ABSTRACT
The idea of news as a commodity is the focus of this chapter. Singh points out that the nature of a commodity is to meet ‘the tastes and prejudices of targeted audiences’. What does it say about the appetite of consumers of news that negative stories predominate, particularly in the coverage of religion? Singh offers the answer that such negativity gives us ‘reassurance that our behaviour is no worse than some of the things religious people get up to’.
Singh illustrates the focus on negative reporting by contrasting the lack of coverage of a high profile Sikh celebration against the coverage of the protest against the performance of the play Behzti. Did the protest attempt to ‘destroy theatres’ or was it, for the most part, peaceful? Only a bystander’s letter in The Times gave much indication that the protest was not bent on destruction.
Singh differentiates his concerns about the play and about negative reporting from an objection to ‘free speech’. Free speech is emphasised as a value embraced in Sikhism, along with equality and toleration. The difficulty, for Singh, is not freedom of speech but the selective focus and labelling involved in constructing the news.
