ABSTRACT
This chapter brings religion into the conversation between media and human rights. It examines how elements of news media have come to have something of a religious 'blind spot'. It is, however, striking, even 'troubling that the time of greatest need for religious literacy has coincided with the time at which religious literacy in the media is at a low ebb'. The chapter provides some examples of the ways human rights, media and religion overlap with one another. Many news events framed as stories about religion might fairly have been framed as about human rights. One example is the mass suicide by members of the 'Peoples Temple' in Guyana on 18 November, 1978. The Israel/Palestine conflict is a much longer running event with fundamental religious features which has in recent years been framed largely in human rights terms. Victims of rights abuses by the State of Israel are usually identified as Arabs, rather than Muslims or Christians.
