“We don’t want the Pope in Turkey”: Exploring the political division of British serious and tabloid press covering religion

Hamid-turksoy, N. (2013). “We don’t want the Pope in Turkey”: Exploring the political division of British serious and tabloid press covering religion. IAMCR-2013, Dublin, 25-29 June.

Abstract: Islam is one of the well-used or some would radically say misused word in academia today. This article explores the representation of Islam in serious British élite versus popular tabloid newspapers. I purposely focus on papers that have severe institutional divisions. On the one hand, broadsheets targeting the intellectual and governing élite, as well as, have an impact on setting the daily political agenda. On the other hand, tabloid titles directly communicating to the members of ill-educated and lower status groups in the British community (Poole, 2009; Baker, 2010; McNair, 2009; Sparks & Tulloch, 2000). It is well documented that journalists working for broadsheet newspapers uses the traditional investigative techniques to write serious news stories; by contrary, tabloid titles function with an entertaining, melodramatic and populist policy (Colin Sparks, 2000, 1992). My small-scale empirical study, is an attempt to throw additional light on the important concern of religious representations in contemporary Britain. By means of a case study – of the head of the Roman Catholic Church Pope Benedict XVI official visit to a Muslim country, Turkey – I attempt to outline an understanding of how contemporary British media’s content and production on religion (e.g., style, taste, lexical and aesthetic format) is shaped, interpret, provoke, (mis)used, and presented by journalists working for different media organizations. The case focuses on the Pope – who has recently been selected as the 5th most powerful man around the world by Forbes magazine – and his 4-day visit to Turkey. This was accepted as an important foreign trip embracing broader political, diplomatic, as well as, security agenda. Since, earlier the Pope increased tension between the Christian and the Muslim faiths by making unfavorable remark that link the Prophet Mohammed with violence. British journalist closely monitor the spiritual leader and address the journey as historic, sensitive and controversial. From a critical appraisal, I evaluate this case by applying a combination of interpretive and discourse analysis (cf. Roger Fowler, Teun Van Dijk, John E. Richardson) to 73 news articles (43 serious, 30 tabloid), published prior to and during the visit in 2006, in 3 politically influential papers, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and Financial Times; and 3 top tabloids, The Sun, The Mirror and The Daily Mail. Comparative findings of 73 news texts suggest that, tabloids tend to use a more radical, extreme, dramatic, shocking and sensational form of language than the broadsheet titles, with reference to provocative words, such as: terrorist, fanatics and extremists. In particular, tabloid titles focus largely on personalized, human interest stories. On the other hand, broadsheets tent to use a less emotive language and make fewer connections between fanaticism, extremism, terrorism and Islam; instead writing more about small and nonviolent protests and peaceful demonstrations or the Pope’s reconciliation dialogue with Muslims. The broadsheets, moreover, take a more global perspective in their reporting’s, while tabloid press far more local.