity suggesting that the self is in the other and the other is in the self. In the context of “glocalisation,” we no longer seek to resolve the contradictions in one synthesis that results in monoculturalism, founded on the characteristic dualism of modern Nation-State. The possibilities are instead capitalized in the dynamics of what we call the “included third.” We try thus to understand the semiotic codes of diversity by, at the same time, avoiding relativism by recognizing what is undeniable and yet denied by the mediation of the monocultural dictatorships, fundamentalisms, or terrorisms masking murders and genocide either behind the promise of eternity or threat of disappearance. What is undeniable is the fact that people who were once alive are now dead. Inclusion and its strategies require testimony of a cultural memory very different from the disinformation of the official histories, tools in the hands of “lynchers,” those who lynch somebody, as René Girard calls them. Different literary and mediated texts are analyzed from this point of view based on their valorization of the metaphor of the chameleon, that is a very positive capacity to blend in different cultural contexts, in this chapter.

All in the Family

This chapter suggests that religion communicators examine their understanding of relationship in terms of their faith perspectives. Do communicators create relationships by building consensus and communities of belief, or did God establish relationships between people by creating the human family? Ideas hold communities of belief together. Disagreements threaten community bonds. The majority works to maintain consensus and silence dissent. Family connections tolerate disunity. Even when people disagree, they remain family members. The main threat to the family is loss of dialogue. Diverse family members want to engage different viewpoints to discern truth. Seeing relationships in family terms could have theological and practical appeals for religion communicators as they try to resolve conflicts, foster cooperation, and manage dialogues with publics. Religion communicators, especially those from Abrahamic faiths, might approach family disputes differently from the win-lose asymmetrical standpoint often seen in business. Religion communicators could downplay instrumental practices based solely on persuasion and consensus. Religion communicators could focus on generating robust dialogue, hearing all sides of an issue, and discerning God's truths.

Public Relations and Religious Diversity

Modern nation-states have become culturally diverse owing in part to changes in immigration law, globalization, and increased ease of transportation presenting both opportunities and challenges, particularly where religious diversity is concerned. The author proposes a conceptual framework that embraces an interpretation of public relations as a social function (Tilson, 2009a), a covenantal model as a theoretical ground (Koehn, 1994; cited in Baker, 2002), and expanded communicative conceptual parameters that include religion in definitions of diversity. Using telephone and e-mail interviews and textual analysis of media to obtain data on religious diversity and public relations practices in the U.S., a review of initiatives suggests that communicators are fostering tolerance and resolving religious conflict through dialogue in keeping with conceptual models that emphasize the social responsibility of the profession. The study also underscores that socially responsible behavior often has a foundation of faith and that the intersection of faith and institutional practice merits a closer look.