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Istanbul. People seem less willing to support dialogue in 2008 – The case of Turkey, where we are gathered, is illustrative, while in 2004 only 44% of people were unfavourable to-wards Christianity now in 2008 it is 74% and 76% an unfavourable opinion of Jewish people. At the same time the 61% of the people in Japan think unfavourably about the Muslim World, 56% in India and 52% in Spain.

But to understand these results it is helpful to look at the data showing how opinion-leading media has reported on Religion, Religious leaders and Values over the same period. Last year´s Annual Dialogue Report of the WEF C100 was based on 2007 results, a year in which nobody had any idea of the upcoming financial meltdown, the terror attack in India or the war in Gaza. But in 2008 headline news has been dominated by these events – therefore the overall framing of “other side” in media broadcasts to the public in Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States of America has been strongly shaped by these events.

Moreover, the media coverage of religion has not changed: News selection remains driven by an Islam framed within the stereotype of ‘terror´ and a “West” framed in the context of ‘domination´ in up to 80% of the news – as has been the case for some years.
The good news of the UN AoC Conference in Istanbul is, that

1) once the global media cover concrete results of specific projects with religious involvement like human development, hospitals run under the guidance of Muslim leadership, youth exchanges etc the stereotype-driven reporting ends and journalists just cover the story without negative framing
2) the Shell youth poll “Citizens 2050” demonstrates that the optimism of young is unchanged people have to interact with “the others” everywhere.

Contact C-1 Foundation
amacrad@hotmail.com and r.schatz@mediatenor.com

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