Pluralismo religioso en la televisión pública: estudio del caso catalán

This text reflects on the role of the mass media as mediators of values and knowledge in relation to religious beliefs. Our esearch focuses on the issue of pluralism and the treatment of interreligious dialogue, including the option of atheism. The text presents a case study of the Catalan public service broadcasting. To bring together the different units of analysis, we used the broadcast search tool available on the online à la carte service. The development of secular democratic systems has not meant the elimination of religious programs, but our empirical work addresses the whole of programming. A total of 106 units were analyzed, i.e., audiovisual content broadcast between 2015 and 2018. The sample is divided into two groups: those dealing with a single religion (65) and those dealing with more than one faith (41). The text presents a quantitative analysis complemented, in relation to multi-religious content, with a qualitative analysis. The results show that the Catholic religion stands out (present in 49% of the sample), followed by Islam (35%). In third place, with a lower percentage, appears Judaism (17%). Atheism, present in 10% of the sample, is always presented as an alternative to the Catholic religion. Informative content stands out (83%). Believers are often presented as victims, and 44% of the multi-religious pieces exclusively operate from a conflict basis. Except in the case of the Catholic and Muslim religions, nthe messages usually refer to other countries, which deepens the distance between “us” and “others.” In specializedn religious programs, the messages involve what we call “friendly journalism,” characterized by conflict avoidance and reinforcing the monolithic treatment of religions, without internal divergence.