News Reporting on Religious Issues: Malaysian Media Practitioners’ Perspective

Authors

  • Safiyyah Ahmad Sabri
  • Zaridah Abdullah

Abstract

The nature of a multiracial and multireligious community is all about concern and awareness from all levels in the society. The differences of thoughts, beliefs and understanding requires tolerance over almost all factors including political and economic sectors. While the people agreed to the contents of the Federal Constitution, conflicts on race and religion continue to happen from time to time. Being the watchdog of the ruling party, it is not new for the Malaysian media practitioners to be in a dilemma in shaping the content in reporting controversial issues. Hence, this paper intends to study the perspectives of the media practitioners in Malaysia in shaping the content when reporting on religious issues such as the apostasy case of Lina Joy and the translation of ‘God’ to ‘Allah’ issue. Using a qualitative method, in-depth interviews were conducted with the media practitioners; journalists and editors of two mainstream newspapers, The Star and Utusan Malaysia. The results show that all of them have a mutual understanding of what they should and should not write in their reporting considering the background of Malaysian society. This is also understood when they are aware of the rules and regulations restricted in the contents of their reports for national security purposes. Keywords: Race, religion, media, news reporting, plural society. https://doi.org/10.17576/JKMJC-2022-3803-18

Author Biographies

Safiyyah Ahmad Sabri

Dr. Safiyyah Ahmad Sabri is a Senior Lecturer of Communication Programme under the Faculty of Leadership and Management, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM). A PhD and Master degree holder of Mass Communication, UiTM, she teaches Communication and Journalism subjects. Her area of interests include racial and religious reporting, fake news, cybertroopers, digital journalism and social media. She looks forward to collaboration of ideas in writing and research. Email: safiyyah@usim.edu.my

Zaridah Abdullah

Dr. Zaridah Abdullah is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Mass Communication and Media Studies, UiTM. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations, a master’s degree in Mass Communication and a PhD in Human Communication. Her research interests are on social media, family communication and mass media effect. She teaches Family Communication and Quantitative Data Analysis in Communication Research courses at the faculty. She has written a book and a few chapter in books and several journal articles. Email: zaridah255@uitm.edu.my

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Published

2022-09-30

Issue

Vol. 38 No. 3 (2022)

Section

Special Articles

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