Rights group blasts 'racist' US media

Turn to any television news channel, flip open any newspaper and chances are good that you will come across a story discussing the Middle East. Just this week, newspapers are filled with stories about the assault on Fallujah, the death of a Dutch filmmaker or even the death of Yasser Arafat, and one might find a whole bevy of sweeping statements about the "Islamic World" or discussions about a "Clash of Civilizations" (a la Samuel Huntington's controversial book of the same name) in many of the stories purporting to give background information on these current situations. This supposed information, however, is often ill-informed and misleading, scholars argue.

It is time both those in the media and we as consumers of the media and students in academia carefully scrutinize the discourses about the Middle East, or indeed, any place in the world. Too often, media and those discussing situations in the any foreign place in the world rely on stereotypes and clich�s to explain complicated, complex and diverse peoples and areas, leading to misconceptions that can result in or fuel racism, hatred, as well as serve to create or further supposed divides.

Edward Said, a literary and cultural critic who examined in his seminal book "Orientalism" the way in which ideas about the East got their start in Western imagination, found that texts by British and French colonial officials and writers of the Imperial era tended to portray the East as backwards and less "civilized" than the West and were often blatantly misinformed and racist.

Today, these discourses about the East, and the Middle East in particular, sadly still inform much of our discourse and so-called news, Said suggests. As Said points out, when the so-called "Islamic World" is pictured in newspapers today, it is usually only in times of crisis and the presentation usually centers around how the "Islamic World" is different from "ours." Too often, this term of "Islam World" is used as a term to represent a whole variety of diverse peoples from various countries: "In no really significant way is there a direct correspondence between the 'Islam' in common Western usage and the enormously varied life that goes on within the world of Islam, with its more than 8 billion people ... its dozens of societies, states, histories, geographies, cultures," Said notes in his book "Covering Islam."

Indeed, even with such diversity present, news reports on the so-called "Islamic World" are likely to lump together regions, states, religious groups and peoples and even then only discuss them in the context of crises. As Parvez Ahmed, a board member for the Council on American-Islamic Relations notes, "A search of past newspaper articles shows that terrorism, militancy or extremism by a Muslim is frequently linked to his faith. The association is 1,000 to 1 times more likely for Muslims than any other faith group."

Furthermore, the United Kingdom's Home Office Report (complied by researchers from the University of Derby) found that 80 percent of the Muslim organizations they interviewed said that coverage presenting an unfair image of their religion was frequent. Such portrayals, one commenter in the BBC series "Myths About Muslims" noted, are "extending misconceptions about Islam and creating hatred that sort of comes with those misconceptions."

Just look at an MSNBC story of Nov. 9 in which it declared: "The clash between Islam and outspoken artists is not new" for an example of such dangerous generalizing.

By simply grouping such diverse places, ideas and peoples under the term Islam we are not able to understand the complexity of many situations involving these areas and, in many cases, miss-representing the religion as it is practiced by many.

The Home Office Report suggests that education, better training for journalists and writers, greater consultation with religious groups and policy reviews to ensure equal treatment were necessary to begin to repair this problem in the media. As Said also suggests, journalists and academics alike must review what they are saying about Islam and consider how perhaps their words are coming out of the Imperialist tradition and seek to inform themselves more clearly on issues. Said calls on reporters and academics (and perhaps consumers) to be "more diligent" asking sources "to explain 'Islamist' instead of leaving its meaning open to the imagination of uninformed readers."

To do this, Said suggests in one of his last comments in 2003, we might be able to "put aside our personal differences and work to make a more humane world."

http://www.collegian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/11/12/419435e1405e8

Hello. Thank you for taking my comment. I just came to Indybay's website today and am very glad there is a wonderful independent news organization in the S.F. Bay Area (my home).

About this article - I also felt that media outlets were overly biased. Personally, I am neither Jew, nor Muslim but I respect both religions and am very upset that Palestineans and Muslims are always dehumanized. I was talking to a man last week and I told him that since the year 2000, thousands of innocent Palestineans have died. He said either they were members of Hamas or I have my numbers wrong. That is how brainwashed people get when they watch our American news. I suggest everyone watch the wonderful documentary - Gaza Strip to learn about what the Palestineans are going through.

Thank you.