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Stephanie Teal Discuss whether news (print and television) representations of Muslims is prejudiced The Islamic faith is the fastest growing religion in the West. Nevertheless, the West has many stereotypes and misconceptions about Islam that are due to the media. Islam is often looked upon as an extremist religion, and many people hate Islam and do not want to acknowledge its true teachings. In many cases, the media’s reports about Islam are incorrect due to ignorance. This is one of the reasons why the West often hates Islam. In contrast to what many Westerners think of Islam, Islam is a peaceful religion, which does not promote any forms of uncalled fighting or terrorist actions. A major factor which contributes to Islamic stereotyping in the West is down to the media’s ignorance of selecting their words that describe Muslims. This is quite common within the print based media, for example newspaper articles. Some common names seen in the news about Muslims are ‘extremist’ or ‘terrorist’. These words are misleading and are mainly anti-Islamic. The media rarely uses more neutral terms such as ‘revivalist’ or ‘progressives’. Journalists may use such terms as these purposefully to create a negative image of Muslims and persuade the public to an anti-Islamic view and general prejudice. The media has the power to do this as the general Western public relies and bases their own opinions on that of what the media presents to them. The Muslim people are poorly represented in the West in terms of print based coverage, such as the press. Not only are there just a few handfuls of news agencies in Muslim countries; there is also the concern over the number of inexperienced Western reporters. Many reporters don’t understand the local cultures in Islam and don’t speak the language; consequently this then means that their representation is often a biased account of the political and social events occurring. We can also pick up on the visual images presenting negative images of Muslims, not just the language used. For example it could be said that these are also quite bias, that the images seen are focused purposefully and solely on the negative side, e.g. – conflict. A very common image associated with Muslims is protests; the Western public see only the aggressive protesting Muslims, what they do not see is perhaps the Western people aggravating the Muslims to this point. Therefore then the media shows the Western public only what it wants them to see, a falsehood on the truth, a negativity leading to prejudice. As well as creating inaccurate images about Islam, the Western media usually identifies Islam in Muslim conflicts. The media hardly points out any other religions in their conflicts. The source of this could be pointed back to the September 11 attacks, news coverage of the Muslim people degenerated after the attacks compared to beforehand. The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were a series of suicide attacks organised by al-Qaeda on the United States on September 11th 2001. Four jet airplanes were hijacked, two crashed intentionally into the Twin Towers and two crashed unintentionally individually elsewhere. It can be said that post 9/11 is where the news coverage of Muslims became more covered and more intense. An article by Ahmed Versi on 17th June 2002 in ‘The Guardian’ claimed that Muslims made up more than 3% of the UK population and were they under-represented in newspaper offices and television studios. An extract from the article shows, “The media portray Muslims as objects of curiosity at best, vilification at worst. Complaints about media representation of Islam and Muslims have been a constant, unifying factor, an agreed given for all shades of opinion among British Muslims. As in other institutions, Muslims are grossly underrepresented in the media. A decade ago there were a handful of Muslims, both male and female, in broadcasting media and a negligible number in the print media. Now, while there has been an improvement, progress is slow.” This shows us that the concern for the misconception of Muslims within the print based media is at large. Also this presents an idea of the prejudice as there is a lack of jobs for Muslims. It can also give the Western public an inside view into the Muslim perspective, seeing as the writer is a Muslim. A negative image of Islam is becoming more inherent in the Western culture from inaccurate media coverage. The media helps to make an image of Islam to unsuspecting audiences. The Western public often is misinformed about Muslims through the images on television and motion picture screens (films), which promote strong messages among their audiences. An example of this could be the images seen in television news reports, mainly they are horrific and depict such things as: - protestors, conflict, and general disaster. The 1 negative stereotypical representation of Muslims as ‘terrorists’ are pushed forward and seen clearly through complimentary visuals of bombings and disaster. Although not all representations of Muslims through the television media is negative, some try to put forward a more positive image. For example there was Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches’, they showed a specific documentary called “It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim” on 7th July 2008 at 8pm. On the third anniversary of the 7/7 London Bombings, Peter Oborne investigated whether these attacks and the fear of terrorism had fuelled the rise of violence, intolerance, and hatred against British Muslims. He discovered that for many in the Muslim community, Britain had become a very frightening place. A range of British Muslims were met who lived in daily fear, either because their homes were constantly vandalised or because they had suffered devastatingly violent attacks. This is just another way of showing (like ‘The Guardian’ article) a Muslim’s own perspective, and comparing the dramatic differences to how the media presents how their perspective should be. It is little things like this which show that the media is not entirely prejudice, just the majority. With the Western media’s focus and governmental attitudes, the West is a place where Islam is a name of negativity. The Western media has contributed a great deal to this negative image of Islam. The media often misrepresents Islam and its culture, it could almost be said that sometimes the media seems to be biased against Islam. The media distorts the image of Islam, and the general public tend to believe this. This manipulation is done purposely because of biased feelings, but also maybe accidentally because of ignorance. Islam is actually a peaceful and fair religion that most often does not correspond to the media’s reports. As Islam grows more and more in the West, Westerners will eventually learn the truth about Islam and find out that these negative stereotypes are not all what they appear to be. 2