Using svg instead of img src

Ah, so it is a page resource. In that case, rather than readFile you can try:

<ul class="list-unstyled">
  {{ range (where .Site.RegularPages "Section" "news") }}
  <li class="ink--text">
    <a href="#{{ cond (in (.Title|anchorize) "%") (.Title | base64Encode) (.Title) | anchorize }}">
      {{ with .Params.cover }}{{ (.Resources.GetMatch .).Content | safeHTML }}{{ end }}
      <span>{{ .Title }}</span>
      <span>{{ .Description }}</span>
    </a>
  </li>
  {{ end }}
</ul>

Assuming of course that images/news.svg is in the page bundle directory (must be a leaf bundle in that case, else you can’t use the images subdir).