Description
The challenge of exploring religious issues through nuanced and well-informed journalism has become especially daunting in today’s media landscape in the U.S., as foreign news bureaus have closed and less time is devoted to sober, analytical discussion. In 2011, with a grant from the HRLI, the Bureau for International Reporting (BIR) worked with PBS NewsHour to create a television series, “Fault Lines of Faith,” dedicated to providing on-the-ground perspectives on sectarian conflict in several regions. Subsequent Luce grants provided additional support for the series and allowed for religion reporting as part of GlobalBeat, a course launched in 2014 at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and taught by BIR’s president, Jason Maloney.
“Fault Lines” premiered in 2012 with an examination of the deadly conflict in Southern Thailand that targets both Buddhists and Muslims. Since then, the BIR has produced more than 20 reports in 10 countries, on topics ranging from the reconciliation process between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, to the impact of the U.S.-supported “global war on terror” in Kenya, to the plight of Muslim Tatars in Crimea. In each case, the programs examine multiple roots of conflict: questions of nationhood and identity as well as religion; marginalization from power and resources; a climate of human rights abuses; and lack of access to justice.
The BIR has filmed reports from Myanmar since 2012, and now proposes to produce two field reports around that country’s election in 2020. One report would examine how politics has become linked to the conflict between the Buddhist majority and the Muslim Rohingya minority, as opponents of Aung San Suu Kyi use religiously-charged rhetoric to claim that she and her party are under the control of global Muslim interests. A second report would serve as an update on the plight of the Rohingya and other religious minorities, including the largely Christian Kachin and Karen.
Our grant would also support NYU’s GlobalBeat students to produce one broadcastquality report on an issue where religion and politics are intertwined. Stories under consideration include Sri Lanka (on the one-year anniversary of the Easter Bombings that targeted churches and hotels, and killed 259 people); Ethiopia (where the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has been drawn into struggles between ethnic nationalists pushing for autonomy and those who support an inclusive Ethiopia); and Kazakhstan (which hosts many Uyghurs in exile from China).
The BIR intends to place each of the reports with PBS NewsHour Weekend, with which it has been collaborating since 2015. The weekend edition, based at WNET in New York and editorially separate from the weekday program in Washington, DC, offers longer segment
9
running times (10-12 minutes, in contrast with 6-7 minutes on PBS NewsHour). Online, the two programs are identical, sharing the same website, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube channels and overall reach.
BIR was founded in 2006 to address the need for vital, in-depth international affairs television news programming. Created by longtime network news producers Kira Kay and Maloney, the organization is designed to independently produce and deliver reports on topics that are important to American audiences yet underreported by the media.
Kay, who serves as co-director, producer and reporter, and Maloney, who serves as codirector, producer, videographer, and editor, have covered over 20 countries for ABC, CBS, PBS and CNN. The BIR’s report on conflict and the peace process in Uganda won the Robert F. Kennedy Award for International Reporting and two Emmy Award nominations (including for best report of the year).
Luce Foundation funds would cover all production and dissemination costs for the Myanmar stories, and partial support for GlobalBeat reporting.
