UNITED KINGDOM: Faith, Media & Human Dignity (II)
Faith and Media Summit (Oxford): Session “Faith, Media & AI” (Introduction to the session and the debate”
See Part I HERE
By Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers
HRWF (17.09.2025) – From 11 to 14 September 2025, The Faith and Media Summit, an initiative of Radiant Foundation held in Oxford, addressed the complex issue of the relations between media and religions. This was a first-of-its-kind gathering of scholars, storytellers, and industry leaders exploring how faith is represented – and often misrepresented – in the modern media landscape.(**) The author was invited to participate in the debate about AI and Freedom of Religion or Belief.
“Historical religions which have shaped our cultures in our European democratic countries are usually treated in a fair way by our media. This however does not mean that they are not criticized on questionable issues as they should.
The world of religions and beliefs is not a fixed and frozen world inherited from the past. It is driven by an internal dynamic that can produce a lot of offshoots.
Other religious or belief communities of foreign origin or having emerged in a recent past in our societies may have raised legitimate or illegitimate suspicions in the eyes of the state or the media. Journalists can play a role as a safeguard against certain undetected dangers but when they choose to deal with matters related to religion, beliefs and spirituality it is most often because they are in search of sensational stories, whether they are true or not, just to attract readers to their media.
My introduction to the upcoming discussion is focusing on the defence of faith communities and the dignity of their believers against unethical journalism.
How can religious or belief minority groups defend themselves against media and journalists, without any religious expertise and without any interest in truth, who do not hesitate, for purely commercial purposes, to trample underfoot the right to the existence of alternative non-mainline faith communities and the dignity of their members?
How and with whom can such religious groups defend themselves against bullying, scapegoating, denigration and defamation? One concrete example, among many, from our experience.
Jehovah’s Witnesses falsely accused in Belgium of covering up sexual abuse
In October 2018, the CIAOSN, a state agency fighting against “harmful cultic organizations” published a report about alleged sexual abuse of minors committed within the Jehovah’s Witness community and asked the Belgian federal parliament to investigate the issue.
The Belgian state agency said it had received various testimonies from people in The Netherlands claiming to have been sexually abused. This led led to a series of searches of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ churches and homes in Belgium.
The Belga national press agency published a breaking news which immediately inflamed all the media: “Sexual abuse of minors among Jehovah’s Witnesses? The Information Center on Cults requests an inquiry.” Very soon, as it could be expected, the question mark disappeared from the title in the media online:
Twenty-four minutes later, “La Libre Belgique” and “La Dernière Heure” titled “Sexual abuse of minors among Jehovah’s Witnesses: An inquiry is necessary.”
Later, “Le Soir,” another leading newspaper, made one more step, titling “How Jehovah’s Witnesses in Belgium silence sexual abuse of minors inside their community.”
On the same evening, the Belgian francophone TV channel RTBF announced in its TV News that the CIAOSN was asking the House of Representatives to establish an inquiry commission about possible sexual abuses “among” Jehovah’s Witnesses. In addition, the RTBF posted on its website an article titled “Sexual abuse of minors among Jehovah’s Witnesses? The Information Center on Cults demands an inquiry.”
These accusations of sexual violence were strongly contested by the religious community. The Jehovah’s Witnesses felt that this was prejudicial to them and their reputation and took the case to court.
I contacted the alleged source of information in The Netherlands and it happened that no Belgian citizen had ever testified to have been a victim of sexual abuse within the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ community in Belgium. This fact-checking had not been done by the state agency nor by any journalist and media. I gave the evidence to the lawyer of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who used it successfully in court as they won their case four years later.
Collaboration between unfairly defamed religious groups and NGOs like ours defending religious freedom is one way to assert one’s rights successfully and to publicly debunk fake news.
Another mean of successful defence is the collaboration with scholars in religious studies.
And in a recent case here in the UK, a warning by a lawyer hired by the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light stopped the planned publication by The Guardian of an unfounded sensational and very tricky story throwing suspicion of a murder by one of their members.
I can further develop such cases during the discussion and the ways to defend one’s right to human dignity and not to be defamed.”
Other unfounded defamation cases targeting the Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light and other religious groups were exposed during the debate.
(*) Katrina Lantos Swett is President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice which advocates for human rights worldwide, championing the rule of law, freedom of religion and belief, Internet freedom in closed societies, and fighting antisemitism and Holocaust denial. She formerly served as Chair and Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and teaches Human Rights and American Foreign Policy at Tufts University. She is also Co-Chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit, launched in 2021, and remains deeply engaged in the global fight for justice and human rights.
Willy Fautré, former chargé de mission at the Cabinet of the Belgian Ministry of Education and at the Belgian Parliament. He is the director of Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF), an NGO based in Brussels that he founded in December 1988. The organization is dedicated to defending human rights in general with a special focus on ethnic and religious minorities, freedom of expression, women’s rights and LGBT people. He has carried out fact-finding missions on human rights in more than 25 countries, including Iraq, Nicaragua and Nepal. He is a human rights university lecturer and published in university journals about relations between state and religions. He is a member of the Press Club in Brussels and a correspondent of The European Times.
(**) See the list of speakers and contributors to the debate HERE.
Photo: Faith and Media Summit, September 2025: Willy Fautré with Ms Katrina Lantos Swett (*), the moderator of the session “Faith, Media & Human Dignity” (Credit: HRWF)
