Religion: The Missing Beat in Philippine Media

Abstract

There is a dearth of news on religion in Philippine media, and there is no religion beat. Instead there is a church beat, which focuses on the dominant Roman Catholic Church and its religious leaders. Although this beat has been in place for many years, no study has been conducted on its emergence and practice. Through in-depth interviews with journalists, religious leaders and academics, and a representative sampling of newspaper articles, this article explores how the church beat is being practised, including the biases of and corruption among journalists covering the beat. This article also examines the need to establish a religion beat and how to improve the reporting of religion news in the Philippines.

Keywords

Religion reporting Philippine media church beat religion beat

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