What is broadcast streams in from media companies locally and internationally but only certain stories are selected. The way the stories are framed, edited, delivered and packaged may mean that important elements of the story are left out, not explained or not backgrounded to fit into the program's format and time and advertising constraints. So often the question to consider is not only what is being covered in the news, but what and who is left out, and why.
Despite the media being global and the attention is placed on a narrow selection of stories. Local politics - but very limited time for any discussion of an issue. Local drama, accidents, disasters. Local sports - which has its own dramas (drugs in sport, off-field antics). International and local celebrities. International disasters. International (US, UK) politics. International wars and other violence. And occasionally religion, especially if connected to drama or celebrity.
From this kind of news I know little about what is going on in the world beyond the fearful and the sad. In a global media saturated world, I would presume to know more about what is happening in other nations beyond the superficial and the stereoype. But I seem to know less.
My ideal for a globalised world is to end divisions between mediated stories revelling in us and them dichotomies. I would welcome an understanding that we live in a cosmpolitan society and with a precious environment. Both need care.
In an article titled Religious Cosmpolitanism, Justin Neuman (2011) states that: 'any cosmopolitanism worthy of the name must offer a model of inclusivity and universalism that both recognizes and reckons with the substantive differences that separate varieties of religious and secular experience'.
He continues to explain the process saying that cosmopolitanism can be viewed as a 'desire, especially of those on the 'cultural left' (are they simply idealists?) 'to forge an ethos of political engagement that navigates a middle path between the particularizing relativism of multiculturalist identity politics on the one hand and managerial globalisms on the other.'
I am caught between the desire for inclusivity and the argument Newman puts forward that this is a desire of the 'cultural left'. If so, what happens to interfaith movements and peacebuilding across religions and nations? What happens to those seeking to end violence and promote peace if it is presumed that these desires are only to be found among a certain small collection of individuals?
I am left with a sadness about this divided view of cosmopolitanism and refer back to Ulrich Beck in A God of One's Own (2010:71) who talks about the bridge of religious functionalism which no longer distinguishes religionists from non-believers but brings understanding 'as an enrichment in a quite personal sense', and ultimately as habitus. He recommends a culture where 'religions are the object of mutual recognition' (72),
References
Beck U. 2010. A God of One's Own. Malden MA, Polity Press.
Newuman J. 2011. Religious Cosmopolitanism? Orhan Pamuk, the Headscarf Debate, and the Problem with Pluralism. The Minnesota Review, 77
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