Harding spots flaws in religion reporting
A STUDENT will get a £5,000 grant to run an interfaith conference of Jewish and Muslim women after winning a national competition on ways to address “on-campus Jewish issues”.
Sally Patterson, a University of Bristol undergraduate, was named ahead of three other finalists as the inaugural winner of the UK Campus Pitch Competition, a joint venture between the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and the Board of Deputies.
Head judge Josh Holt, the president of the Union of Jewish Students, praised Ms Patterson’s proposal, called Women of Faith in Leadership, as an “excellent” way of tackling both antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred.
Ms Patterson plans to hold the oneday conference at Bristol towards the end of 2018. She told the JC that both communities face similar challenges, including a lack of female representation in leadership roles, and prejudice.
She said: “Coinciding with a rise in antisemitism is an increase in Islamophobia, too. We will hopefully run some workshops to learn how to tackle both forms of hatred.
“And when it comes to Israel and Palestine, it feels as though people on either side are speaking different languages. But things will start to change when we share commonalities and experiences.”
The panel, also featuring Gillian Merron, the Board’s chief executive; Stephen Rubin, chairman of Pentland Group; and Marina Gerner, a WJC representative, awarded £1,500 to each of the runners-up.
Ideas that didn’t win included an interfaith gardening project at Queen Mary University in London, and an Israel-focused photography and film competition at the University of Warwick.
JAMES HARDING, the former director of BBC News, spoke of facing antisemitism as a journalist in his keynote address at JW3’s inaugural religion and media festival.
Mr Harding, 48, who was joined on stage by radio presenter and author Libby Purves, also criticised some reporting of religious affairs in the mainstream media, saying organisations “prefer to cover organisations than religious issues”.
Tuesday’s all-day event, at the Jewish community centre in North-West London, also featured an address by Mark Thompson, a former director-general of the BBC, and a screenwriting masterclass with Frank Cottrell Boyce.
Mr Harding, who is also a former editor of The Times, told the audience that he was once asked whether his Jewish background disqualified him from leading a large news organisation. He added that he has also received “inane and insulting” abuse on Twitter.
He said that, upon joining his first newspaper, he considered reverting to his family’s original name, Hirschowitz. It was changed to Harding by his grandmother after moving from Berlin to London in 1936.
He said he had asked his grandmother whether he should use James Hirschowitz as his byline. His grandmother recommended he stick to Harding.
Moving on to how the media reports religious affairs, Mr Harding said: “Newsrooms report religion always from the outside, rather than from the inside. They also tend to focus on the extremes of religion, such as intolerance and violence.”