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Dagbladet: The third largest newspaper in Norway with a total circulation of 146.512 on weekdays and 247.555 on saturdays. The paper promotes a social/cultural liberal stance and is one of Norway’s leading newspapers published in a tabloid format. Aftenposten: The biggest national subscription newspaper and the second biggest paper overall. Has an average daily circulation of 250 200 copies (mon.-sat.). Situated at the centre-conservative political spectrum.
The country specific reports not only differ with regards to their methodological approaches in selecting sources and keywords, but also in their general approaches to media analysis and what they have chosen to look for and highlight in their analysis. In contrast to the other reports, the British report for instance deals to a great extent with the specific media related features that can be said to have an influence on the nature of media coverage. As such, ideological leanings of the specific newspapers in question, type of article genres and tone of voice are emphasized. These are doubtless important aspects of an analysis of media debate. In addition the British report also searched Google for sources on religious slaughter, which makes for an important aspect when investigating the public debate, as most people access online sources through this popular search engine. The French report on the other hand puts much more emphasis on the political climate and surrounding context in which debates on religious slaughter takes place, or does not takes place. It has a thorough description of the standpoints of public authorities, religious communities and animal welfare organisations. The Norwegian report used a centralized media database to elicit articles from both major national newspapers as well as from smaller local newspapers. The advantage of this is that it provided a good overview on the many kinds of issues and events that brought about media attention. An important aspect regarding religious slaughter relates to agriculture and the farmers involved, whether they are directly or indirectly involved in halal or kosher slaughter. Hence, issues and events related to religious slaughter are often more interesting to local media than to the national newspapers and can easily be missed if only national major press are consulted. The German report puts more emphasise on the historical background.
3 Media debates in the different national contexts 3.1 France The issue of halal is rarely discussed in the general press in France. However, it seems to be found increasingly discussed in specialized ‘cyber-press’. The fact that the general press has paid little attention to the issue of halal and religious slaughter is quite remarkable in itself. The halal products distributed in the French market are not all guaranteed halal and when they are, there is no indication that these guarantees are backed up by any independent certification. As a result of the existing uncertainty in terms of halal certification and labelling, there have been several incidents relating to trade in “fake” halal meat. Scandals around “fake” halal appeared intermittently in the press until 2005, when the government commissioned a report with an investigation into “the market of halal”.
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